Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal recently released his new book “Leadership and Crisis” where he opens up about the Obama administration’s response and handling of the BP oil spill among other issues. The Louisiana governor spoke to me earlier this month and described President Barack Obama’s reaction to Mr. Jindal when the president first landed in Louisiana after the oil spill disaster.
“From the very beginning, the response to the oil spill [from the administration] was, as I described, lackadaisical. It was amazing,” said Mr. Jindal. “The first time the president came to the state after the explosion, he was upset with me about some letter we sent to them about food stamps. He wasn’t even upset about the right things. I didn’t mind him being mad, but one could be focused on the lack of resources to fight this oil spill.”
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Mr. Jindal was particularly critical at the Obama administration for holding back skimmers that sat unused on the shorelines while the oil continued to spill into gulf.
“We had skimmers sitting in the dock and they wouldn’t let them go out there, even when we showed the Coast Guard official in charge of the response to our state that the oil in the water would take 24 to 48 hours to get the resources mobilized,” Givernor Jindal explained.
Governor Jindal was also frustrated with the administration over the oil drilling moratorium as well as what he describes as a bureaucratic process. “Time and time again the red tape got in the way. The reality is it’s going to take long term monitoring to understand the full effect of the oil on our coastline and time and time again seemed to be divorced from the facts and reality on the ground.”
“You saw last week the inspector general talked about how in their moratorium in the Department of the Interior, they made it sound like their independent panel had recommended a moratorium and that simply was not the case. The majority did not agree with the moratorium,” he added.
