Opinion: Not the Obama We Needed

(June 15) -- There's this fumbling plumber, messing with his wrenches, constantly hitching up his pants, squinting at the leak in your basement. He's been there forever, muddling around, splashing in the waist-high water. For hours, days, you've been yelling down the stairs. "How's it going down there? Any progress?" No response, or just some new platitude yelled back up.

Eventually, you've had enough. "Damn it," you want to say, "get out of the way!" You want to storm down the stairs, push the guy aside, grab a wrench and fix the thing yourself.

I thought that the guy down on the Gulf Coast that I wanted to push aside was BP. And I thought that, in his speech tonight, President Barack Obama would be the one who'd had enough of BP scratching its head and shrugging with a helpless little smile. I thought -- hoped, I guess -- I'd see Obama finally taking things into his own hands.

But the one I want to push aside now is the president.

Obama is sharp. We love his intellect and ability to articulate his strategies. But we didn't need that tonight.

Tonight we saw the worst of the calculating Obama. It was Michael Dukakis, on stage during his presidential debate in 1988, calmly elucidating the intellectual argument against the death penalty. You could practically see Obama's bullet points written on a piece of paper, predict easily how he hoped "epidemic" would enter the vernacular of the oil spill. He calmly built up to his arguments in favor of clean energy technologies; immediately after the speech, an update to his Facebook page encouraged people to stand with him "for a clean energy future." Yes, Mr. President. Sure, that pipe is still broken down there in Louisiana, but I'd love e-mail updates about legislation in the Senate.

When he was running for president, two years ago yesterday, widespread flooding in the Midwest demanded the candidates' attention. Obama flew there, rolled up his sleeves (literally) and began filling sandbags. Addressing crises firsthand shouldn't be a campaign tactic or a political decision. It should be the default position for the leader of the country.

If, however, you insist -- here's the calculus, Mr. President. The oil spill is jobs; this crisis, the economy. Yes, yes, a lack of regulation created the BP disaster, just as it created the economic one. And yes, you're all over it, I hear you. (I mean, National Guardsmen are standing by to help with processing claims, as you noted.) But just as no one will consider the economy fixed while so many are out of work, no one will consider this spill fixed until the oil stops.

That oil is gushing out as I write these words. It gushed out while he spoke, more than 25,000 gallons during his 15-minute speech. As he talked about the fishermen's prayer ceremony, more than a thousand gallons leaked into the gulf. And the U.S. government is just standing there, scratching its head, shrugging.

Philip Bump is a columnist for Mediaite.com focusing on technology, the media and politics. A former political and communications consultant, he lives in New York City with his wife, China, and his dog, Lucy.


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