The oil spill commission released their final report.
Chapter Five, “Response and Containment” (pdf, p. 138) contains the following:
During this spill, however, the Governors and other state political officials participated in the response in unprecedented ways, taking decisions out of the hands of career oil-spill responders. These high-level state officials were much less familiar with spill-response planning. In addition to the National Contingency Plan, each Coast Guard sector is an “Area” with an Area Contingency Plan created by relevant state and federal agencies. When confronted with a contingency plan setting out how the federal and state governments were supposed to run an oil-spill response, one high-level state official told a Coast Guard responder that he never signed it. According to the Coast Guard officer, the state official was not questioning whether his signature appeared on the document, but asserting that he had not substantively reviewed the plan. State and local officials largely rejected the pre-spill plans and began to create their own response structures.
State and local officials chafed under federal control of the response. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s advisors reportedly spent days trying to determine whether the Stafford Act or the National Contingency Plan applied.
Because the majority of the oil would come ashore in Louisiana, these issues of control mattered most there. Louisiana declined to empower the officials that it sent to work with federal responders within Unified Command, instead requiring most decisions to go through the Governor’s office. For example, the Louisiana representative at Unified Area Command could not approve the daily agenda of response activities.
Local resentment became a media theme and then a self-fulfilling prophesy. Even those who privately thought the federal government was doing the best it could under the circumstances could not say so publicly. Coast Guard responders watched Governor Jindal — and the TV cameras following him — return to what appeared to be the same spot of oiled marsh day after day to complain about the inadequacy of the federal response, even though only a small amount of marsh was then oiled. When the Coast Guard sought to clean up that piece of affected marsh, Governor Jindal refused to confirm its location. Journalists encouraged state and local officials and residents to display their anger at the federal response, and offered coverage when they did. Anderson Cooper reportedly asked a Parish President to bring an angry, unemployed offshore oil worker on his show. When the Parish President could not promise the worker would be ‘angry,’ both were disinvited.
As the media coverage grew more frenzied, the pressure increased on federal, state,and local officials to take action and to avoid being seen as in league with BP. What
Admiral Allen would later call “the social and political nullification” of the National Contingency Plan, which envisions “unity of effort” between the federal government, state
governments, and the responsible party, was well underway.
There are three players mentioned in this part of the oil spill story who started with preconceived notions, and where they began colored everything they did and said, as it progressed.
Anderson Cooper started with “Obama’s Katrina”, and he pursued only the facts and interviews that fit that frame. Bobby Jindal started with “the federal government is inefficient and unwieldy, and the best response is localized”, and he immediately began the “social and political nullification” of the National Contingency Plan. That Anderson Cooper and Bobby Jindal ended up working in concert is not deliberate, in my view. They were pursuing two different predetermined goals, and those goals happened to intersect, in ways that benefited them both.
Admiral Allen was the single (named) actor in this drama who started with a set of actual guidelines, the National Contingency Plan. From Allen’s perspective (and that of the Coast Guard responders) how well or poorly that plan is carried out is the single objective measure of their work. He and the Coast Guard responders don’t write policy, they carry out the plan. Once the plan was “nullified” there’s no objective measure. The measure of their work becomes wholly dependent on perception, which is, of course, a subjective measure.
In listening to the media coverage, I noticed a shift in Allen’s attitude and efforts. He seemed to abandon his initial attempt to try to explain to media that there was a plan in place prior to the spill, and that the plan was being followed, because it didn’t matter. Reading this chapter of the report, I might have done the same thing.
His efforts at explaining the National Contingency Plan, or the meaning of the phrase “a spill of national significance” or the underlying framework of the Oil Pollution Act fell on deaf ears. It was, from the outset, “social and political”.
Ija
This is despicable. So basically Jindal refuses to allow the Coast Guard to clean up an area so that he can return to that area for photo op? How much more opportunistic can he be?
RobNYNY1957
Do they really not know how to spell “prophecy”?
Ash Can
I like to read this blog because God knows I’m not going to find this kind of reporting and analysis anywhere else.
Kay
@Ija:
There’s an alternate good faith” explanation. Bobby Jindal believes, to his very core, that a state and local response will be better. I would argue with that, his “berm” solution was and is an absolute disaster, but if we look at it from his perspective, he could sincerely “believe” that. Whatever he has to do to effect the “nullification” of the federal response is best for his state. That’s where he starts.
