Quote Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger View Post
To the contrary, I think this was a clumsy, highly transparent move, and very obviously political. I don't see it changing any mind either. He didn't adequately connect the oil spill to cap and tax (which would bend logic more than even his impressive rhetorical skills could manage). And on a completely different level, it takes quite a bit of gall, while the oil is still pouring into the Gulf, to seize on these people's misfortune to pimp stillborn legislation that can only be tangentially linked to the disaster.

If I was a resident of the area, I would be pretty pissed off if the president used what had to be between a third and a half of his time that was billed as an update on the oil spill situation to push legislation with a primary focus on taxing coal.

I guess it doesn't matter though, they're already beyond angry at Obama's response.
PJ:

Most politics is not subtle, despite our romanticized view of the process. At its core it boils down to: "help my supporters who got me this gig" and/or "now that I have the power, I'm gonna do what's right (definition almost always subjective on this last)." Chicago school politics is even more bluntly in this category. Incumbents brag about the pork they've brought home and, when opposition rears its head, they squelch it by whatever means available. THAT is where President Obama learned his business. The folderol over Blagovich's apparent retailing of the Senate Seat makes me laugh -- people are reacting as though that WASN'T S-O-P for the area. It was really more of the same-old, same-old and I suspect none of the parties truly thought that it was particularly unethical. Same with the "jobs to stay out of the primary" thing -- that's the way the game is played.

I thought the speech fell short because he didn't take full advantage of the opportunity to hammer the "Make BP pay" theme. THAT is what his supporters and many of those affected want to hear most. He did some of that, but many folks want to hear that BP will be taxed/fined to cover all of the cost of recovery as well as providing subsistence payments to all those impacted by the spill. In addition, the more ardent lefties WANT "cap-and-trade" as a first step to dramatically reducing our carbon output and shifting towards wind, solar, and geo-thermal energy sources (and some of them want that to segway even further into a shift in energy consumption that puts us more in line with other developed nations on a per capita basis).

Obama's goal was to say enough to placate those on his side of the aisle regarding these issues, while not being so overtly anti-corporate as to antagonize the mugwumps and the semi-involved/semi-ignorant who are the mass of the US voting pool. They want the problem to be dealt with decisively (mostly unaware as to what that entails), so he wants to appear decisive on this issue, while still focusing on the leadership goals with which he began his presidency.

All-in-all, he really wasn't speaking to me. After Axelrod's comments on Sunday, I knew they were doing what the government could do: insisting on two relief wells as added safety, providing an ideas group, keeping the pressure on the BP team, and bringing in (however late) others with needed resources. It's not like the government has the tools to do more, the rest is just political agendaneering -- which is what I expected to hear and what I heard last night. Again, I'm a voter but I vote for candidates in the other half of the economic/conservatism end of the scale, so he really has written me off already.


Leadership? A bit, though not ringingly. Effective Politics? Yeah, probably....I just wish he was working towards an end-state I preferred.