Filibuster Cartoons
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President Obama gave his first-ever “talk-to-the-nation-in-a-somber-voice-from-behind-his-desk-in-the-Oval Office” televised speech type thing yesterday, attempting to address concerns about his administration’s response to the ongoing BP oil rupture.
It was not really his finest hour, in my opinion. A lot of standard Obama boilerplate, but at the same time, it has to be conceded what a difficult position this president is in. The public obviously wanted to hear how the federal government plans to stop the leak immediately, but there is no quick and easy answer to that question. The very reason the oil has been flowing continuously for over two months now is because there is no technological fix in the short term. No one knows what to do. The problem is too unprecedented.
So Obama can’t do a lot other than appoint a series of fact-finding panels to “look into” various things related to the spill, such as what led to the current crisis, how we can prevent similar crises in the future, and, of course, the ongoing hunt for possible solutions. Obama called attention to a couple such commissions during the course of his speech, including a Gulf Coast restoration committee headed by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and a special scientist task force headed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu. There’s also been a special “Flow Rate Technical Group” appointed, and a fact-finding commission headed by former Florida governor Bob Graham. And of course you’ve got your traditional crisis subcommittees of the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and Mineral Management Service as well, who are always involved in this sort of thing.
One thing’s for sure; sometime in the near future Obama is going to have a lot of reports to read.
Read the full text of Obama’s speech here.
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