Stop blaming Obama for the oil spill

But back to basics: BP did the dastardly deed, of this there is little doubt; and yet Obama is getting pilloried, especially by his own side. James Carville—than whom there is no man on American soil (or even in American coastal waters) more partisan—has lit into his president, saying, “The president doesn’t get down here in the middle of this… I have no idea why they didn’t seize this thing.” (Seize what, fistfuls of oleaginous goo?) Carville went on, bizarrely, to say that Obama “could’ve demanded a plan in anticipation of this”—my italics, and I want what the Ragin’ Cajun is smoking! He added, for caustic measure, that “it just looks like he’s not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this.”

Proof, at last, that Carville is deranged, but proof also of another thing: Once you set out, as a president or a party, to propagate a message that the government has (or is) the panacea for all ills, then failure to deal with an ill leads to your being hoist with your own panacea-petard. If the entire range of your political program rests on the message that the government is the problem-solver, the deliverer from evil, the Messiah, the curative current that runs through our civitas, then a failure to solve a problem, to deliver from evil—or from an evil oil spill—leads to consternation, bafflement, and profound disillusion in the ranks of the faithful. Carville’s rant is the rant of the blind adherent who cannot believe that the forces he worships have been unable to wave that magic governmental wand and make the horrible stuff just go away. So he beats up on Obama, just as an impotent Obama, who really has no means to control the oil spill, beats up on BP…

So what to do about this epic oil spill? Perhaps this is radical, but I would leave it up to the common law, that vigorously pragmatic and empirical wonder that keeps our society functioning through peace, through war, and, one trusts, through oil spills. Courts can assess whether there has been actionable negligence, and can allocate damages; or they can, as Richard Epstein has suggested, ascribe strict liability to BP and all its operating partners: You changed the condition of the seabed; an oil spill resulted; ergo, you’re liable, end of story. The U.S. government does not have much, if any, role to play in this matter: In fact, the government is useless at this stage because it neither foots the bill nor understands the technology. BP does both.