President Barack Obama could use Sarah Palin about right now. With oil gushing into the Gulf and no end in sight, Palin appeared on Fox News Sunday demanding an answer why President Obama is “”taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.”
It is no surprise Palin should grasp the BP disaster better than Obama. She was Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the state’s oil and gas fields for safety and ethics. Palin was a whistleblower on the commission, turning in a fellow Republican who was leaking information to oil insiders. As a former governor of Alaska, she presided over 20 percent of America’s domestically produced oil production – big, unforgiving outposts like Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field. In fact, it is her knowledge of big oil that thrust her into America’s living rooms.
During the summer of 2008, as Americans grappled with record high gas prices, Palin had a practical appeal to John McCain’s Presidential campaign. Palin may not have had international savvy, but she had something to say about energy and how to handle the big oil companies.
Scan the skyline of downtown Anchorage and nearly every tall building reads like an interstate pit stop – Shell, Exxon, BP. A governor here must learn the oil business, while being mindful not to become a shill for the international conglomerates who play high stakes. What’s more, the Exxon Valdez was a hard learned lesson in Alaska that taught generations of Alaskans a hard lesson about co-existing with oil in your backyard.
So, when Sarah Palin was governor, she was no pushover.
She earned a reputation for not bending to the oil companies’ will, sometimes at great political risk. When she was thrust on the national stage, Palin brought moxie – and much-added ‘mojo’ – to John McCain’s foundering campaign. The strategy seemed simple, almost elegant: let Palin talk tough about America’s energy independence and the war hero handles national security. McCain and Palin were a dynamic duo for a few weeks, until the Lehman Brothers crisis and talk of bailouts ended their appeal.
But now, it seems Sarah Palin deserves yet another look. She’s the energizer bunny of politicians – a hockey mom from Wasilla who looks just as comfortable in a hard hat as she does in a red leather jacket. One can easily picture her in a room full of brainy engineers declaring, ‘This is a time to grab the grizzly by the ear and cap this gusher.’ The White House is already spending time they clearly don’t have in the midst of this crisis belittling Palin’s take-charge approach. And there will be those who will chastise her for her ‘Drill Baby Drill’ position — and they will conveniently forget this is Obama’s exact position. But in a crisis, Palin’s leadership style stands in sharp contrast to Obama’s community leader approach.
The President is disturbingly comfortable waiting and watching to see how others handle a problem, while watching the Gulf of Mexico become the world’s largest pool of gelatinous goo.
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