Mr. Obama's Katrina
The Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is political death by a thousand drips. People on the left make fun of those on the right who compare it to Katrina. Nevertheless, the comparison seems apt. In the months just before Katrina, Mr. Bush's favorable/unfavorable ratings had flipped — thanks in large part to Katrina he never recovered. But who was it who changed their minds? Those on the left, and many of those in the center, already hated him. The big change, the only possible change of any significance, was that many in his base began to abandon him, and they continued to abandon him throughout the remainder of his presidency. The Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has created a mirror image political situation: people on the right already hate Mr. Obama — it's his base on the left and in the center that's collapsing.
For the sake of argument let's assume that BP fails for several more months to stop the spill. The eventual total quantity of oil spilled into the Gulf turns into an environmental and economic disaster that will last decades. If that happens, as seems increasingly likely, the only sensible thing to say, politically, is that we won't allow any more off-shore oil drilling, especially not deep water drilling. But Mr. Obama won't say that because he doesn't believe in limits to corporate profit-seeking behavior. Moreover, a corollary would be to extend a reassessment of risks from corporate behavior to nuclear power, to ask what kind of 10,000 year safety plans the nuclear industry has developed for deadly nuclear waste, and why we should believe in those plans but, again, Mr. Obama won't take a chance that public opinion might count for more than corporate influence. For him, it's business as usual. But for people who live outside of Washington DC, it's not.
Posted by George Kenney on May 13, 2010 4:00 PM 
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Comments
A comparison of kind but not of degree methinks.
[Note new estimates on the actual rate of spill. Katrina was recoverable, this one, well, maybe not so much. g.]
Posted by: jackied | May 14, 2010 12:34 AM
So when does hurricane season begin? Oh, already?
I wonder what sort of "degree" it will be when tarballs start rolling down the streets in Montgomery?
Posted by: Benedict@Large | May 14, 2010 4:06 PM