BP oil spill: How Obama Blew It
Bureaucratic
timidity. Bad phone lines. And a failure of imagination. Why the
government was so slow to respond to catastrophe.
It's a standing joke
among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm
and hearty in public, Obama can be cold and snappish in private, and
aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the
United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad
news on this early morning, Tuesday, some 24 hours after Hurricane BP
oil spill had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would
have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return
to Washington.
The president did not growl
this time. He had already decided to return to Washington and hold a
meeting of his top advisers on the following day, Wednesday. This would
give them a day to get back from their vacations and their staffs to
work up some ideas about what to do in the aftermath of the spill.
President Obama knew the spill and its consequences had been bad; but he
didn't quite realize how bad.
The reality,
say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might
displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night.
Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the
president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans.
Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Obama could see
them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next
morning on Air Force One.
How this could
be—how the president of the United States could have even less
"situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average
American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the
more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments
of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.
|
