A new Teflon president? (May 27)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
President Obama, in San Francisco yesterday to scoop up money, called the Gulf oil spill “a terrible tragedy.” He would find it hard to find anyone to disagree with him on that. It did seem odd, though, that the anti-drillers of the Barbara Boxer crowd didn’t beat him up.
Didn’t Obama say he would continue to favor limited offshore drilling? Pretty soon, they may start calling him the Teflon president, just as they did Ronald Reagan.
Let’s look at two separate “terrible tragedies” and how presidents handled them.
First was Hurricane Katrina. After New Orleans and Louisiana officials had made a horrible botch of evacuating residents in advance of the storm, President Bush was blamed. He was blamed after the storm hit, even though the Coast Guard and Navy were saving people’s lives. He continued to get blame months afterward, even as he poured billions into the economic sump that New Orleans is famous for being. New Orleans officials wasted reconstruction money left and right. Bush got the blame.
Now, oil is creeping from the Gulf spill into the Louisiana marshes. Obama has said, in essence, let the oil companies handle this problem. It’s hard to disagree with Obama on that. But if Bush had said the same thing, the Democrats would have burned effigies of him.
In both cases, neither president was responsible for the disasters, and both moved quickly to help. They put the bureaucracies they commanded to immediate use.
By the way, Boxer adamantly opposes Obama in his plans to allow some offshore drilling. Yet, he came to the Left Coast to thump the tubs for her and to help her so-far lackluster campaign. Even as he helped her inside the Fairmont Hotel, however, sign-bearing lefties outside were lined up to criticize him.
Maybe his Teflon is wearing a bit thin.
