First, the Los Angeles Lakers are the 2010 NBA champions, winning their 16th title. But, boy, they won ugly. Or to be charitable, they spotted the Celtics 3 1/2 quarters before showing up. There are reasons for cliches--it did come down to who wanted to win it the most.
Which brings us to our battered President. For weeks, there was a drumroll of criticism that the President had not called or met with BP CEO Tony Hayward. Then he meets with him and the criticism was that it only lasted 20 minutes. The net of the meeting was an escrow fund of $20 billion for the Gulf and another $144 million to compensate oil workers during the period of the moratorium. Clearly, this was the only piece of good news from the whole BP Gulf disaster.
Republicans at the urging of Karl Rove have been planting this idea since the beginning of the Obama administration that the President would be like Jimmy Carter or we'll make him into one. The Gulf disaster for Republican strategists would not be Obama's Katrina, since that reflected on George W, but rather the equivalent of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. The media would start the old Ted Koppel Day 300 and counting timeclock and Obama would be mired in the mess for the rest of his term.
Throughout the last 18 months, I have had doubts about whether the general public understood the commitment of the Republicans to destroy the Obama presidency. Most of the dirty work was done through filibusters and procedural maneuverings few people, except insiders, know or understand. Even progressives howl about why the Democrats with massive majorities can not pass the needed legislation. The net effect is to create the image of ineffective government and an inept administration. Therefore you should long for an authoritarian white father, who wouldn't believe in government but would wave the flag and invoke patriotism.
No Republican I have talked to or any of their public voices have admitted the country was or is in a Depression. The stimulus package was an unnecessary boondoggle of government spending and a vast extension of government's role in the economy. Financial reform is not the restoration of pre-1992 regulations but a government takeover of the economy and stifling of the private sector. Therefore, the mantra became "jobs" and the "deficit". Let's conveniently forget that by the end of this year, the Obama Administration will have created more jobs than the entire George W. Bush Administration.
If you didn't follow the extent of corporate funding of the congressional Republicans and the intent of their actions, you might think their case was plausible.
The President was said to lack emotion, backbone,courage and was too professorial and, according to former Reagan speechwriter Darkness at Noonan, out of touch with the American people.
There are gaffes, there a misstatements but then there are moments when the whole game is laid bare for all to see. Yesterday was one of them. D.C. lawyers had finally wakened up to the fact that they could litigate all their lives and never achieve the $20 billion escrow account for the victims of the Gulf disaster. Seasoned lawyers called it miraculous and noted that it was done without the necessary lawsuits. It was pointed out that the victims of the Valdez had to wait almost a generation of fighting the oil companies to get compensation and even that was severely cut down by the Supreme Court. In this case, the escrow account will be administered by the "special master" who handled all the claims for 9/11 victims, someone who was praised by both parties for his integrity and diligence.
If you are on the other side of the aisle, you might want to remain quiet or shift the subject. But the Heritage Foundation rolled out a position paper criticising the deal as an infringement on the rights of BP shareholders. The Republican Study Group, composed of 100 House members, wrote that the escrow account was a "shakedown" and a "slush fund". Haley Barbour, Governor of an effected state, worried about BP financial health. Michelle Bachman said that the account was Obama's ATM.
This is the type of rhetoric we have been used to for the duration of the administration. But what changed the situation was the nationally broadcast apology to BP's CEO Tony Hayward by Rep. Joe Barton of Texas for his treatment at the White House. Barton was simply repeating the Republican talking points. He was not talking as a single person. He went on to say that BP had been shaken down with Attorney General Eric Holder in the room. The key here is that the Justice Department is actively investigating bringing criminal charges against BP. The implication was that President Obama had intimidated a private corporation into ponying up the money.
The response both in the House and from the television audience was immediate. People were outraged not that Barton attacked President Obama but that he so clearly, as did other Republicans on the Committee, side with a foreign corporations over the people of the United States. John Boehner had to bring Barton into his office and threaten him with taking away his seat on the committee. Then out of Boehner's office came a press release ,ostensibly from Barton, retracting his apology to BP and saying his use of the word" shakedown" was miscontrued.
Then Republican mayhem ensued. Other congressmen did not get the memo and kept reiterating the same talking points; while congressmen from the Gulf States demanded Barton lose his seat. It also didn't help that BP's CEO Tony Hayward came across as lying through his teeth and simply did not generate any sympathetic feelings.
But the damage was done. The Republicans had been exposed as simply shills for the big corporations and nothing else. The plight of the citizens on the Gulf Coast clearly didn't matter. They would walk over their corpses for political gain. And what was startling to everyone was that it was so obvious and clear.
Within two hours, the Democratic fund-raising machine was up and running, exploiting the moment.
There was an interesting poll this morning that showed that 60% of Americans believe that President Obama cared for people like themselves.
This was brought home to me by a letter that was sent to Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish, which spoke about this woman's father who was a "marsh rat", who wanted to retire to a small cabin in the marshes and fish all day. This father was a real Arcadian, originally spoke French as his first language. Not an Obama supporter, he listened to the Oval Office speech. The woman wrote that when Obama pivoted on the "blessing of the fleet"section of his speech, her father cried and the President had his support from then on it.
Maybe like the Lakers, President Obama will have to win ugly.
No comments:
Post a Comment