Slick, Real Slick Posted 05/27/2010 06:57 PM ET
Accountability: Democrats have finally gotten around to blaming the Bush administration for the Gulf oil disaster. We wonder when this administration will take responsibility for anything.
Asked on the "Imus in the Morning" program Tuesday on Fox Business Network if the Obama administration is to blame for the damaging fallout of the spill, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., actually said, "Well, you know, they come into office a year ago with all of this. And so, after the last eight years ... " before being interrupted by a perplexed Imus.
We too are perplexed. George W. Bush was blamed for the federal response to Katrina, even though the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, both governed by Democrats at the time, dropped the ball as first and primary responders.
It wasn't Bush who ordered people into the Superdome instead of out of the city. It wasn't Bush who left school buses to sit empty in a flooded parking lot. But this spill is on Obama's watch.
Unlike Katrina, where disputes and confusion quickly arose between federal, state and local authorities over who should have done what and when, the handling of this accident in federal waters was a clear federal responsibility. It was the failure of this administration to implement contingency plans in place since 1994 to contain and burn the oil that made the situation far worse. It's not Bush's fault.
President Obama has just made his second trip to the Gulf in a nearly 40-day span. Bush made something like seven in the same time span while supervising, among other things, the Coast Guard plucking something like 30,000 people off their rooftops to safety.
While the oil washed up in Louisiana marshes, Obama took time out to raise money for the re-election of Barbara "Call Me Senator" Boxer in California.
As the St. Petersburg Times editorialized on the first Friday of the BP blowout: "President Obama met U2's Bono in the Oval Office on Friday when he should have been headed to the Gulf Coast."
While the Gulf Coast faced an ecological disaster, President Obama yukked it up at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. His following Saturday radio address didn't even mention the oil rig explosion in which 11 workers died.
And Democrats are blaming Bush?
This is on President Obama's watch. He and his administration should man up and put a sign on the desk in the Oval Office reading: The slick stops here.
