The Importance of Being Unctuous

We should be happy we have such political leaders as Joe L. Barton of Texas. Who else would be willing to take on President Barack Obama or would have the foresight to apologize to Tony Hayward, the embattled and one hopes soon to be unemployed chief executive of BP? No one, except Barton, the oil industries $1.4 million man in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barton's comments during Thursday’s hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee make one proud to be a Democrat.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday (Wednesday),” Barton said, referring to Obama’s announcement of a $20 billion liability fund that would be used for clean up of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as for restitution to those who have been financially harmed by the spill. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown.”

That nearly everyone agrees that BP should pay for the clean up and make restitution is lost on Barton. His desire to attack the President has overwhelmed his sense of fair play and justice. Even Republicans assailed his comments, with Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio threatening to remove Barton from the committee if he did not retract his statement.

Barton, who the Center for Responsive Politics says received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests in 2009, eventually retracted his apology to BP, but it was too late. He had already provided a distraction from what should have been the issue of the day -- Hayward's explanation of what went wrong and what BP is doing to correct the problem.

Instead, politics became the story. Alabama Republican Parker Griffith decided to equate the spill to smoking. Griffith said that "if we're going to talk about the environment" then he would "like to remind the committee that the greatest environmental disaster in America has been cigarettes."

Rep. John Sullivan, the Oklahoma Republican who received $65,250 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests according to the center, said the Obama administration is "focused on the politics of putting the oil and gas industry out of business."

Meanwhile, Mike Ross, an Arkansas Democrat, noted that 112,000 gallons of oil had flowed into the Gulf of Mexico in just the first few hours of Thursday's committee hearing. (New government estimates say about 60,000 barrels, or 2.5 million gallons, of oil are spewing into the Gulf each day.)

As Congressional Republicans and Democrats attack each other over the spill rather than join together to address the tragedy, Gulf coast fishermen, hoteliers and, yes, even oil workers on other off-shore rigs are losing their livelihoods. In addition, we still don't know why the Deepwater Horizon blew up, how to stop this leak or what will be the long term impact.

But at least we know that such leaders as Joe L. Barton are willing to apologize to corporate polluters so America won't lose face among the world's capitalists and multinational corporations.