So this evening Fearless Leader delivered an address to the nation, his first from the Oval Office which, I am given to understand, is generally characterized as being a power play of sorts. I have my own theories but I can get into those later.

The topic of discussion was, unsurprisingly, the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Having just returned from yet another trip to the "third coast" (where he gamely partook of the local seafood, as a show of confidence, bravo) Obama laid out, in brief, his outline for how the Federal Government would move forward in it's response to the catastrophe.

In my own mind the single most important item on the list of response measures, after stopping the damned leak itself, is getting the fund necessary to fund as full and complete a clean-up effort as is possible through modern science and also to compensate the millions of people whose lives and livelihoods are dependant on the Gulf Coast, the Gulf of Mexico itself and the biodiversity contained therein. All the expense of British Petroleum, naturally. Well...possibly also at the expense of Haliburton and/or Deepwater Horizon, should they prove to be culpable. It would seem that Fearless Leader agrees with me; Obama stated that he would be informing BP's Chairman that he is to set aside whatever resources required and that said funds would not be under BP's control.

There are a great many people out there for whom this course of action is simply not satisfactory; they won't be satisfied with anything less than British Petroleum's dismantling here in the US. There are others for who the point isn't even taking step to avoid a repeat performance; what they want is simple revenge, in the name of their ideals and the planet itself. Its easy to empathize with that, especially when we begin to understand that British Petroleum has put more effort into trying to control the public perception (the word "optics" has become the current vogue) of the entire situation than in fixing the damned leak.

I heard a great deal of complaint from the left after the address, complaint that boiled down to disappointment that this was not a great, rousing speech made to capture public energy and inspire us all to so great national action...specifically in this case, action to the effect of completely overturning the fossil fuel industry and replacing it with clean energy systems. I empathize with this too. From a purely tactical perspective this event could have been used to justify (which word I use advisedly) a drive towards a green revolution. At the very least, these people would have rather gotten something much, much more akin to Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech (although he never used the word); they wanted a rhetorical boot up the back-side of the American people to propel us away from fossil fuels in general and oil in specific. Again, I empathize...

The consequences of such a speech though, bear consideration. In the first place, the traditional supporters of "big oil" already sounded the cry against this undeniably obvious tactic. On this level, its obvious that little beyond reinforcing the traditional, extant postures and battles would be achieved. There would be no significant improvement in the balance of power between the conservatives and progressives and, furthermore, it would have only put another rhetorical arrow in the quiver of the Right. Secondly, there is a sizable contingent of independent voters...what are somewhat vulgarly referred to as the "mushy middle". This contingent (in which I happily claim membership) played no small part in getting Fearless leader and the current Democratic majority elected and the largest part of our camp has a genuine dislike of dramatic politics, even when it leans in a direction we like. We've been watching the trend towards extremism (largely but by no means exclusively in the right wing) and it makes us uncomfortable; wild vacillations in governing policy can "shake apart" the social structure as well creating a situation similar to that which gave us the Civil War (or, War Between the States, for you lot in moonshine country).

That having been said, I don't think that even the most rabid of left-wing loony tunes can find fault with the open reference to peak oil and the fact that we are past it. He may not have tried to mimic Kennedy's call to "shoot the moon", but he did, finally, point out the 800-pound gorilla.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again: the way forward in our various national policies cannot be to swing wildly back and forth between ideological extremes. The right and left both attack him, but I continue to hold faith with Fearless Leader because even when neck-deep in various crises, many of which could have been leveraged into a number Democratic agenda victories, he has stuck scrupulously to the principal of moderation. In short, I admire the man's ethics.