A fact of life: accidents of monumental proportion happen.
It’s what we do, individually and as a society, after the accident that counts.
In the case of the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform and the tragedy of the disastrous, ongoing oil spill, people demand the corporation to act responsibly. . .but in truth, the torrent of their demands, actions and personal attacks on company officials indicate nothing will satisfy them. Nothing.
Anyone who has spent anytime in a “War Room” during a crisis situation knows that solutions come neither easily nor on schedule. But for outside observers, especially those from the political arena, there is great advantage in spinning solutions, demands and accusations, sometimes from thin air.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute recently wrote:
When oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and all the administration’s efforts appear only to be slowing down the clean-up, there’s nothing else to do than attack a convenient Republican. Rule 11 of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, states: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.”
That’s what Democrats are doing with Representative Joe Barton. No Democrat has addressed the issue that Barton raised, namely why has the administration expropriated without clear legal authority the distribution of compensation? Why is the administration, rather than BP, writing checks to hundreds of thousands of Americans harmed by the spill? Can the administration do a more efficient job than BP of rapidly processing the claims? Is the administration using the compensation process for political gain? If the oil spill isn’t solved by November, Americans will be angry at the administration, not at Joe Barton.
I agree. Furthermore, from a PR perspective, here is what I’ve seen:
• BP, yes, apparently unprepared to correct the specific way in which the pipe twisted when it blew;
• BP officials who, with their corporation, continue to work relentlessly to meet the technological demands of the repair – who are brainstorming, analyzing, testing and implementing solutions 24/7;
• The BP CEO who appears before the media on-demand and has since the first moments of the crisis; a CEO who is transparent, honest, straight-forward, willingly vulnerable at the jaws of a presidential administration, Congressional leaders and a public ready, it appears, to crucify him, for example, for trying to recuperate for a day on his yacht;
• A global corporation, BP, who is prepared to do the right thing by paying out a minimum $20 BILLION in reparation payments as soon as possible – this in addition to the cost of repair and clean-up.
What kills me are the sanctimonious actions and holier-than-thou rhetoric of members of the congressional committee who interrogated CEO Tony Hayworth last week.
Were Senator Joe Barton to be able to do it over again, he may choose to rephrase his statement regarding his suspicions that the presidential administration had railroaded (my term, intended) BP into the $20B reparation payment. In that phrasing, he created the vent from which the lava of hyperbole spews. Had he phrased differently from the outset and released the statement outside the halls of the congressional committee, the statement could have been productive – politically and otherwise.
So, let’s get a grip here….a firm grip on what teamwork on a national scale during crisis really means, what it looks like and how it’s done.
America needs proactive leadership….we don’t need the current administration continuing to instigate a 2010 version of the Salem Witch Hunt.
Till next time ~Cyndie
