Capping The Failure

This morning the reaction to the President's speech last night is lukewarm at best.  Olbermann blew a gasket, Kevin Drum hated it, but NBC News liked it (as did I, Mark Murray's read on this is similar to mine) but I can't help but think that this was the wrong speech at the wrong time.

It was, as The Atlantic's Josh green said, small.

I'm all in favor of the moratorium on drilling, a national commission to understand the causes of this disaster, and the idea that we need to move toward developing sources of clean energy. But I thought Obama reached for some pretty cheap platitudes on the latter point. "Seizing the moment," invoking World War II vets and the moon landing are all well and good, but it rang pretty hollow to me. What stood out was that for all his praise of the House climate bill and talk about the "consequences of inaction" and so forth, not once did he utter the phrase, "It's time to put a price on carbon." And that suggests to me that this speech was primarily about containing the damage to his administration, and was not the pivot point in the energy debate that many people were hoping for.

Obama clearly threw the idea of climate legislation under the bus.  He stuck to his stated goals, which was "We'll make BP pay" and "We need new energy sources."

The problem is this morning, the "Make BP pay" part has already fallen to pieces.

BP Plc and the Obama administration have failed to agree on an escrow fund covering cleanup costs and claims stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, people familiar with the negotiations said.

The lack of an agreement raises the stakes for a scheduled meeting of President Barack Obama with BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg at the White House today.

The two sides continue to negotiate over issues including the size of the fund, who would administer it and whether BP shareholders would have to approve the transfer of money required for the account, according to the people, who asked not to be identified describing the private talks. 

In other words, who knows if there's going to even be an escrow deal...and Obama can't even renewable energy legislation going because of the moratorium on drilling.

Frankly, it's looking like Obama's holding zero cards right now. Given the chance to swing for the fences on climate, he bunted.  This isn't the guy I voted for, not by a long shot.