In his June 8, 2010, 7,000-plus word Rolling Stone article entitled “The Spill, The Scandal, and the President,” Tim Dickinson fixed blame for the oil leak in the Gulf, but ignored how the effort to fix the mess it’s causing has been badly mismanaged. In that sense, he hit his intended targets, but missed the mark.
The subtitle of the piece identifies his targets.
The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world’s most dangerous oil company get away with murder.
The storyline is simple. A notoriously negligent oil company, British Petroleum (BP), plus a corrupt Minerals Management Services (MMS) inherited from Bush, equals The Spill. It’s a variation on the “It’s Bush’s Fault” motif.
Even a Republican Congressman piled on:
It’s tempting to believe that the Gulf spill, like so many disasters inherited by Obama, was the fault of the Texas oilman who preceded him in office. But, though George W. Bush paved the way for the catastrophe, it was Obama who gave BP the green light to drill. “Bush owns eight years of the mess,” says Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. “But after more than a year on the job, Salazar owns it too.”
Ronald Reagan took responsibility for Iran-Contra and John Poindexter fell on his sword. Barack Obama will take responsibility for The Spill and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will end up in the skimmer because:
Salazar did little to tamp down on the lawlessness at MMS.
So Salazar failed to correct Bush’s mistakes. Unfortunately for the Obama administration though, fixing blame for the leak will be easy in comparison to explaining the Federal Government’s feckless clean-up campaign. Who will take the blame there?
As the pipe at the bottom of the ocean hemorrhages crude, the listless federal response typifying the clean-up effort won’t be so easy to suck up. Some MSM journalists, perhaps most, may have difficulty articulating the cause of the botched-up clean-up. Here’s why.
Journalists are artisans who work within a relatively simple bureaucracy – compared, say, to a typical large corporation. They work with a degree of independence not enjoyed by many other vocations. Like the lab scientist in a large chemical company, their primary allegiance is to their craft, to their discipline, and then secondarily to the news outlet that employs them.
Likewise, attorneys in a small firm face a similar environment, as do community organizers who often work against the local bureaucracy – often perceived as their clients’ adversary – with considerable independence. One of the primary tasks of a community organizer is to coordinate overlapping groups of stakeholders. Lacking executive power, their modus operandi is consensus-building. Committee meetings, influencing key people, managing the media, training volunteers and strategy-plotting sessions are among their venues to advance a cause.
When a person without executive experience is elevated to the top of the Executive Branch of the United States Government, the most complex bureaucracy in the world – second only to the Roman Catholic Church – all will be appear to be well… until something big and bad hits the fan. It’s only then that the leadership skills of a competent executive become conspicuous by their absence, as consequences mount.
That’s where we are in the clean-up of The Spill. And this is the crucial factor that Rolling Stone ignored.
We know there’s a systemic operational problem when the topic of week concerning The Spill is a bureaucratic conundrum…whether or not to suspend the Jones Act, and who should make such a request, to whom.
Admiral Thad Allen, ostensibly in charge of the clean-up, indirectly outlined the problem in this exchange with FOX News Sunday’s host Chris Wallace on June 7. Running comments appear below [in brackets].
WALLACE: The question really is — the big question — who was really in charge in the first days, the first weeks, of this disaster, B.P. or the government? And if the government — and particularly the public — had known just how bad the situation was right from the start, would we perhaps — we the government — have responded faster?
ALLEN: Well, this started out as a search and rescue case. We had the explosion. We had the extraordinary tragic loss of 11 lives. And for 48 hours we were involved in search and rescue when the drill sunk. We mobilized every asset as if it were a catastrophic response.
After the Exxon Valdez, Congress passed legislation called the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and the way we respond by designating B.P. as a responsible party and having them have contractors available to do the response is the structure that was mandated by Congress after the Exxon Valdez.
We are changing that as necessary to meet this very anomalous event we’re dealing with now, but the notion that B.P. is the responsible party and hires contractors is the structure that was created by Congress in 1990.
WALLACE: So was B.P. in charge at the beginning?
ALLEN: We are accountable for oversight. B.P. is the responsible party, supposed to put the resources out there. In the long run the government is accountable. And frankly, I’m accountable.
[There’s the fundamental fissure in a political bureaucracy: The dangerous and unholy separation between “accountable” and “responsible.”]
WALLACE: Well, let me ask you about that, finally. Who’s in charge of the government’s response? Who do you report to?
[Wallace separates the event from its consequences.]
ALLEN: I report to Secretary Napolitano and the president.
[That inherently convoluted answer seems based on the corporate matrix model, a problematic configuration since its inception. Two parents work for a child. But in wartime, and the war here is against invading oil slicks, having two bosses slows the process. But it gets worse.]
WALLACE: So is Secretary Napolitano — who’s in charge of saying, “We’re going to do this today, we’re not going to do that?”
ALLEN: Well, I’m the national incident commander. Obviously, I consult with the secretary and the president, and we take the advice of the — of the secretary. Secretary Salazar, Secretary Chu are down there looking at the technical issues associated with Houston.
[An image of the late General Haig’s “I’m in charge” statement comes to mind here. Now the supervisory-consulting group includes the President, Napolitano, Salazar and Chu. It’s a committee.]
But the final call has to be made to the federal on-scene coordinator by law, and that’s a Coast Guard officer.
WALLACE: And that’s you?
ALLEN: Yes.
If “the final call” rests with Admiral Allen, then the President of the United States has abdicated his responsibilities. But, of course, we know that Allen doesn’t make the big calls.
It’s been said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. The Spill clean-up to date is a campaign managed by a committee of politicians – the most inefficient possible species of committee participants. And the nation is suffering the consequences, with more to come.
This is what the Rolling Stone piece completely and thoroughly ignored.
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