"Amorphous Cloud of Goo"

Not the Gulf Oil Spill, but Obama's speech about the Gulf Oil Spill as reviewed by Jonah Goldberg:

In a peculiar instance of synchronicity, President Obama's Oval Office speech to the nation last night resembled the very calamity it was intended to address: Like the oil spewing into the Gulf, it began as a focused and narrow stream of words — and quickly spread out into an amorphous cloud of goo.

What started as a just-the-facts-ma'am explanation quickly got caught up in political currents — by the end we were treated to bromides about the Greatest Generation and putting a man on the moon and preposterous insinuations that the Red Chinese will turn Green before us. (China, mind you, is the country where the rivers burn, the air is crunchy and the government is building a new, filthy, coal-fired power plant every 10 days for the next decade).

Last night we saw just the latest installment of "Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste," written by Rahm Emanuel and performed by The One. The immediate goal: to create the political climate where BP will bend over and say "thank you sir, may I have another" in perpetuity. Beyond that, to browbeat the public and Congress into accepting some version of cap-and-trade legislation that will export jobs and raise energy prices in the middle of a recession.

If we could defeat Hitler, we can hike your utility bills! If we could put a man on the moon, we can put an American manufacturing job in India! Yes, we can!

This points to the intractability of the political mess Obama is in. The White House desperately wants to focus on job creation and fiscal responsibility, or at least appear that way. But Obama's agenda incontinently blows in the opposite direction, and every other direction as well.

The speech was a flop. Nobody believes Obama anymore. The magic has passed.

Jay Leno summed up the speech pretty well:

"President Obama announced tonight that he wants to use the oil spill to move America toward green energy. I have a crazy idea. Maybe he should use the oil spill crisis to fix the oil spill."