That's assuming Tony has enough time on his hands next week to swing by the White House. It's really hard to break away from shooting those cool commercials urging Americans to chill because BP is on the job.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today danced around the potential tete-a-tete of the two embattled leaders. Hayward visits Capitol Hill next week so Congress can get invaluable PR face-time to express outrage over the destruction of the Gulf. Those leaders are the same guys who can't craft an energy bill to speed development of alternative power sources, energy that one day -- far down the road -- may eliminate the need for offshore drilling. Gibbs said he couldn't rule out a Presidential meeting with relevant BP officials. Hayward is as relevant as they come. He’s a man worthy of some Presidential butt-kicking or at least some huffing and puffing from the Commander-in-Chief. Phony outrage is apparently what the American people want from their leader. They sure don’t want to foot the bill for a permanent U.S.-Government oil spill disaster team.
The expertise to drill and contain any spill is supposed to be part of the toolkit of oil majors. One would think ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, Shell and the other big guys would rush to the assistance of BP, which apparently lacks the savvy to fix the disaster. BP’s mess is fast becoming a Three Mile Island-like crisis for Big Oil. And we all know what Three Mile Island did to the nuclear energy business. It destroyed a generation of development. We sure could use the power from those global warming friendly, but never-developed reactors today.
Another BP oil note: The National Journal reports that 79 percent of Republican Congressional "insiders" expects to benefit from the oil spill in November's election. A little more than half (53 percent) of Democrats expect no impact on the upcoming election. The GOP, which gutted regulation and loaded federal agencies with industry cronies, expects to gain politically from BP’s mess.
Go figure.
(Image: Businessweek)
