Peggy is Shrill and Unrealistic....

I have been absolutely amazed at the inchoate rage that has seized the commentariat, in regards to the Gulf oil spill. The best example would be this piece by Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal.

No do not get me wrong the people of the Gulf region and most of the U.S should be gravely concerned with the what we are witnessing down there. I have nothing but sympathy for those that will suffer due to this. However most of the complaints are empty and baseless. The notion that the President should do "more" is hopelessly simplistic, an argument put forth by individuals have little to no clue of the difficulty involved in deep sea oil mining.

There are literal engineering limits involved here. I know this is of no comfort to anyone but there are some things that are hard to fix once they break. It is probably why we should consider more heavily whether we should even be doing the drilling in the first place. But that isn't my main issue with this tragedy. It is the tone of Mrs. Noonan that I find annoying. Her pieces is chalk full of the worst sort of know-nothing palaver that one could imagine. The sort of practiced faux-common man "there is a simple solution to every problem" bullshit that comes from years of political speech writing.

I was going to turn to some of the progressive voices out there to offer a defense for the Administration (here and here [not actually a progressive]), but instead (possibly the only time you will here me say this) I found this post at the NRO to be one that resonated with me the most. These people are no fans of the current administration and I do not agree with this Katrina comparison, but there is a kernel there that is articulated well about the expectations of the government that I find myself in agreement with:

We who live in the 21st century West have the least messy, least dangerous, least uncertain lives of any human beings in history. We should be very grateful for that, but we should not let our good fortune utterly distort our expectations of life, and we should not react with unrestrained indignant shock anytime the limitations of our power make themselves seen or the cold and harsh capriciousness of nature overcomes our defenses. We should expect a firm response from the institutions we have built to protect ourselves—science, technology, and modern government—but we cannot expect a perfect response. Not from Bush, and not from Obama.

This is something I can agree with. Now I will not completely let the Bush Administration off the hook for some of the tragedy of Katrina, I do not blame them for the root causes (improper/maintenance of the levies, the hurricane itself), but the general gist is correct. No matter how competent our government is, we will still have tragedies and catastrophes. That is the nature of life. What government does is try to mitigate the human tragedy to the degree that it can. Expecting more then that is juvenile.

-Cheers