Academic

JERRY POURNELLE: Of course the President hasn?t any competence in deep water oil drilling, of for?

By Glenn Reynolds

JERRY POURNELLE:

Of course the President hasn’t any competence in deep water oil drilling, of for that matter in oil spill cleanup. Why should he? No one expected him, or the Federal Government, to know how to plug the hole. What we did expect is some competence in crisis management. At least we had a right to expect that.

We had a right to expect that the President would take this seriously, if not on the first day, at least in the first week. We had a right to expect him to assemble a team of experts to assess the threat and recommend actions. We had a right to expect a plan to plug the hole, and another plan to deal with the oil contamination.

Instead he throws in Stephen Chu, Nobel physicist, as if Chu, a brilliant man, would have any competence in plugging holes a mile under water, or cleaning up threatened marshes — or crisis management.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Mother Jones: Obama and the BP Spill: A Command Gap? “The problem isn’t that the president hasn’t displayed enough anger. He hasn’t shown that he’s in charge.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on June 15, 2010 (boomark / email).