Friday, June 18, 2010

Inhofe slams Obama’s response to the oil spill: Bush’s ‘leadership’ during Katrina ‘looks pretty good right now.’

By Tanya Somanader In an interview last night with Newsmax, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) chided President Obama for his response to the BP oil disaster, stating that Obama “hasn’t made a good decision yet on that whole cleanup.” Claiming that Obama had “flunked” the test of presidential leadership, he saw President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina as a

success story:

Remember the criticism George Bush got during Katrina? They said it was a lack of leadership. Let me tell you, that leadership looks pretty good right now.

This is the first time he’s had a really tough test and he flunked. It’s not just me that is saying he’s provided no leadership.

Inhofe’s comparison does in fact echo other top conservatives leaders’ enthusiasm to call BP’s oil spill “Obama’s Katrina.” But as Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has pointed out, “Other than proximity to the Louisiana coast, this catastrophe has nothing in common with Hurricane Katrina: That was an unstoppable natural disaster that turned into a human tragedy because of an inadequate government response. This is just an unstoppable disaster, period. It will be a human tragedy precisely because no government response is possible.” A reminder here of how Bush delayed paying any real attention to Katrina for days.

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