Wednesday, June 9, 2010

It’s the inexperience stupid: Why Obama hasn’t met with BP’s CEO

Yesterday on the Today show, Obama sat down with Matt Laurer and was asked about why he has not yet spoken to BP CEO Tony Hayward. Check out the 2:35 mark.



Gateway Pundit reminds us why this answer doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Barack Obama unabashedly announced during the 2008 Campaign that he would be willing to meet with the world’s worst dictators including the Iranian Preisident Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez from Venezuela and Kim Jong Il from North Korea in his first year in office “without preconditions.”


Lets see if we can get this straight. Obama won’t meet with Hayward because he knows Hayward is going to blow smoke up his ass. However Obama will meet with Iran despite the fact that they have been blowing smoke up everyone’s ass for decades.  It just doesn’t make sense. I think the real reason why Obama has not met with Hayward is because of inexperience. Obama simply did not think to do it. Remember this is the very first executive position Obama has ever held. He has never run a business, a city or a state.  All Obama has run up until now is his mouth.

Sarah Palin in her latest Facebook note sees Obama’s lack of experience and the media’s failure to notice it. 
50 days in, and we’ve just learned another shocking revelation concerning the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf oil spill. In an interview aired this morning, President Obama admitted that he hasn’t met with or spoken directly to BP’s CEO Tony Hayward. Hisreasoning: “Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s gonna say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.”
First, to the “informed and enlightened” mainstream media: in all the discussions you’ve had with the White House about the spill, did it not occur to you before today to ask how the CEO-to-CEO level discussions were progressing to remedy this tragedy? You never cease to amaze. (Kind of reminds us of the months on end when you never bothered to ask if the President wasmeeting with General McChrystal to talk about our strategy in Afghanistan.)
Second, to fellow baffled Americans: this revelation is further proof that it bodes well to havesome sort of executive experience before occupying the Oval Office (as if the painfully slow response to the oil spill, confusion of duties, finger-pointing, lack of preparedness, and inability to grant local government simple requests weren’t proof enough). The current administration may be unaware that it’s the President’s duty, meeting on a CEO-to-CEO level with Hayward, to verify what BP reports. In an interview a few weeks ago with Greta Van Susteren, I noted that based on my experience working with oil execs as an oil regulator and then as a Governor, you must verify what the oil companies claim – because their perception of circumstances and situations dealing with public resources and public trust is not necessarily shared by those who own America’s public resources and trust. I was about run out of town in Alaska for what critics decried at the time as my “playing hardball with Big Oil,” and those same adversaries (both shortsighted Repubs and Dems) continue to this day to try to discredit my administration’s efforts in holding Big Oil accountable to operate ethically and responsibly. [MORE]

What I also find odd about Obama’s refusal to meet with Hayward is that BP’s handling of the spill has the potential to totally sink Obama’s presidency. Just look at how BP’s slow response and failed efforts are drawing focus on Obama’s performance. What if BP takes another 50 days or more to “plug the damn hole”? If I were Obama, Hayward’s private cell phone number would be #1 on speed dial on my presidential BlackBerry until this nightmare was over.

I believe that Obama’s original thought was to dump the whole mess in BP’s lap and simply play the blame game. It never dawned on Obama that people would expect him to get involved. Obama has been ducking responsibility from day one. He outsourced the stimulus, he outsourced Cap and Trade and he outsourced ObamaCare. All have ended up being a hot mess.

The oil spill has force Obama to finally get personally involved. He is going to have to take an active role in the crisis and the results of his effort will define his presidency.

Video h/t: Hot Air

5 comments:

Janelle said...

Spot on, Clifton, and running his mouth is all he is doing now. It is what he knows.

billd said...

all good points (as usual)

ref: I believe that Obama’s original thought was to dump the whole mess in BP’s lap and simply play the blame game.

"we have been on it since day one"...

doublegenealogytheadoptionwitness said...

BillD’s excellent pairing could explain much of the administration’s ineffective response to this disaster.

Time passage is opportunity lost. Instead of finger wagging, Obama could be using his charismatic gifts to marshall “we the people” to selfless action. Right now, there are millions of unemployed. We could be facilitating them, and many others, to the marshes. Right now, the whole wide world has eyes on and hearts tortured – just listen to the 24/7 radio programs, people everywhere wanting to help, replete with ideas. Instead, we are watching a side show, and waiting.

I posted to the BP idea collection website with no confidence of consideration. The marsh slick adheres to rubber gloves (oil based cloth). BP/Amoco produces oil based fabric or “geotextile” in massive size and quantity – some line roadbeds. The process uses massive rollers. A low tech response would be to fashion rollers into wringers on two containment vessels at the marsh, and the fabric into a conveyor belt. Then, in a continuous circuit, the fabric would submerge below the oil, get hoisted and conveyed to the wringer for offload. Lower tech would have volunteers man smaller pieces of such BP supplied cloth, submerge, pull up, and off load.

A small army of people would try lots of innovations, and some will actually work. Watching the BP beach crew pick tar balls up one at a time, for deposit in a small dog poop bag is driving me nuts!

Right Girl said...

Excellent job connecting the dots. Our president baffles me. His blind followers baffle me.

I've cross-posted on my blog.

crypticchika said...

At this point I am convinced IT IS MALICE..

Some of his other policies changes have helped convince me of this..For example Obama ratified the UN CRC Treaty, TO TAKE PARENTAL RIGHTS, and states ''children need special care, THAT PARETS CAN'T GIVE.. Check out parentalrights.org if you are having problems believing me..

How many passes are you gonna give Obama??

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