Tim Fernholz writes that Deepwater Horizon was preventable, and Obama should take the heat. With the disappointing news that the latest attempt -- the evocatively named "top kill" -- to seal the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has failed, political pressure on President Barack Obama has increased. It's important, though, to understand how the government failed if we want to hold the administration accountable in the right way. Calls for the president to do more -- personified by James Carville's ranting or Maureen Dowd asking the president to emote more -- seem designed to encourage theater rather than fix the mess. The problem with these critiques is that in interactions between government and business, the government's responsibility is before-the-fact, not after. Obama can be faulted for failing to make corner-cutting BP play it safe in the Gulf, but it's not clear what more he can do to stop the leak. The real failure here was in prevention. It was clear when Obama took office in 2009 that the Mineral Management Service, which regulates offshore oil drilling, was in desperate need of reform. At the time, I wrote a column about how the new administration could succeed at governing; one chief example was reforming the MMS, which had recently been exposed for a "culture of ethical failure." An influential transition briefing book prepared by the Center for American Progress discussed the need for reform of offshore drilling regulation. And though the president appointed Liz Birnbaum, a former congressional staffer, to head the agency, it's clear that she lacked the mandate, resources, and ability to change it. Birnbaum resigned last Thursday. KEEP READING. . .
