From the National Journal, some commentary on the state of presidential power. While executive powers have expanded considerably over the past century, it still has practical limits. Campaign rhetoric aside, presidents aren't Superman. And while we hear concerns about Obama's apparent attempts to expand executive power we nevertheless, we also hear calls that Obama should do more to contain the oil spill, which requires him to usurp more executive power of course. We did the same with Bush and terrorism, as well as other presidents and whatever crises happened during their tenure. We want executive power both expanded and limited at the same time. We criticize presidents for abusing power, and for not using it.
So, as a public, do we say that we want limited government in principle, but demand expansive power in practice? Is we wish government to be limited, we have to accept the idea that certain things are going to happen without our control or influence -- like huge oil spills. Do we really, collectively, want that? I think the American public is conflicted about governmental power and attitudes about Obama's response to the oil spill encapsulate that.
Here's the story:
The Gulf, Unplugged: When it comes to stopping the Gulf oil spill, we don't hear the president shouting 'Yes, we can!'
by Will Englund
Saturday, June 5, 2010
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This week, the Obama administration made a show of the various ways it is taking care of business connected to the oil spill -- steps that are significant and most likely necessary, but none of them having any effect on the gusher itself.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into the disaster. President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony to introduce the co-chairmen of a commission charged with figuring out how to prevent another such catastrophe. (They are Bob Graham, the former senator and Florida governor, and William K. Reilly, who was President George H.W. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency chief, back when the Exxon Valdez was hitting the rocks.)
As always at such events, the two eminent commissioners kept mum, but that may have been especially prudent in this instance, in which no one, at the moment, has a good solution to the unfolding disaster.
Obama doesn't have the luxury of silence. He has to talk about this mess. Last week, at his press conference, he veered into long explanations of what the government could and could not do, and what it should be doing.
In the Rose Garden, he was a little more trenchant and a lot terser. Yet White House reporters later badgered press secretary Robert Gibbs about whether the president has displayed sufficient rage over the BP spill. Gibbs parried and talked around the question and, before the dialogue had played itself out, several dozen more barrels of petroleum, at least, had flowed out of the Deepwater Horizon well and into the Gulf of Mexico.
Neither a raging president nor commissioners nor crusading prosecutors can stop the oil. All may have a role to play in the larger story surrounding the event but none is central to the solution.
In the meantime, Obama isn't getting very good marks on the spill. By margins of 5-to-10 percentage points, polls taken in late May show that more Americans disapprove than approve of his handling of the crisis. Conservative critics lambaste the president for not doing more about the spill and accuse him of plotting to use it as a pretext to halt offshore drilling. Public support for drilling has dropped dramatically, however, since the "drill, baby, drill" days of 2008; support fell from 62 percent to 45 percent in CBS News polls.
Americans have come to expect their presidents to be able to set right anything that goes wrong. It's an idea that presidential candidates like to nurture -- and maybe none more so than Obama, with his "Yes, we can" slogan -- but no president, once in office, can live up to that expectation. Theater, and a sense of timing, though, can help.
Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And when, two years later, the wall did come down, Reagan's supporters seized on it as proof of his genius and daring. If Obama had gone down to the Gulf at the right moment and declaimed, "BP, plug up this hole!" it wouldn't have stopped the oil any more than Reagan's speech brought down the wall, but it could have been thrilling to his allies.
It wasn't always like this. The biggest oil spill in U.S. history was the Lakeview Gusher, in California. It blew in March 1910 and went on for 18 months. President Taft appears to have said nothing about it. Two statewide Democratic candidates made a point of driving by it one day -- to enjoy the thrilling sight of a fountain of crude.
The Gulf spill, whatever its ultimate dimensions, will clearly inflict far more environmental damage than Lakeview did, given its location. But this is also not an era that is receptive to an "accidents happen" outlook on life.
Obama has been lucky in one aspect: Oil companies are about as unpopular as health insurers. BP makes a handy villain (and the British accent of its CEO, Tony Hayward, may reinforce the point). Polls show that virtually no one approves of BP's handling of the crisis. One puzzle is that an administration that is powerless to address the physical problem -- the oil welling up from below -- has been so slow to turn against the oil company that drilled the hole in the first place.
