Oil spilled: But Hysteria by Democrats did the Real Damage

While Obama spent his time responding to the Gulf Oil spill by deciding "whose arse to kick", on my blog I took the correct approach to the spill. The correct approach to the spill was not to demonize a company, not to overreact to the events, not to try to make political hay out of the events, and not to make the damage worse.

The correct approach was to "gather the experts — federal, state, local, public and private — not to discover who is to blame but to secure their active and continuous involvement until the crisis is resolved". Mitt Romney said that, and I talked about it in my post Mitt Romney on Leadership, when I said that "what we need right now is someone who will use what power and authority and resources that the federal government has to help, and other than that stay out of the way." Obama didn't choose that correct approach- he closed his group and cast blame.

Another correct way to respond to the Gulf Oil spill would be to take a look at government policies and see if they are in any way making the situation worse. I did so when I was one of the early bloggers writing about the Jones Act- see my post Obama: Didn't Waive the Jones Act, Made Gulf Spill Worse. In that post, I wrote "Don't kid yourself- there is a lot that the government can do to help the situation in the Gulf- like getting the heck out of the way of people who want to help"- that's right, the correct approach would be to get government out of the way, not get it more in the way. Obama didn't do that either.

In Obama Can Help with Gulf Oil Spill I gave our clueless partisan hack of a President some advice on what to do when I wrote:

Obama CAN help to contain and clean up and prevent future Gulf Oil disasters- but he isn't doing that. He isn't helping to contain the spill- in fact, it appears that he is not repealing regulations that hinder fighting the spill and he is hindering efforts by states to build reefs and other means of protection. He isn't helping to clean up the spill- he has created a vacuum of leadership at the top of our nation, a vacuum that is sucking the oil right out of the ground and spewing it everywhere in a potent symbol of his inadequacy for the Presidency. And he isn't helping to prevent future Gulf Oil disasters, unless you consider his attempts to drive the US back into the Stone Age by killing energy production a way to help prevent future spills like this one. Obama can help the Gulf Oil Spill... but he isn't. The same things could be said for the Democrats who are running Congress as well.

One of the great things about being a policy advisor like me is that I can suggest solutions and options, and then compare the results of what politicians did to what I suggested. If Obama would have taken my suggestions, the Gulf Oil spill would have not been a hysteria-filled situation, would not have been front-page news, and would have appeared to everyone who asked about it to be 'not a big deal.' Oh, I know liberals would have been all upset that I was ignoring the situation and not giving it the attention that it deserved, but the most important thing about the Gulf Oil spill was to not make the situation worse- the rig had exploded already, the oil was leaking already, and freaking out after that would only make the situation worse.

But Obama and the Democrats in Congress did freak out, and now crashing visitor numbers and plummeting fish sales are devastating businesses in the region. Yeah, likely less people would have visited the Gulf region due to the oil spill, but after Obama and the Democrats promoted an image of oil everywhere that it resorts had to start planning on an 80% drop in revenues.

Figures show just 16 of the state's 180 holiday beaches are at all polluted, while the bulk of the spill appears to have dispersed, or be dispersing out at sea, but perception becomes reality, and President Obama and Democrats hyped the oil spill for political purposes and created a perception that oil is evil, and now the taint of their lies has tainted the entire Gulf economy.

Simon Jenkins, writing in The Guardian, writes:

The spill has been another classic of state terror in which incident and response are wholly out of proportion to one another. As the oil leak began back in April, Obama declared a disaster, banned fishing in 37% of the Gulf and ordered a halt to underwater oil exploration, putting some 27,000 jobs at risk. Columnists screamed it was "Obama's 9/11" and demanded he "harness the nation's outrage". He was attacked for playing golf within 58 days of the disaster. With dial-a-quote scientists howling blue murder, any who might have looked at previous spills and thought it might not be so bad would have been unpatriotic disaster-deniers.

Hardly a day passed without the president castigating BP, the hated "British Petroleum" – never its American site operators, Transocean and Halliburton, or his own regulators. It was a field day for xenophobes. The president used the sort of language normally visited on global terrorists. He was going to "get BP" and make them "pay for this". It was another Hurricane Katrina, but one that could thankfully be blamed on foreigners.
Now, mysteriously, Obama speaks of we, we, we … who "have this thing under control". His environment adviser, Carol Browner, says "the vast majority of the oil appears to have gone". Less than 10% of coastline saw any oil at all. There have been no sightings of dead fish floating in the sea and most fishing will soon be "back to normal". The Gulf is apparently "clean, safe and open for business", and a lovely place to take the kids. It is OK, everyone. Disaster has turned to triumph, so let us all think about the midterm elections.

So whose fault really was the collapse in the local economy? It began with a failed oil well, responsibility resting with BP, but blame still not apportioned. Yet as every terrorist knows, it is not the bomb that does the real damage, it is the publicity multiplier given it by the media and politics. The bomb causes the bang; the target is then relied on to supply the megaphone.

The great conflation of fear – often egged on by "the science" – is the result of government gladly allowing itself to go mad for a day, to raise a fear, glean a headline or win a budget rise. Obama grotesquely exaggerated the oil threat to advance his personal and party cause.

As voters, we have to hold those people responsible for doing the damage they have done to our economy and nation. Thankfully, as voters we can hold Democrats responsible this coming election. Please do so.