Haley Barbour, the adult during the oil spill
By Gary Reese
July 29, 2010 — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is a rarity into today’s political world of media breathlessness and partisan blindness. He’s the countrified tortoise leading a pack of condescending hares. Barbour has been the adult in the crowd from Day One of the Gulf oil spill. All along he’s called for restraint in both media words and government deeds. While many elected officials and most media were predicting an environmental apocalypse from the Deepwater Horizon accident, Barbour early-on took a political risk by expressing open skepticism that significant amounts of oil would ever reach the Gulf coast. A hundred days later, he’s apparently been vindicated. What an irony, and what a lesson. This portly, thick-drawled Southern politician was right, while an army of supposedly infallible scientists and told-you-so environmentalists were wrong. (Even Time Magazine is now saying the damage from the spill apparently isn’t anything close to what most thought it would be.) While President Obama (Democrat), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (Republican), and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (independent) indulged in rhetorical hyperventilation, Barbour kept his cool. As a result of his early judgment about the spill, Barbour’s already high approval rating among Mississippians has topped 70 percent, and talk of a presidential run in 2012 has been fanned into a discernable flame. Again this week, Barbour has proved statesmanlike in an era of partisan excess. Rather than trying to prime the pump of his popularity by joining the lynch mob against BP, Barbour asked the Mississippi attorney general to lay aside plans to sue the oil giant on behalf of the state. Barbour says a suit might delay BP’s compensation payments to state residents, and would benefit trial lawyers more than anyone. Other Gulf State governors also have benefitted politically from the spill, even as President Obama has taken a hit. Louisiana has been harmed much more by the spill than any other state, and Gov. Bobby Jindal also has enjoyed a spike in popularity. Understandably, Jindal’s approach has been the near-opposite of Barbour’s. Jindal has reacted with feverish emotion. In Florida, Crist has taken a populist stand against BP and oil drilling as he angles for a seat in the US Senate. Barbour by no means has joined the ranks of the BP apologists. He said this week that he believes it will eventually emerge that the Deepwater Horizon crew wasn’t following drilling safety regulation when the explosion rocked the rig. But yet again he resisted the impulse for political overreach. Barbour said it’s not new laws to govern drilling that are needed, but better enforcement of the ones already on the books. He opposes the federal government’s moratorium on deepwater drilling, pointing out that 30 percent of America’s oil comes from the Gulf, and 80 percent of that comes from deepwater rigs. It’s simply not realistic to believe deepwater drilling can end anytime soon, he says. One can argue that this kind of political evenhandedness is easy for a Republican governor safely ensconced in a heavily GOP state. Barbour doesn’t have to govern by the polls… …Unless, that is, he is sprucing up his resume for a run at the White House. He has not ruled that out. But, typically for his personality and his style of governance, Barbour is flying under the radar as he preps himself for a potential presidential bid. More on that another day. |
