Well here goes my first serious post. I’ve been in a bit of a war of words with others on JP’s blog 56 Rebels. People saying we shouldn’t blame Obama, or I guess, ask too much of him. Who cares if he goes on vacation repeatedly during this crisis? Who cares if he spends more time with Paul McCartney than he did with the citizens of Louisiana? He is only one man, they say over and over again.
I consider myself an independent, politically. I truly think both parties are responsible for most of our problems. One is as useless and evil as the other. My dad is very much a Republican but also taught us to respect the office of the presidency no matter what. So, this is really not personal. But here’s the thing about the oil spill. I’m infuriated by the administration’s lack of response. I see these stories, day after day…the spill’s getting worse, BP can’t fix it, 5000 barrels of oil a day – no wait – make that 19,000 barrels of oil a day. More and more fishermen looking completely stunned on the news with no idea of how to pay their bills or how or why this happened to them. Mayors of small towns in tears. A Congressman from Louisiana breaking down on the House floor. Birds covered in oil. Fish dead. Shrimp dead. 11 men on that oil rig, dead. I do not know the last time I felt this sad. My heart is breaking for them. For all of the people and for all of the wildlife.
I don’t expect that the President is magic. I do not expect him to go down to Louisiana, snap his fingers and come up with a solution on how to stop it. I really don’t. But what makes me so angry is, I get the feeling that he just does not care. I get the feeling that for him, this is just a nuisance. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this keeps him up at night. Maybe he and Michelle sit on the sofa with tears in their eyes watching the same pictures that I do. But I don’t see it. I know his reputation is that he is the guy who stays even. That is great in most circumstances. But not now. Now we need him angry. We need him so angry that he unleashes a wrath of fury on that idiot CEO who said he ‘wanted his life back.’ As Spike Lee recently said, “If there was ever a time to go off, this is it.”
I know GWB made a thousand horrible decisions as president. I know his response to Hurricane Katrina was unforgivable. There is no denying that. I can’t even get started on the war in Iraq. That’s for another time. But I have a picture in my head of him after 9/11. I remember hearing him speak during news conferences and interviews and cabinet meetings. I remember such anger in his voice. Such hurt, on the verge of tears. I knew that he felt what we were feeling. Sitting in my living room all the way in the midwest, I knew he was as angry as I was. There’s a reason why his popularity rate went up to something like 90% during that time. In our darkest hour, he understood. And he got mad. That is what we need now from President Obama.
A part of me thinks the problem is that people in other parts of the country just don’t understand the magnitude of what is happening. I mean, where are the trendy celebs and their telethons? When is the benefit concert for suddenly out of work fishermen? For people in the Gulf region, this is their 9/11. It is. You can argue that Katrina was. Maybe. But they can and are rebuilding from Katrina. You CAN rebuild from a hurricane. You just need time and money. The difference here is that just time and money won’t fix the consequences of an oil spill the size of New England and growing. Yes, eventually they will figure out how to stop the oil. Yes, the ecosystem may recover. But it will be decades or more from now. People who are fourth, fifth generation fishermen, aren’t comforted by that. They need someone to stick up for them right now.
So, what do I want from Obama? I want him to show us he cares. I want him to put the people of the Gulf region ahead of photo ops with the NCAA basketball champions. He is leader of the free world. He has the power to pressure the BP execs. He has the power to establish a system of help for those who are suffering financially. He has the power to enlist the help of every wildlife expert in the world to help save whatever can be saved. He has the power to order the Coast Guard to do whatever they need to do to start cleaning up the water as best they can. I don’t care how much money he has to spend. I don’t care if he has to move the entire White House staff and his cabinet to Louisiana temporarily. Just get it done.
That is all.
