Jun 10
25
political tests
Progressive political activists all across the web have begun to argue among themselves about the White House response to the BP oil spill. An emotional crescendo rolled through left-leaning political websites as if it were an electronic wave in the days leading up to the much awaited press conference President Obama conducted in Louisiana last Friday, leaving a frothy lather in its wake.
Many bloggers, myself included, who got tired of what we were seeing from the White House, took to our own bully pulpits – our blogs – and expressed our frustrations. Jill Tubman, the pseudonym of one of the co-founders of Jack & Jill Politics, a leading website for black progressives, found out the hard way last week how little patience some of her blog audience has for criticism of Obama.
“I’m with James Carville. The administration may be limited in what it can do, but it should be giving the impression of a) caring as much as the people of the Gulf about this and b) doing whatever they can. Why not get NASA or NOAA or Woods Hole involved? Where are the submarines, the Marines and Navy in addition to the Coast Guard?”
Barack – Bamboozled By BP and Blowing It Jill Tubman, Jack & Jill Politics
I heard about the aftermath on Twitter, where accusations of everything from personal character attacks on the president to more links than you can shake a stick at to government websites with lists detailing the response effort by the Obama Administration peppered the 348 responses to this missive over the next few days.
So I decided to see if I could catch Jill Tubman on a holiday weekend, to ask her a few questions about her experience.
Were you surprised by the reception from your own homegrown blog audience to the criticism you had for the president’s handling of the BP oil spill situation?
I was surprised by the volume of comments but not the push and pull. There are some African-Americans — especially older ones — who feel very protective of the first black presidency. For them, any criticism is highly threatening or destabilizing. They are often the most vocal & extreme. At the same time, there were enough comments supportive of either my opinion or me personally that I could see I am not alone in my belief that the President could have handled the oil spill better.
What do you think is the impetus behind some of the vitriol you received?
(see above) All black folk recognize that there is a lot of stake re: the Obama presidency — not only for him but for all African-Americans. I think for some people, critique of the President makes them feel personally vulnerable and they lash back with emotion not always grounded in the facts. I understand that. It doesn’t make me angry at them — I just disagree with their strategy of “protect the president no matter what at all costs”. I too am eager for the Obama presidency to achieve its maximum success and potential. The biggest way, I believe, that we can support the President is to give him our honest opinion — it carries a lot more weight when accountability comes from usually loyal & passionate supporters. African-Americans will de-legitimize their power if they abandon their moral compass and good sense to speak straight when things are not right.
Do you think your closing statement in this piece:
“Obama needs to get on the good foot. Before he finds a foot kicking him out the White House door in a couple of years. If there was ever an issue that threatened to damage his reputation and thwart his re-election, it’s this. If Obama doesn’t get this right, it could indeed, in the words of Glenn Beck, be Obama’s Katrina.”
Was it simply too much for diehard Obama supporters to bear?
I should have added to the last statement to be more sensitive to the survivors of Katrina and clarified in the comments of the post. I stand by those comments. It pains me to agree with Glenn Beck — to clarify, I meant this in a meta-sense. Katrina was the largest humanitarian disaster on U.S. soil. The BP oil spill is the largest environmental disaster our nation has ever seen Katrina was the point at which finally when Bush lost the confidence of the American people as a leader who could demonstrate both caring and competence in a crisis. I think that Obama was at risk of doing permanent damage to his reputation and re-election chances. He’s starting to re-position but the press conference he had last week should have happened several weeks ago.
Shutting our eyes and sticking our heads into the sand when trouble arises for the President is not the way to have his back in my opinion.
The good thing about these kinds of tempests in our electronic teapots, so long as they do not fester for long, is the depth to which each side will go to support their arguments. A vigorous debate, even if it seems to be numerically one-sided, can help to re-engage some of us who have been moseying along since the 2008 elections.
Most of us understand implicitly that no United States president is a lone gun slinger at O.K. Corral, who can be scripted to wrap things up by the credits. They are team leaders. Commanders of small armies of men and women who execute game plans on their behalf in order to advance many agendas, some large, some small, even while crises as devastating as the BP oil spill take place. We know this.
But since “Yes We Can” is the president’s theme song, it should come as no surprise that some of his supporters are itching to see a few more “Yes We Did” codas replace the historic refrain of the Obama presidential campaign.
