Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan assesses the political cost of the Obama administration’s handling of the BP-Gulf catastrophe. She’s not just making Republican political hay, though, for the crisis is not only Mr. Obama’s, but that of an entire nation too dependent on the increasingly unreliable and expensive leviathan of Big Government.
The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It’s not good to have a president in this position — weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support — less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of “the indispensble nation” be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.
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But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We’re in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they’ll probably get the big California earthquake. And they’ll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.
