YOUR REFLEX IS MY RATIOCINATION:

Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse (FRANK RICH, 5/30/10, NY Times)

FOR Barack Obama’s knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, there’s the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency. [...]

Of all the president’s stated goals, none may be more sweeping than his desire to prove that government is not always a hapless and intrusive bureaucratic assault on taxpayers’ patience and pocketbooks, but a potential force for good. [...]

We expect him to deliver on this core conviction. But the impact on “the people” of his signature governmental project so far, health care reform, remains provisional and abstract. Like it or not, a pipe gushing poison into an ocean is a visceral crisis demanding visible, immediate action.

One would hardly expect Mr. Rich to get that calling it the UR's Katrina is a witticism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2010 6:50 AM