Opinion: Obama's Vision Deficit on Display

(June 15) -- What can only be called President Barack Obama's vision deficit first came into undeniable, turn-your-head-and-cough, full-monty view fewer than 100 days into his presidency, when he started yammering on April 15, 2009, about making sure that the wealthy pay their "fair share" in taxes. Then there was his bold plan to free the nation's cities from traffic jams with a high-speed rail system that pulled not one smoke-belching car off clogged city streets anywhere on the planet.

When it came time to unveil his bold 21st-century stimulus package, it turned out all he was talking about was cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, and cash for laying asphalt and paying state and local workers for another year or two.

Even his most ardent admirers had to admit that the guy wasn't exactly dazzling in his approach to the issues of the day. From his approach to foreign wars and civil liberties to his belief that massive government bailouts and housing subsidies will jump-start the economy, he's been more like the third term of George W. Bush than something new and different. Little wonder, then, that Obama's approval ratings have been positively Dubyaesque.

Fast-forward to Obama's first-ever Oval Office speech, talking about the BP-caused oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His message could have been delivered mere minutes after the crude first started bubbling to the surface. Or, in fact, it could have been delivered years or even decades earlier (and had been, by a rogues gallery of politicians from every position on the political spectrum).

You know the anti-drill:

• We're "addicted" to fossil fuels in general and "foreign oil" in particular and that's gotta change.
• The "clean energy future is now" and we've got to "accelerate the transition" to the fuels of the future via government largess directed at favored technologies and exhortations to entrepreneurs and inventors to come up with something/anything that won't kill an entire region's economy for years or even decades to come.
• More heads will roll at the objectively corrupt and inept Minerals Management Service, the agency that is stupidly supposed to both maximize natural resource royalties from federal lands and regulate the same folks doing the extracting. That sort of self-defeating mission is a recipe for exactly the sort of incompetence and criminality evinced over its entire existence.

The one tangible, immediate action item in Obama's 18-minute monologue was his declaration that BP would pay not just for all cleanup costs but for all economic costs associated with the spill. That is, BP needs to cover all revenue forgone by fishermen, tourist places and even other oil companies because of the spill. BP, Obama averred, needs to pony up billions of dollars in an escrow account that would be administered by an independent third party.

What's interesting about this is that under a law that dates back to the last ginormous catastrophe (the Exxon Valdez spill), BP and all other drilling companies have the cost of such damages capped at $75 million. Why that so-low figure? Because legislators decided that such a paltry amount allowed smaller players to stay in the oil-drilling business. And because the bigger players didn't mind having their liabilities capped at petty-cash levels for them. Capping liability at submarket rates is no way to ensure good risk management.

Yet Obama's escrow-fund edict is less than meets the eye and underscores his vision deficit. It's far from clear that the federal government can (or should) simply waive away existing law, even in the face of such a horrible development as the gulf spill.

As important, as a multibillion-dollar corporation, BP knows a thing or two about the difference between strict legal liability and managing public relations. This is a company, after all, that showered bundles of cash on Obama and pushed for "green technologies" that played well with focus groups if not with, well, the environment. With 2009 revenues of $240 billion, BP has long been ready, willing and able to show it's a good corporate citizen by ponying up pocket change for the right causes. It is happy to seemingly stretch a little to go beyond what it owes statutorily, if that's the difference between staying in business and getting chopped up for bait.

The spill in the gulf will eventually be capped. Here's hoping that -- and an effective cleanup -- happens sooner rather than later. What will linger long after the last oil ball washes ashore on a sandy beach in Florida or Louisiana is the memory that President Obama, the great avatar of Hope & Change, was slow in responding and weak on details when he finally did. And that his vision on this topic, like all others, consists of soaring platitudes and cliches that, like Icarus' wings, just aren't up to the blazing-hot sun of everyday reality and the catastrophes that come one after another.

Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com) is the editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com.


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