Obama Waited Two Months to Call CEO of BP After Oil Spill; Only Waited Two Days to Call Sandra Fluke

If someone has been wronged or there is some sort of problem, a personal phone call from the President of the United States can be an important piece to improved understanding of the problems and can help to get past any sort of communication issues that are out there. The office of the President is one that is filled with prestige and honor, and a phone call from him that carries the weight of that august office can go far in putting pressure on people to overcome problems or calm down inflamed emotions and right wrongs. But the President's time is valuable and important, so it understandable if his personal touch isn't applied to every situation in the form of a personal phone call and it is okay if he sometimes waits several days before talking to people who are important or who have been wronged.

The important quality for the President of the United States to have is the judgement and decision-making skills to determine who he should take the time to call and when he should decide to just sit it out and not get involved. It is important that the President have the sound judgement to focus on the important issues facing our nation and use his office and the power that goes with it to improve situations and smooth past difficult issues. It is important that the President be able to decide when to use his office to bring light to issues and focus public attention on them with a phone call.

President Barack Obama (Democrat) lacks sound judgement and proper decision making when it comes to making personal phone calls and when to make them.

On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded, resulting in a severe oil spill from the ruptured well. BP, which had employed Deepwater Horizon to drill on its Macondo Prospect, immediately began to work with the a range of U.S. federal government agencies and assets to try to reduce the flow of oil into the Gulf, figure out what happened, and try to assess blame and responsibility for the large oil spill. There were a lot of moving and complicated aspects of the US government tied up in this effort, and to coordinate them and make sure that they were used properly at some point the President of the United States should have talked with top level decision makers in BP, including its CEO Tony Hayward.

But for over two months, President Obama did not talk to the CEO of BP and did not make a personal phone call to him to discuss efforts to limit the oil spill, to figure out why the oil spill happened, or to figure out how to overcome the important issues that the spill brought up. This represented an important failure in judgement and a bad decision; a phone call between the President and the CEO of BP could have resulted in more coordination between BP and the US and more understanding of how and why the accident happened, resulting in less oil spilled, less wildlife killed, and a quicker resumption of drilling in the gulf and the lower oil prices and greater economic growth that would have resulted form this. Obama eventually did meet with the CEO, but it took him over two months to do so.

In contrast, two days after radio show host Rush Limbaugh called community activist Sandra Fluke a slut, President Obama took time out of his busy day to make a personal phone call to her to "offer his support to her, he wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy."

The quick personal phone call, especially in light of his two month long wait before calling the CEO of BP after the oil spill earlier, and the fact that he would use the office of the President to call a private citizen and apologize to her for the comments of a private radio host represents a failure of President Barack Obama's judgement and decision making with who receives a personal phone call from the President of the United States. His office phone, rather than being used to coordinate the assets of the United States or figure out how to avoid oil spills in the future, was used instead to make a quick phone call to a private citizen to give official support for their views and to side with her in a controversy between her and a radio host who is trying to generate ratings.

President Obama, rather than following important events around the world and with our economy, clearly is just sitting in the White House listening to talk radio and making phone calls to people mentioned on talk radio stations. The President did not call the CEO of BP earlier about the oil spill, even though he was called many names by bloggers, radio show hosts, and comedians, further demonstrating his poor judgement and poor decision making skills.

Our nation needs someone who understands how and when and why the President of the United States should call people, and these two examples clearly indicate that Barack Obama is lacking in judgement and decision making. We need to- and can- replace him in 2012 with someone with better judgement and decision-making skills, someone who understands that the CEO of BP should have been called in two days and that a private citizen who is called a name by a radio show host should not receive a phone call from the President.