Kay
@RobNYNY1957:
I had to format. I’m a terrible speller. I might have screwed it up.
SFAW
To borrow from MLK: Jindal’s lips dripping with the words of photo op and nullification
Just when you think the Rethugs can’t get any more vile, despicable, and disgusting, they find newer and “better” ways of making me want to throw up.
Fucking secede already, will you assholes?
SFAW
That may be true – although I doubt it – but that doesn’t give him the right to sabotage and subvert things as he did.
Mike in NC
Cooper wants a Pulitzer and Jindal wants to be a VP nominee. Self-serving A-holes.
Alwhite
@Kay:
You say ‘good faith’ as opposed to political opportunism. I would simplify that to stupid/evil. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if he is evil or just stupid his results are harmful.
SFAW
One hopes you don’t preclude the possibility that it’s both.
TR
@Ash Can:
Ditto.
Great work, Kay. Thanks.
kay
@Alwhite:
There’s another explanation for Anderson Cooper, too. His gimmick is “on the ground, with the people”. That he didn’t bring on any people who were not spitting mad and incoherent with rage is just cable tv.
I stopped watching. I could not listen to another nitwit ask Allen why the response wasn’t “federalized”. It was “federalized” the moment it was termed “nationally significant, it just wasn’t a hurricane, so the legal mechanism was different. That’s not complicated. He said it about 50 times. Ignored! Next question!
merrinc
@Ash Can:
Amen to that. Thanks for putting this together, Kay.
dr. bloor
@Ija:
How high is “up?” This is pretty much the story of Jindal’s political career.
Culture of Truth
I thought Obama’s Katrina was cash-for-clunkers.
kay
@Culture of Truth:
It was the GM bail-out, or that’s what Grover Norquist said.
Opinions differ on Obama’s Katrina, and facts don’t matter. At all.
Villago Delenda Est
Anderson Cooper is, and let’s be blunt about this, old line parasite overclass, a trust fund baby descendant of a man who’s most famous utterance is probably “the public be damned.”
Jindal is just a Rethuglican opportunist out to protect his campaign contributors’ interests at all costs, and if that means destroying the livelihood of countless thousands of his state’s citizens, well, so be it.
Suffern ACE
@Culture of Truth: Nah. That was Obama’s Austerlitz and Snowstorm of ’78 all in one.
evinfuilt
@kay:
The facts got in the way of a good narrative.
Poopyman
@Ash Can: @TR: Ditto.
Thanks for this, Kay.
Jindal may believe he’s acting in the best interests of the state, same as he believed he was truly performing an exorcism. He’s a duly elected leader. What could be done about him in this case? Would a stronger federal response that essentially blocked Jindal from taking any action been possible? It would have created a shitstorm in Louisiana and the rest of the South, that’s for sure.
RP
Our nation has gone full retard.
Poopyman
@evinfuilt:
I think what we witnessed was the narrative winning out over the facts.
Culture of Truth
@kay: Mara Liasson really did call $4clunkers Obama’s Katrina
TheMightyTrowel
@Villago Delenda Est: Ramen, brother/sister! Just a reminder to all and sundry, AC is the guy who, until well into his middle years, had never seen whipped cream in a can.
evinfuilt
@RP:
If you haven’t seen last nights Colbert report, his 20min interview with the French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy kind of proves that point.
To think that a country could prize the search for truth and intellect over our hate of “elitists.” Sad for us, amazing for them.
evinfuilt
@Poopyman:
Yes they did, the narrative actually did change the facts, and modified the reality we had to deal with.
SFAW
OK, so Obama’s had his Katrina, Austerlitz, and
SnowstormBlizzard of ’78. How much longer will he make us wait for his Gallipoli, Pickett’s Charge, Dunkirk, and Waterloo?And if he wins in ’12, we’ll need to get a whole new set of metaphors, dammit. Although, given the principle of Hoekestroika, maybe “that snowball fight at Jimmy’s house” might get some billing.
Villago Delenda Est
@evinfuilt:
This happens again and again with the MSM. They’ve got their narrative, and they’re sticking to it, regardless of what the facts may indicate. Remember that special election in upstate NY where a teabagger candidate drove the establishment Republican candidate out of the race, and a Dem won the seat for the first time since just after the Civil War? Prior to the outcome, that was the most important single contest according to the MSM in that particular election…bigger than governor races in Virginia and New Jersey. When the results came in, suddenly it was not nearly as important as those other two races…it frankly totally dropped of the MSM’s radar because it didn’t support the narrative, which was teabaggers uber alles.
geg6
Completely and utterly OT, but this moved me this morning:
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/sen-gillibrand-rep-wasserman-schultz-describe-giffords-opening-h…
kay
@Poopyman:
In the “berm” section of the report, (I read the draft, when it came out) there’s a really interesting account of a struggle.
