I find this commentary ridiculous and I'm not alone in that. The Economist again has a blog post up on this subject. They quote Clive Crook of The Atlantic when he says, "Apparently it is a great idea to elect a president who is calm in a crisis, except when there's a crisis. Then what you need is somebody to lead the nation in panic."
The President of the United States MUST do more than one thing at a time. I am frustrated with people who complain about the optics, but have very little in the way of criticism for the substance of the government's and the president's reaction. Serious problems demand serious people.
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This is what happens when we deify the office of the presidency, and view the officeholder as some all-knowing, all-powerful being expected to solve all of the country's problems.
President Obama knows very little about the oil industry and even less about the intricacies of deep water exploration and its attendant hazards. This is not a criticism, merely a statement of fact.
To the extent Obama has a role toj play it is largely to get the bureaucracy out of the way, which from what I understand has been an impediment to some of the local disaster response mechanisms.
While I think criticism over Obama's lack of personal involvement is mostly misplaced and can be chiefly explained by a desire to score political points, I also think that the left is reaping the whirlwind here, as after helping to foster a belief in the power of government they should be unsurprised so many people now place unrealistic expectations upon its leader.
As a libertarian with no such beliefs or expectations of government, I am hardly disillusioned by the fact that the White House isn't supervising every aspect of the oil spill response. In fact, I applaud it.
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