Obama's address: grand setting, weak policies The main impression left by President Obama’s address on the oil spill is the chasm between the ambition of its commitments and the thinness of its policies. Obama pledges to "fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes." Then he authorizes National Guard deployments that he cannot order, urging "governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible." He will "meet with" the chairman of BP to urge him to set aside sufficient recovery funds. He has "asked" someone who works for him to develop a long-term Gulf Coast restoration plan. He will bring "new leadership" to the Minerals Management Service. He will push for energy legislation he supported even before the current disaster, while pronouncing announcing himself "happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party."
The setting of the Oval Office creates an expectation of decisive executive action. It recalls memories of President Dwight Eisenhower dispatching federal troops to Little Rock or President John F. Kennedy announcing the naval "quarantine" of Cuba. This speech will not be confused with those precedents. Obama urges others to take action, kibitzes with corporate executives, shifts some government personnel and signals the start of a review process. A crisis is met with a study. The action verbs in this speech have somehow gone missing. It is all rather limp and weak.
For this I would not blame the speechwriters, who must ultimately work with the policy they are given. But someone at the White House is responsible for putting Obama in a dramatic setting with little worth saying. Whoever they are, they have not done the president, or the country, much service.
