Americans watching the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are all suffering the unfamiliar sensation that there is nothing they can do to prevent imminent environmental catastrophe.
People in America do not like feeling powerless. It doesn’t suit them.
But watching the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico they are all suffering the unfamiliar sensation that there is nothing they can do to prevent imminent catastrophe.
Everyone knows that the worst is yet to come. Even if any of the latest manoeuvres do succeed in stopping the oil from flooding into the sea there are still millions of gallons of crude just waiting to wash ashore.
Beaches will be soiled, birds and wildlife oiled and delicate natural habitats ruined. For weeks to come the filthy goo will be highly visible and the best of efforts of numerous US government agencies wont be able to stop it.
Everyone wants to do their bit. Some people are organizing consumer boycotts of BP petrol stations and pressuring firms to disinvest in the British oil giant.
While in hairdressers and barbers across the nation – including round the corner from me in Washington DC – human hair is being collected to try to help mop up the oil.
I’ve even been keeping hair I’ve brushed off the dog in plastic bag ready to help to save the Louisiana shore.
But now we hear the plan to stuff old tights with human and animal hair and use them to try to absorb the oil before it washes ashore has been abandoned as impractical. So everyone is left feeling thwarted and powerless.
People are asking why can’t the military be sent? Would a submarine help? Should they just blow up the oil reservoir? Very American solutions, to a delicate environmental disaster.
We know they are feeling the same inside the White House. President Obama was heard to shout at an aide in the oval office “plug that damn leak”.
President Obama has been sharply critical of BP from the start.
Politicians of every party have been lining up to shout insults at the British oil giant. It wasn’t exactly difficult to see where the politically expedient side of this argument was.
But the government is now finding it hard to put enough distance between themselves and the people they say are responsible for this mess. Because they need BP to solve the problem.
Over the weekend, when people first started asking if Deepwater Horizon was going to be Obama’s Katrina the administration moved quickly to say that if BP couldn’t rectify the situation they’d have no hesitation in pushing the company out of the way.
But they pretty quickly had to back track on that when they realized that no one in the government has the expertise or equipment needed to try to tackle this problem.
The head of the coastguard had to admit that any idea of pushing BP out of the way was “more of a metaphor” because, he said: “To push BP out of the way would raise the question of: replace them with what?”
Much as they hate to admit it the truth is the administration is almost entirely reliant on BP to fix this. They can’t do it without them.
We haven’t been told if they were collecting hair from Bo the First Dog inside the White House. But the President certainly shares the frustration of millions of Americans.
And he has to walk a fine political line – taking care to make sure he doesn’t end up being blamed for what BP have done in the Gulf whilst never admitting how helpless he is to do anything about it.
Americans don’t like feeling powerless but they like their President looking impotent even less.