Haley Barbour, the adult during the oil spill
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.
Southern Political Report
7/30/10
Magnolia Tribune
