THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE - #280

THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©

AN IRREVERENT VIEW


Time Line: June 15, 2010
Date Line: Chicago IL

Writing a daily comic strip isn’t any easier than being President. In both cases the audience is fickle, demanding, and unaware of all the problems that go into doing the job.

The employers are alike too. The comic strip writer’s boss wants increased circulation at lower cost, peak performance, the right to criticize and second guess the strip’s characters. The President’s employers want lower cost government, the right to second guess his actions, and superhuman performance even though they voted against him and said he was a dunce.

A comic strip writer who wanted a raise asked for it politely and got turned down flat. That Saturday put his hero into an impossible situation, hanging onto a spider-web over a vat of boiling oil and watching the web lengthen to the breaking point.

He went up to the Editor and said, “I quit”. The Editor agreed to a raise and a long term conduct on condition that the strip continued and the hero got saved. Next morning the strip opened with the statement, “By superhuman effort, our hero extricated himself from his impossible predicament” and went blithely on to a new chapter.

Every President from Washington to Obama would give up NY in a primary contest if it were that simple. The closest it ever came was Eisenhower’s innocent question, “What U2?” Mr. Obama has no such refuge in the current BP screw-up.

The demand is for him to “take charge” and to “show compassion for the damage to the residents of the Gulf”. Pay attention folks: Ours is a country with domestic and international issues in addition to the oil spill. How many times does a President have to say, “I am sorry that you were in harm’s way” before he is allowed to go about the business of dealing with the rest of problems that face the country?

Being in charge means exercising power over the circumstances and the participants. In the BP spill the President has no plenary power. If he did, should he order BP to stop working on the problem and turn it over to the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard? A “yes” answer means that we might assume responsibility and take BP off the hook. BP’s executives pray fervently for the US to adopt that course of action.

Why does every newsman ask the government to do more without suggesting what “more” should be?

There is no technology or equipment designed to deal with this problem quickly. There is no way to put crews on the seabed for extended periods of time to clean up the polluted oceans. There is no assurance that a “relief well” will solve anything, let alone clean up the damage to date.

We are frustrated by the circumstances; humiliated by our lack of capability to handle the mess. Being human, we look for a culprit.

The culprit is not the President or the US government. Blame rests with a company that is NOT dedicated to seeing that the US is protected from harm. BP is a mindless entity designed to protect the people who run it and its profit making activities.

Check the Funnies this Sunday to see if “By superhuman efforts President Obama extricated himself from this impossible position.”

Howard Stamer