Jindal is spinning like mad to get his sand berms. Allen doesn’t want to give them to him, because every single expert said they would fail. Not only that, but Allen (rightly) surmises that effort will waste time, because he’d have to re-commit resources to this crack pot plan. Allen is then really dispirited when, with heavy media promotion of the berms, Jindal “wins”. He gets the berms. NO ONE thought they would work, and they didn’t.
I feel like it’s there where Allen gives up. You can almost see him throwing his hands up, though his statements. They beat him. Narrative beat facts.
AAA Bonds
When implementing public policy, perspective matters – and, counter to the shallow interpretation of “pragamatism”, so does narrative. Allen, as an experienced public administrator, was well aware of this during the initial cleanup.
Poopyman
@kay: That’s what it looked like to me at the time, too.
But you left out the crucial point in your comment. Who gave the go-ahead for Jindal’s berms? I realize I should probably read the report myself, but that just isn’t going to happen for the next couple of months.
AAA Bonds
@Culture of Truth:
I thought Obama’s Katrina was the Ford Hood shooting. That’s what Fox has been saying for the last few days. Stay classy, Fox!
Culture of Truth
From 2009 through 2010 the media was on the hunt for Obama’s Katrina. It must be there somewhere! It was their White Whale.
From 2011 through 2012 the media will be hunting for the Great GOP Candidate. There must be one! It will be their new White
MaleWhale.Christie, Pawlenty, Jindal, Palin, Huckabee, Romney – they’ll keep looking ’til they find one.
Villago Delenda Est
@AAA Bonds:
The problem for Faux is that so far, none of their imagined “Obama’s Katrinas” has been like, um, Katrina.
They’ve got their manure all over the floor…there’s got to be a pony around here, somewhere!
kay
@Poopyman:
Ultimately, Obama did. Obama went down there, and he met with local (political) leaders, and they wanted to do something. They were under their own political pressure. Jindal’s motivations were different. It was federal money for a long-held plan that had nothing to do with the oil spill.
“DO something, Obama (whomever, fill in the blank)”, you will recall, was the incoherent call of the day. That’s what they did. Something tangible. Move sand around. Obama actually tells Jindal “I know what you’re doing and I know why you’re doing it”.
I think it’s very human to insist someone or other DO something. I just think it should be resisted, instead of immediately indulged, because what you do matters.
Citizen_X
@SFAW:
Awesome. I await Obama’s Alamo, storming of the Bastille, and Bruckner missing the grounder, also, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW:
I’m holding out for Obama’s Defenestration of Prague, myself.
SFAW
Buckner
Bruckner is a composer running through the Duh Bronx.
dr. bloor
@SFAW:
Very well-played indeed, sir/madam.
Poopyman
@kay: Amen.
Sometimes a leader has to choose the least liked option because that will do the most good. Intelligent and well-informed citizens recognize when you have to eat that shit sandwich, and will accept such decisions. Sadly, our leaders these days are a good reflection of the majority of our populace. I guess that’s the downside of democracy, eh?
Poopyman
@SFAW: Well, that would explain why he can’t field grounders, now wouldn’t it?
Suffern ACE
@kay: Unfortunately, the narrative usually does win. I don’t want to take away the focus on Jindal here, but I wonder if the media ever reads these reports and says “You know, we don’t do crisis reporting very well. What can we do to do a better job.” Why do we always have to wait for, say, a Frontline documentary?
I know they need eyeballs, and crises happen really fast and no one knows what is going on. But someone should point out that in looking for Obama’s Katrina, or his “Mission Accomplished” moment, the punditry has been making a lot of little incidents appear way out of proportion to what they are, just like the desire to find Clinton’s Watergate really started to drive coverage of his presidency.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Culture of Truth:
Liarson should have been fired along with serial sexual harasser Williams.
Cain
@Poopyman:
It’s too bad we have so many fucking malcontents in both parties. The right we can write off, but our own firebaggers need a collective foot through the ass repeatedly. Really, they don’t have any idea what reality is. They are only looking for revenge.
