Oiling Up The Government Wheels

Greg Sargent asks a pressing question today that directly has to do with nearly all aspects of domestic politics and it's an argument we've had around here on a number of occasions in the comments:  has the oil spill hurt Obama's position that government is a force for good?

So what does the public want? For the Federal government to bring its boot down on BP's neck. An astonishing 64% say it should bring criminal charges against the company, and 51% strongly favor this.

There's good and bad news here for Obama. The bad news: People are not convinced that the government is doing all it can to deal with the Gulf crisis, whether through a White House failure to communicate or because the White House's response has in fact been lacking.

The good news, though, is that people continue to want a very aggressive Federal response. In other words, if there's only so much the government can do to control the spill itself, the public continues to want decisive action.

Sargent's theory is that people want the government to take strong and immediate action and that the government can be a force for change and reform, but they currently do not believe it is being used as such right now, especially in relation to the oil spill.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans want BP to face criminal charges for this, not just civil ones.  They want to see the people responsible go to jail, much like Bernie Madoff.  That is, as Sargent points out, a very good sign that Americans don't see the government prosecuting BP as unfair or an abuse of government power.  Americans may not be thrilled with government, but they hate corporate scumbags even more.

Having said that, a lot of the blame for BP and for Obama on this is irrational, as the root cause of all this mess is the fact that we needed to drill for oil offshore in the first place.  I've seen the argument in comments that drilling in shallower water would make it easier to resolve spills like this.  That's possible.  But that's not the root cause either.

That root cause is the fact we consume so much oil in this country.  If we didn't need so much oil, we wouldn't have to drill for it a mile under the ocean and risk destroying, oh, thousands of miles of coastline and putting millions out of work and costing tens of billions in damage.  It's the answer nobody's really talking about and that's unfortunate.

Obama has helped to address some of that with higher mileage standards on vehicles and promoting some green power initiatives, but we need a hell of a lot more.  And that is something government can do for good.