No one can accuse James Carville of being anything but a loyal Democrat. He’s long been one of the most colorful and loyal of Democratic strategists and gave good advise to Bill Clinton and others.
Now in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Carville has slammed the response of the Obama administration to the BP oil environmental disaster. Huffingtonpost has this up as its lead story under the title, “James Carville takes on Obama On Oil Spill: He’s ‘Risking Everything’ with ‘Go Along with BP Strategy’ “
Basically what Carville told Anderson Cooper is that Obama’s response has been inadequate and that he has relied too much on the oil giant and not taken the initiative. That fits in with the facts. The White House didn’t call a major meeting on the spill under 2 days after it happened. Obama didn’t visit the Gulf until 11 days after the oil rig blew up and oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
Carville has urged Obama to go to Plan B but unfortunately, his administration doesn’t appear to have a plan B. That’s likely because Obama chose the inept Ken Salazar as his Secretary of the Interior, even though environmental groups had warned him that Salazar long had been in bed with special interests and that he was a proponent of offshore drilling. Note too that under Salazar and the Obama administration, BP was given waivers for drilling without filing environmental impact statements, as reported by the Washington Post.
Carville is right and this disaster isn’t just going away anytime soon. Obama must be more decisive in this than he has been. He should can Salazar immediately and then start getting much tougher with BP and other oil companies. He should also permanently restore the offshore ban (he put it on hold for 30 days).
Here’s my effort to import the video clip of the interview with Anderson Cooper. <iframe src=”http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=99D1HC3882XXX3VX&widget_type_cid=svp” width=”420″ height=”421″ frameborder=”0″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ scrolling=”no” allowtransparency=”true”></iframe>
If that doesn’t work, check out the Huffingtonpost story which includes it!
SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/21/obama-faces-new-wave-of-c_n_585620.html
ED: Apologies for my inability to include that video here. Maybe someone can help out?
[editor’s note, by fflambeau] Sorry for my inability to put the video into the story. Maybe someone could kindly help out?
[UPDATE:]
The statement by Carville is so strong I’m wondering if it is more than just criticism. Could it be a “shot across the bow” of the Obama presidency? Perhaps not by the Clintons themselves but by some of their most loyal supporters, as Carville is. Carville may reason that he is getting on in age and health (so is Bill) and that 2016 might be too late to wait.
Then too, they may feel that if the Republicans take over the House in November (as many expect) this will not only result in gridlock but also continuous investigations of the administration. Both will not be good news.
If this happens and the recovery continues in slow fashion, Clinton might be in a good position to say to Obama in 2012: you’ve had your chance, you had 4 years, and it isn’t working. I did all I could to support you too. Now, please step aside.
Let’s face it, she would take most of the labor union support, almost all the progressives, most of the Latino vote, a huge majority of the female vote, and a chunk of the American American community (which may well reason: what’s this guy done for us? We have the worst unemployment rates in the country.).
Moreover, the line of attack that was effective for her in the last months of the Democratic primary campaigns: that Obama is not a fighter for average Americans, seems to have been borne out.
This does appear a means of putting some distance between the Clinton faction and the Obama administration, which with its commission to investigate the oil spill, is looking more and more ineffective.
