Bush I never visited the Exxon Valdez site

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Thu Jun-17-10 07:32 PM
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Bush I never visited the Exxon Valdez site

Obama is Not No-Visit, Feckless Bush on Oil Gushers: Update: GOP say is "natural disaster"

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse

Right-wing media have whined that Obama is "scrambling after week-old spill" and that Obama visited the Gulf BP disaster too late. They have the audacity to try to compare Obama's response to some imaginary Republican who would have been "absolutely pilloried in the press" if a Republican administration had "gone eight days without serious action."

Really? We don't have to imagine. I checked some press articles from 1989, and Papa Bush apparently did not show up in Alaska when Exxon Valdez happened because he was either too busy or believed a site visit would be a "political downer." Moreover, how has Papa Bush been "pilloried in the press" for not providing compensation claims to the people in over 20 years?

Exxon-Valdez oil disaster happened on March 24, 1989. Papa Bush apparently never personally visited the site, but continually made excuses that he was too damn busy when the truth was that he did not see how he could yield any political benefit from personally visiting the devastation caused by his oil buddies. No matter of the economic impact on the area or that "thousands of animals died immediately," with estimates of "250,000 seabirds, at least 2,800 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, as well as the destruction of billions of salmon and herring eggs."

This is what the media reported back then.

April 14, 1989: Bush first had no comment as to why he did not plan to visit the disaster site.

A White House spokeswoman said the president is not planning to visit Prince William Sound, where the Exxon Valdez was torn open by a clearly charted reef March 24, spilling 10 million gallons of oil in the worst tanker accident in U.S. history. When asked why Bush has not made the trip, the spokeswoman said, "We have no comment."

April 30, 1989: WH did not recognize "enormity of the disaster" during vacation weekend perhaps because it just affected the "small people."

In the first hours after the Exxon oil tanker slammed into a reef off Alaska, almost no one at the White House recognized the enormity of the disaster. The president was taking off for a family weekend, and preparations had begun for the annual Easter egg roll on the back lawn of the White House.

<...>

September 19, 1989: Clean up not going well, so stay away!

Papa Bush had planned to visit Alaska this week to "see the spill first-hand," but the "president's trip was canceled after news reports that the Exxon cleanup effort was not going well."

Apparently, Bush was still too damn busy:

"Please don't associate my not going to Alaska at a rather busy time with a lack of interest in Prince William Sound," Bush said.

September 19, 1989: Too "politically risky"

But Bush aides feared that a visit now (from Papa Bush), just a few days after Exxon stopped its uncompleted cleanup for the winter, would be politically risky for the president, so they canceled the trip and pressed Quayle into service instead.

By my count, Papa Bush spent months coming up with excuses to the one simple action of visiting the site of a major environmental disaster.

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