The Teflon President

by C. A. Jones

A generation ago, the nation watched as flap after flap, misstep after misstep washed off President Reagan. In his second term, with advancing Alzheimer’s, the man was no more coherent than George W. Bush. He was, however, adored by Republicans, and he bamboozled us with “credit card prosperity.” Reagan acquired the cognomen, the “Teflon” president. Nothing stuck.

President Obama, entrusted to protect us and reverse the tides of dispute and chaos, is under siege. Can he operate under such duress? Is he doing his job? Is he really under fire? Robbinsense thinks not.

Suppose: A nameless president contracts to a foreign oil producer for a difficult project, a company with a history of accidents without satisfactory resolution, of poor safety and quality control. A year later this president announces support of renewed drilling in off-shore and eco-sensitive sites. Suppose: Above project subsequently goes ballistic and because of safety precautions below international standards, begins spewing an ocean of oil into the ocean. Unnamed president claims the contractor is on top of the situation, and eleven days pass before he appears to survey the damage. Suppose that the feckless contractor had contributed heavily to this president’s campaign… What would we expect the response of the “environmental” community to be---the response of the left-wing punditry to such a petro-president? If it were George W. Bush, the howl would be deafening. But the contractor was, of course, BP, and the un-named president, Obama.

BP spent $15.9 Million in 2009 on lobbying. What does it get for this “access?” In 2005 an explosion at its Texas City refinery killed 15 and sent 43,000 fleeing to the safety of shelters. The Chemical and Safety Hazard Investigation Board concluded this was caused by “company deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation”, including several cost-cutting measures. A $50 Million fine, in face of $17.2 Billion profit in 2007, was less than a slap on the wrist…murder, even manslaughter charges: all dropped.

In 2006 The Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into two massive BP oil spills in Alaska caused by corroded pipes. The danger was apparent to all, but the “corporate” decision was made to let the pipes fail and pay the fine, which would be less expensive than fixing the pipes. The proposed, massive investigation would reach well into the boardrooms of the London-based corporation, but the Bush administration dropped the prosecution in favor of a $20 Million fine and a misdemeanor charge. The list of prominent names on the BP lobby panel is a virtual who’s who of the last three administrations. BP has been one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the Pentagon for several years.

And now, we have reports from surviving workers that BP officials were on the Deepwater Horizon platform “hours before the explosion” demanding that corners be cut. They ordered Transocean Ltd. to purge the drilling mud that keeps oil and gasses from ascending the pipe and replace it with seawater to expedite completion of the well head. This ploy is straight from the BP playbook.

Curiously, while the “Drill-Baby-Drill” chorus has ended after the blowout, there are no political fingers pointing, in any direction. Mr. Obama tapped BP for this difficult, sensitive project in the gulf after accepting substantial campaign contributions.

This impropriety, leading to disaster, is but one of many problems that we find with conduct of this administration. Our wars continue: drugs (Reagan), Afghanistan (Bush, with complicity from congress), Iraq (Bush under false pretense), terror (Bush, orchestrated by a demagogic fear campaign), Pakistan (Bush/Obama).

Mr. Obama has largely adopted the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his own. In Afghanistan we still have over 100,000 troops behind President Karzai, heading an egregiously corrupt government with little public support. We’re dumping $12 Billion per month into this futile effort, ensuring the enmity of their people and the fertility of the country as a matrix for terrorism. We’ve now had more than a thousand American troops killed in that country, plus 4000 civilians killed by our military forces, innocents with no connection to 9/11 or ill intent to our safety. This does not include the thousands killed by their own people for collaborating with our pipe-dream efforts. Does anyone know what our objective is there? Are we trying to turn Afghanistan into a Western style democracy? Those people have their own culture and institutions to sort out. Our interference adds to their litany of woes.

Our military’s own report on a February Predator attack which killed between 21 and 27 civilians found the bombing crew negligent. The 3-man crew, which consists of a pilot, a camera man and a liaison officer, ignored evidence that the group of SUVs was carrying civilians. The attack was broken off when women and children wearing brightly-colored garments were seen fleeing the vehicles. Can we allow trigger-happy, “gentleman-pilots”, comfortably sitting in a building in Las Vegas, to be killing people on the other side of the world---out of zeal? How soon do these “soldiers” become inured to killing and lose contact with the consequences of their action. This is no more than an arcade video-game to them.

In a speech in Kabul, President Obama actually stated: “The USA does not quit once we start on something…” What the bloody #$%&* does that mean? Is Mr. Obama too young to remember Mogadishu, Beirut, Vietnam? Our country does not quit on its politically-driven misadventures until our political will is out-flanked by personal and community sacrifice borne by our apathetic population. A mere 0.5% of that population directly supports our government’s wars, while the other 99.5% conduct daily affairs as though we live in Wonderland. Our president has not asked us to “pony up” to support this mess with a surtax, has not spoken of a draft to bring more than this tiny fraction of our public to task. This is all business as usual---Bush Lite.

In the mid nineties President Clinton, a political centrist, adopted the Republican agenda. Among other things, he balanced the budget and initiated welfare reform. He also pushed an anti-crime agenda that would make any Republican proud, expanding the scope of the war on drugs and imposing mandatory sentencing guidelines. He signed a bill declaring convicted felons disqualified for public housing or any public assistance, which likely set the battle against recidivism back a generation.