Revenge is not good public policy right now. I share the fact that people who spearheaded the wars need to be put in jail but in lieu of that I rather we just get back on track. Once we do, then we can make those fuckers pay, but let’s not do it while we’re still unstable. The public comes first.
cain
SFAW
Excellent!
I had hoped to work in that grounders were a New World for him, but then remembered that it was some other (dvor)Jock who had that problem.
kay
@Suffern ACE:
I just finished reading the story behind the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue, in the New Yorker. Remember that? The visual? We saw it again and again and again. I know propaganda is part of war, but to read each step is chilling.
Media decided to make the toppling of the statue a “turning point” in the war, to the extent that a field reporter’s submitted copy (words, not a photo) was altered.
It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was a clique. Once one reported it as a “seminal moment” they all did. It was this great visual, and they couldn’t resist.
Uloborus
@SFAW: Oh, his Waterloo was HCR. You don’t remember that? Turned out he wasn’t Napoleon in that battle.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
Kay, I knew at the time it was bullshit, because all you had to do was look at the MSM approved visual (close in, looks like a crowd surrounding the statue) and the non-approved visual (pull out, see that there’s just a small knot of people around the statue, the rest of the square is utterly empty, with small groups of people going about their business and utterly ignoring the statue pull down).
sukabi
So besides BP and the other oilers being directly responsible for the spill, partisan politics and media bias made thing exponentially worse and collapsed the entire response plan… criminal assholes, the lot of them.
sukabi
@RP: sometimes I think we don’t have the collective IQ to even be considered retarded… hopelessly stupid.
jazzgurl
What the hell has happened with Anderson Cooper?
Last night, after the memorial, he was asking the most assinine questions to illicit even more assinine comment!..and always with that frown on his brow which makes him look dense and clueless,and quoting isms..’Obama’s Katrina’, ‘pep rally’.etc witht the rest of the dirge crew,Borger and co.
Even more, what has happened to David Gergen? He is only happy with comparisons of other presidents. Hey David, stop living through the past and stop being such a negative oldtimer.
Mnemosyne
@jazzgurl:
He went into contract negotiations and got the “corporations” lecture from Ned Beatty?
Actually, it’s probably something even stupider, like, “I can’t look like I favor this president and think he’s doing a better job than the last guy, so I’ll have to come up with something to complain about to show that Bush and Obama are exactly alike.”
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: didn’t AC admit the other week that he was either drunk or on meds during one of his shows? could be a continuing theme or contest between TV “journalists” … how f’d up can you be and still do your “show”… could help explain the retarded media personalities we’ve got….
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: it’s probably not that he doesn’t want to seem to show “favortism”… did you read the part on Katrina response? Dude’s got a storyline to push.
edited to make some sense… %-p
KRK
I wish the pundits would ask “Is this Obama’s Agincourt?” Just ’cause I like how it sounds.
ETA: Thanks from me as well, Kay, for a great post.
Allan
I look forward to Anderson Cooper’s “Keeping ’em Honest” reporting on this story.
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m much more basic than that, so I never got that far.
I was thinking “why does pulling down this statue = the war is over? I don’t think it means that.”
I rejected it, but for a different reason. My whole Iraq picture was a little fuzzy. I never got past predicate inquiry.
Many of my initial questions went unanswered :)
I’m going to have speed up.
BC
@Poopyman: As someone who has peripherally worked on disasters, the federal government has set up partnerships between the federal, state, and local governments. This is good because you really don’t want everything federalized – local governments often know what’s best, they live there and know their area. Ditto for state governments. But the partnership means that each government entity has responsibility to be a partner – not to try to grandstand or gain political advantage. What this report shows is that Louisiana state government wasn’t a partner in this effort and that Jindal used the media stage to grandstand and gain political advantage. Federal government did not have partner that was working in good faith with them – they had someone always looking for an “edge” politically. Partnership in this event does not work.
torpid bunny
Very interesting analysis. Jindal may be a moron or whatever, but the way this happened isn’t exactly surprising. A governor in the national spotlight, with possible national ambitions, is going to feel an irresistible urge to seize as much power as possible. Plus some of this is predictable bureaucratic infighting. No one cares about a response plan beforehand. No one feels the slightest obligation towards it because, as the official said, they never “signed off on it”. Obviously something very bad was happening and the primary concern for Jindal was CYA and that was done through obvious grandstanding.
Argumentative
Katrina is the mother of all such happenings. There is no other way of looking at it.