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Debrah

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16-Jun-10 02:57

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Heh heh!! This is hilarious. Thank you Daniel Gross -- another hit outta the park. . .

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BP—Blah Performance
President Obama's Oval Office speech was almost lousy enough to make you miss George W. Bush

By Daniel Gross
Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010, at 10:17 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2257150

President Obama's Oval Office speech about the Gulf oil spill was almost enough to make you miss President George W. Bush. Maybe not the actual presidency of George W. Bush, but at least the platonic ideal of the presidency of George W. Bush—the MBA president, the chief executive as CEO.

Since the oil spill began, it has become clear that BP and its bumbling CEO Tony Hayward lack the foresight, competence, and managerial skill to contain the damage. The Oval Office speech had been promoted as an attempt by President Obama to show that he's in charge, and that he will do what a good CEO should do: hold accountable those who screwed up, stop the bleeding, and lay out a clear strategy to recover and avoid a repeat. But those who expected Obama to go Jack Welch on BP came away disappointed. My guess is that the speech, far from sending BP's stock into a new downward spiral, will turn out to be something of a non-event.

Obama certainly offered some Churchillian, take-charge rhetoric. "We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy."

And he issued some mild warnings to BP. He promised that on Wednesday, "I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness." But that's a relatively hollow threat. The chairman of BP reports to BP's suffering shareholders, not to the president of the United States. I'm not sure President Obama has the authority to order the chairman of a privately held, Britain-based company to set aside specific resources. Besides, the public and investors already presume that BP will do that, which is why its stock has been scythed in half.

Like a CEO, Obama made an effort to delegate. He did speak specifically about some of the leaders who will be tabbed to help execute the recovery and prevention strategies. He spoke of a team led by Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu, and of the "nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and cleanup the oil." He has authorized the calling out of the National Guard and urged "the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible." But CEOs have to find competent contractors and subordinates to execute the plan. And so far, the most important task—capping the well—continues to be outsourced to BP. He didn't explain why BP is still on that job.

The most un-CEO like behavior came toward the conclusion. Obama hit the right tones in noting how we've entered a period of difficult-to-find oil, how we need to cut our addiction to oil, and how his administration has proposed policies that will hasten that. He mentioned the "strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill" energy bill passed by the House," and swore that "the one approach I will not accept is inaction."

But he didn't call out the inactors in the Senate, who have been sitting on the House's bill. And while he spoke eloquently and specifically of his faith in America's ability to innovate in the long-term—a faith I share—he was vague when it came to the specific, short-term steps the organization he runs can take. As John Dickerson notes here, there was little mention of tough, controversial, but necessary initiatives such as placing a price on carbon, or sharply raising the tax on gasoline, or instituting a cap-and-trade regime. Obama's speech was like a PowerPoint presentation with the last few slides missing.

http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2257150

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Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. - Anonymous

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Debrah

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16-Jun-10 03:22

What needs to be remembered here, and in all the media schplitzing and sputzing about this speech, is that the bottom line is still that President Obama is only allowed to say what "they" allow him to say. He can promise the moon and the stars, but he has to be careful how he says it. What's the old saying? All poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles? Something to that effect, meaning some things are obvious but you still have to differentiate.

Here's some more from Slate:

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Deflection Point
What Obama's speech on the BP oil spill was lacking

By John Dickerson
Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010, at 10:33 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2257068

The Gulf oil crisis, say White House aides, is at an "inflection point." That's why President Obama chose this moment to deliver his first Oval Office address. If you've forgotten this term from calculus, it means "turning point." But it's not a dramatic change in direction where the tires squeal—if you're driving an S, it's the moment when the steering wheel is straight. It means the situation is less bad than it used to be.

Something similar can be said of the president's 20-minute speech: It wasn't as bad as it could have been. He offered the rhetorical flourishes we expect and was specific in some cases—he called for a fund to pay Gulf residents that would not be controlled by BP—he talked about deploying the National Guard and putting the secretary of the Navy in charge of restoring the wetlands not just to their condition before the spill but better. He charged BP with "recklessness" and promised that the company would pay. He promised that he wouldn't forget the Gulf.

But there was something lacking. Maybe that's to be expected when you use the terminology of mathematics while playing by the laws of politics. If you declare a turning point, one will duly arrive, and the president will be credited with creating it. The pivot will take place. The page will turn. The fever will break. There are only clichés for this phenomenon because it is essentially a magic trick that requires a lot of conjuring.

The president is constrained. He can't stop the leak. And he doesn't seem to be able to do much about the confusion reported on the ground. Reaction plans are being hatched on the fly. The speech felt like more of a management update of the crisis than an attempt to take command of it.

Maybe the call for a heroic moment of command is too much to ask for. Still, the president made the situation worse for himself. The use of the language of war created the imbalance. He talked of a "battle" and "siege," but like all the other times when war has been misused—the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the economic war Joe Biden declared last year—the action taken didn't match the words used to describe the menace. Prudent, methodical, and secure … Wait a minute. There's a war going on. Shouldn't we be doing something more?

In the context of war, the facts and figures—miles of boom, strength of National Guard troops deployed, number of ships at sea—feel meaningless. Sure, they sound impressive—but compared with what? Today, for example, we learned that the amount of oil flowing from the ground is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels a day. Last week the estimate was between 20,000 and 40,000. The president did offer welcome specificity when he said that soon BP should be able to capture 90 percent of the oil leaking from the well.

There were hints earlier in the day that Obama might use the power of an Oval Office speech to make a push for robust climate change legislation. He talked a lot about it, using the kind of language we're used to hearing when we're being called to national action. But all of those words added up to less than what he's already said. Several weeks ago in a speech in Pittsburgh, Obama was far more forceful. He called for an aggressive comprehensive legislative response. He said he would fight to find the votes to pass a bill that put a price on carbon.

During the health care debate, supporters of the public option learned how to spot a presidential endorsement that was no endorsement at all. Though the president claimed to support the idea, there was no oomph in his voice. He's matching that strategy on this issue. He sounds like he'll take just about anything, a recognition perhaps of how tough a comprehensive bill would be in this election year.

This is not the first time the White House has declared an inflection point on this story. On May 24, when Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen briefed reporters from the White House on all that the administration had done, it was intended to deflect the criticism that too little had been accomplished. A White House official wrote an e-mail to me declaring the moment an "inflection point." Three weeks later the president is still trying to show command—proving that even when you're in an inflection point, it's not clear whether things are getting worse or better.

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Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. - Anonymous

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