It seems almost in poor taste to discuss the politics of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but that is what we do here. I’m less interested in how the failure to cap the well will affect the Obama administration than in how it will affect the beliefs of Gulf Coast residents (and, to a degree, the whole nation). If Obama is going to take a hit for telling us offshore drilling was safe, the GOP is going to have to rethink it’s ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ ethos. How would Family Ties character Alex Keaton have responded to the decimation of sea life in the Gulf, along with soiled beaches, destroyed wetlands, and massive erosion of southern Louisiana? Perhaps he wouldn’t have adopted the hippy-dippy attitudes of his parents, but he very well may have abandoned his worship of big business and his anti-regulatory attitude. He probably would have become sympathetic to the environmental movement. The question I really have is whether the next generation of Gulf Coast residents will demand that the GOP adopt environmental planks or if they’ll simply abandon the party in favor of the Democrats.
The tension can be seen in a general non-partisan way in Louisiana. With their economy dually dependent on drilling and fishing, the politicians of both parties are trying to figure out how to preserve their way of life but are discovering that they can’t have it both ways. They have to choose between the fishermen and the rig workers. And it’s complicated by the fact that so many Louisiana residents and families work in both industries. But, in the end, this is not a close contest. There is no argument in favor of Big Oil here. Either deepwater drilling needs to stop or it needs to be very tightly regulated. The old conservative argument that anything that costs Big Oil money and hassle is bad for Louisiana isn’t going to cut it with the local eco-system in ruins.
No politician is going to say it, but the people of the Gulf are not innocent victims here. They voted for this. I don’t think they’re going to continue to vote for it. And that is going to shakeup the two political parties down there, and maybe everywhere.
