It's A Bird, It's A Plane, No It's...

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama released his “Blueprint for Change,” a document outlining his grand plans for our nation once he became president.  The document was hailed as an idyllic roadmap to this country’s transformation.  In his proposal, he grandly claimed to the nation that he was in the presidential race to quite literally “save our planet.”  He also boasted that “the Democratic Party has always made the biggest difference in the lives of the American people.” 

Now, however, in the face of the largest man-made oil spill in history, where is President Obama, the savior of the world? What steps has he taken to stop the gushing of oil into the gulf and onto the shores of American soil?  A month after the spill, the man who claimed his presidency would mark the moment in history that “the planet began to heal” is notably absent from the solution-finding process.  Why?

Well, first of all, I imagine it’s a little difficult for the President to successfully don a brightly-colored spandex suit, mask, and cape to come flying to the rescue of the planet as his inflated comments suggested he would (although, if that were to happen, I have no doubt that the media would capture the “inspirational” moment of Obama’s head held high, his cape blowing in the wind, and a whole rescued family of endangered baby ducks sleeping peacefully in his arms).  In all seriousness though, the reality of the oil spill requires complex, highly-specialized, technological inventions to solve a problem that has never before been seen, so honestly, what contribution could a community organizer / politician have on the situation? Answer: none.  There is no scientific solution that our government can offer to a problem that clearly requires a scientific solution. 

Why would the government be able to do any better than BP’s failed attempts?  How could they? The federal government is not an oil-drilling specialist.  The federal government’s only expertise is – and should be – in policy-making (and given the vast quantity of recent bills that have passed into law without our politicians reading the text to ensure constitutionality, I make this statement quite liberally). Still, scientists from oil drilling companies are the experts.  They are the ones that politicians call in for special advice when regulating and making new laws and policies, since the technology is simply beyond their general knowledge base. 

If expert scientists and engineers from oil companies are unable to find a solution to the oil spill, there is certainly no way that Obama is going to find a solution. Obama realizes this, therefore, instead of putting himself in the spotlight and subjecting his impotency and inability to solve this deep-sea dilemma to the public’s über-critical eye, he opted to lay low, hoping no one would remember his claim to rescue the planet just a few years prior.

Even if Obama can’t imagineer a real solution on his own, he has recently taken action by commissioning James Cameron, Director of the movie Titanic, to do the brainstorming for him…because, you know, people who direct movies about sunken ships clearly understand the technology behind stopping an oil leak.  

Listen, I don’t claim to have the answers to this problem either, but it just seems to me that if the government is going to turn to Hollywood to save the planet, maybe Obama should have chosen Michael Bay over James Cameron.  I mean, in Armageddon, Bruce Willis’ team was a bunch of deep-sea oil rig geniuses who flew two spaceships into space (spaceships, by the way, that were magically funded, built, and modified for the space drilling expedition in a mere few days time). They drilled a bunch of holes into an asteroid, walked around dramatically in slow motion, and dropped a couple of nukes down the half-mile holes.  If the government is looking for solutions from Hollywood, it just seems like it might just be better to put the fate of the world in the hands of Bruce Willis and his team instead of Leonardo DiCaprio. (After all, in the words of the immortal Bruce Willis: "The United States government just asked us to save the world. Anybody wanna say no?")

Still, all joking aside, I do think some credit needs to be given to the federal government in times like this.  After all, I don’t believe that every crisis is at the fault of the current sitting president. It’s simply not possible to blame any one particular party for a disaster, because a disaster – by its very nature – usually implies that there was a perfect storm of mishaps that have been building over time.  Take Hurricane Katrina, for example – one of the most powerful series of climate patterns to hit the Gulf in years.  Would the hurricane have been so destructive if the population had not chosen to live in a region that is several feet below sea level and logically in a location subject to high risks of flooding?  Was it President Bush’s fault that the local tax money that had been collected for over 20 years was squandered by local politicians on other pet projects fix instead of repairing the levies as the region’s primary source of protection against flooding? No, but that’s what happens when we create a nanny state – we create false expectations for a government entity that has no reasonable means or requirement to solve every problem on this planet. 

It is not the federal government’s responsibility or role to fix every bad mortgage deal. It is not the federal government’s responsibility to regulate and control the patient-doctor relationship.  Nor is it the federal government’s responsibility to find a solution for the failures of private companies.  However, since the federal government previously failed to review BP's engineering "fail safe plans" when approving the original drilling permits, the federal government must assume at least partial responsibility for the current disaster. Likewise, this oil spill affects the ocean coast and borders multiple states. Since the ocean is beyond the constitutional reach of the states independently, it is reasonable to also assume that the federal government does need to step in to protect the property of those affected by the spill.

In short, every day that passes without the federal government taking action to at least protect the property of the states affected, the federal government is failing at its constitutional responsibility. 

Regardless of whether this systematic failure did or did not happen during Obama’s presidency, the impact is still hitting the Gulf now, so we must ask: Where is his leadership?  He is perfectly willing to come to the aid of banks (that support him) or pass mandatory health care (with added perks to interest groups who support him), but where is his "patriarchal" attitude now? If it's his moral obligation to save the planet and oversee our whole lives, including what we eat, what kind of car we drive, and how much money we can make, where is his "protective" umbrella of assistance for the Gulf States?

If Obama wants to play Superman for every other part of our lives, if he wants to make grandiose claims that under his leadership, “the planet can begin to heal,” he had better be prepared to follow up his lofty speech with action – and this oil spill is his chance to do so. However, given the ongoing span of this oil disaster and the continual lack of leadership our President has demonstrated, it’s about time that this administration stops the blame-game, fear-mongering, and threats against BP with fines for violating environmental regulations and starts making legitimate steps toward protecting the trans-state coastline until a solution can be found.

~Gee