Opinion: Oval Office Speech -- A Missed Opportunity

(June 16) -- President Barack Obama's first Oval Office speech to the nation presented an opportunity to address an anxious country in the midst of the worst environmental disaster in its history.

Going for broke with his opening, Obama touched on the recession, the wars in (mineral-rich) Afghanistan and (oil-rich) Iraq, the "fight to al-Qaida wherever it exists" and the BP oil disaster in one foul swoop, neatly characterizing them as a "multitude of challenges."

Having been roundly criticized on every front for not being tough enough, sentimental enough, angry enough, positive enough and schizophrenic enough, his speech writers decided to lay into the oil spill with fighting words to describe the "battle we are waging against an oil spill" that is "assaulting our shores and our citizens."

The president made it unequivocally clear that BP was going to pay. Given the war analogies, Americans were surely swept with relief, reminded of how the oil revenues in Iraq would pay for the invasion once the "weapons of mass destruction" were confiscated, the troops gratefully greeted with showers of fresh-smelling IEDs and the Iraqis "liberated" with depleted uranium and weekend spas at Club Abu Ghraib.

Remarkably, the president revealed that owing to the brilliance of the team he assembled following the oil rig's explosion, their efforts "should" capture "up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well" in the "coming days and weeks." As John Mellencamp once sang, "Seventeen has turned 35. I'm surprised that we're still livin'."

"From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history," Obama declared. Perhaps, then, it must be the egregious First Amendment violations that have prevented reporters from covering this remarkable coordination and collaborative effort. Now, an authorized "deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast" can continue helping BP protect its image rather than manage the unmanned boons and other antiquated spill-cleanup technologies.

The president demonstrated that he can empathize with the pain and "wrenching anxiety" of those who have been economically affected by the disaster, but his articulation of it is inadequate as an actionable response.

Obama appointed Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy and former governor of Mississippi, to develop a long-term Gulf Coast restoration plan as soon as possible. And BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region. That's about as comforting as a life jacket on a space shuttle.

The third part of the president's response plan was the "steps we're taking to ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again." He also admitted that he'd approved new and limited offshore drilling based on assurances from the industry that "it would be absolutely safe." But those assurances, it turns out, weren't worth much more than the paper they were printed on.

In fact, top oil executives from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips and BP America were forced to admit to Congress on the same day Obama gave his speech that their emergency disaster-response plans were copy-pasted versions of a 2005 Alaska plan, including protection of walruses and emergency contact data for a wildlife expert who died in 2005. If BP is as reckless as the president claims, so are all the other companies that blatantly misled the president -- and the rest of the country -- about their ability to deal with a disaster.

But Obama's response was merely to set up a national commission to "understand the causes of this disaster" and "offer recommendations" on what "additional safety and environmental standards we need to put in place."

How about a demand that until and unless half of any profits derived from offshore drilling are applied toward environmental disaster and recovery technology, the moratorium becomes permanent? What about real regulations with teeth and consequences?

Obama's speech was an opportunity wasted.

Even George W. Bush warned about America's dangerous addiction to fossil fuels as he and Dick Cheney set the energy policy that led to this catastrophe. They too would recommend praying, because, rest assured, whatever "hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day" doesn't belong to Barack Obama or BP CEO Tony Hayward or oil industry executives.

In the end, we are left with more of the same. We are none the wiser and none the safer.

Clinton Fein is an artist and writer and serves on the board of the First Amendment Project. In 1994, his multimedia CD-ROM Conduct Unbecoming, based on Randy Shilts' book of the same name, won the Critics Choice Award. Visit Fein on Red Room.


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