The president who says that people shouldn’t blame others for their failures says that the Deepwater Horizon disaster is the fault of the GOP because if (hypothetically) he had tried to prevent it — which of course he didn’t — the Republicans would surely have stopped him:
I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending.
Lame.
POSTSCRIPT: I know this doesn’t merit a response, but I can’t help pointing out two things beyond the obvious: (1) Even if we suppose that you get to blame others for what they would hypothetically have done if you had done something different, Congressional action wasn’t required for the administration to make sure that the MMS was doing its job, or for a Jones Act waiver, or any number of other presidential prerogatives. (2) Since when does the president care what Republicans think? Republicans (and the public too) were against the stimulus boondoggle, and the auto bailouts, and especially health care nationalization, but he went ahead with them anyway.
As far as his deeper point about how regulating oil drilling would violate our small-government principles, I think it’s best for us to be the judge of our own principles, thank you very much. I explained here why he’s wrong.
Internet Scofflaw 