Did these measures bring political capital to the Clinton Administration from the right? Absolutely not! For stealing their agenda they hated Clinton all the more, becoming more obstreperous, more obstructionist. They impeached him over lying about a personal indiscretion. But Republicans have no problem with a Republican president lying to drag our country into war, killing hundreds of thousands, destroying national treasure and disrupting international relations for perhaps a generation.

So what has Mr. Obama done to incur Republican wrath? Liberal? What a laugh! The man is a measured and calculating conservative. Republican wars continue. Republican bailouts continue. Gitmo still operates. We have not unconditionally renounced torture. The “Patriot Act” still looms over our liberties, while contributing little or nothing to national security. Speaking of national security, Obama has publicly stated that he will do nothing to prevent those placed on our “terror watch list” (under provisions of “The Patriot Act”), from acquiring hand guns, assault rifles---anything they want. Financial reform is only emerging now, under a cautious banner, filtered by an administration manned by Goldman Sachs alums.

Robert Rubin and Larry Summers head our president’s Treasury Department. These men, along with Alan Greenspan, championed the hedge fund mess that led to our financial collapse. In March 1999, this troika of blowhards literally shouted down Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, before a congressional panel in her effort to control the industry and prevent catastrophe.

Healthcare reform, supported by the insurance industry, has been passed. But it’s a shell, with no public option. In a slap to women, Mr. Obama signed a bill denying public funds for abortion services. The prescription drug bill, driven down congress’s throat by Republicans, and mandating that all drugs be purchased by Medicare at full retail price, is still in place, draining $80 Billion per year from the budget. On the environmental front, the government has moved to suspend the moratorium on whale hunting. He has opened the door to new drilling in sensitive areas (whoops!) and a new generation of nuclear reactors.

And the continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? The president’s finger prints are all over it. Considering that the right-wing noise machine has its slur campaign amped to over-boost on everything from the Obama legitimacy to bail-out programs initiated by a Republican administration, how can they pass this up?

The easy answer is that Republicans support our wars under any pretense and support the continuation of war. And oil? “Drill, baby drill.” Do you think they’re going to start pursuing alternate energy technology? The Republicans have no intention to attack the president over substantive issues. There is practically no substantive issue that currently runs counter to right-wing agenda. Republicans are not motivated by issues. They are motivated by slogans!: “socialist”, “death panels”, “Hitler”, “death taxes”, “communist”, “birther” claims, “secular/socialist regime”, “big spending”, “liberal media”, blah, blah, blah. Now they’re back to “spending” (which they always worry about when a Democrat is in office). Where were the "tea partiers" when President Bush was running up $8 - $900 Billion annual deficits during times of prosperity, prying into our bedrooms and depriving us of our liberties with bogus claims of national threats?

Obviously, there are many issues on which the president is vulnerable. Only in the past couple of weeks have the media begun to examine the apparent dearth of “leadership” from the president over the crisis in the gulf. Whether this is a real failure on his part, or only one of perception may be a matter of “politics”. But it’s only “leadership” that is being examined…no mention of culpability. Mr. Obama’s gift as an inspiring orator and visionary has carried him to the Whitehouse, but his lack of inspiring “leadership” is also becoming apparent. The irony in this matter is that Mr. Obama appears to be the flip-side of Mr. Bush. While “W” had no oratorical skill and little poise in public, it would be ingenuous not to note that he was an inspired “leader”. [The problem with Mr. Bush’s leadership was that at almost every turn, he led us in the wrong direction.]

So why is Mr. Obama getting a free ride on the continuing mess over which he is actively presiding? The irony here is that his agenda is being driven by the Republicans and the right wing. In a brilliant campaign of demagoguery and hysteria, the right has stolen the political agenda and defused the left. While the right-wing’s issues are at the front of the Obama agenda, they hammer him over inconsequential, non-substantive silliness.

We can only guess at the “policy” that lies in Mr. Obama’s heart. But he is afraid to confront the political storm of belligerence, scorn, outrage that would result from pursuing real change. The right keeps the left off balance with claims that are preposterous beyond bothering to refute. This noisy rabble sees the president as an alien usurper, intent on imposing a socialist one-world regime. What hole did these people emerge from? We suspect that the great majority of them consist of Republican racists, intolerant of being led by a Democratic black man. But the campaign serves to prevent the left from initiating an attack on Mr. Obama over substantive issues. The left doesn’t want to add fuel to the fire that’s already cooking their man. The agenda remains in the right-wing court. On substantive issues, President Obama is the new “Teflon President”.

This country needs the kind of change promised by candidate Obama. Each of the candidates in the 2008 election guaranteed what our president is afraid to attempt. Are we really only positioning for re-election? Can we only expect one year of governance from a president in a first term, followed by 2 ½ years of a (possible) second term before he is “lame ducked” out? Do we go rudderless for 5½ out of each eight years? Healthcare reform or not, Robbinsense has taken off the gloves. We still rate the President’s performance a solid D.

C. A. Jones is a Robbinsense staff writer