Who Can You Trust?

Who Can You Trust?” is an ongoing look at some of the main players in the Gulf Coast oil-spill disaster. We analyze the media appearances and public statements of those covering, controlling, and combating the spill to determine who’s spinning for personal advantage, who’s playing to the crowd, and who (or what) we can truly count on. Today, we examine the players singled out by Obama in his speech last night. (Except for Thad Allen, who’s made several appearances on previous guides, and who’s assessment remains unchanged).

Michael Bromwich
New head of the Minerals Management Service

If the issue at MMS is workflow, checks and balances, and lax regulation, Bromwich is a good choice: he’s currently the head of the Internal Investigations, Compliance and Monitoring practice group at the law firm Fried Frank, where his job basically consists of keeping corporations in line (though he also dabbles in a little white-collar crime defense); and he was inspector general at the DOJ. But how much does he know about energy?

Trustworthy? Let’s see how many heads will soon roll at MMS; the fervor with which he guts the agency may indicate that he’s not messing around.

Ray Mabus
Secretary of the Navy

Former governor of Mississippi, Mabus was an early Obama supporter, and is now the man in charge of heading up the gulf’s long-term recovery plan. He knows a thing or two about coming back from the brink: his bio says he helped lead a cushion company out of bankruptcy. But the problems in the gulf are so devastating, so tied to the success of engineers and scientists who are trying to contain the spill, and laced with so many difficult and brand-new environmental challenges, it’s hard to say whether he—or anyone, for that matter—is the right person for the job.

Trustworthy? It depends on Mabus’s first speech or public statement—will it be full of broad generalities, like the presidents? Or heavy with specifics?

Ken Salazar
Secretary of Interior

Call us crazy, but we think that Salazar is on the upswing—with environmental groups calling for his head and Obama dinging him in the speech for being slow to act, the secretary of Interior has nothing to lose. During the speech, Obama praised Salazar for ridding the MMS of much of the corruption that plagued the agency prior to the spill. But he also dinged him for being slow to act. Salazar knows he’s being closely watched, and that if there are any sacrificial resignations, his might be next.

Trustworthy? Could be. His reputation is on the line.

Steven Chu
Secretary of Energy

Chu is a long-time advocate of alternative energy and weaning America off of fossil-fuel addiction. Obama says Chu’s been leading the government’s scientific response since immediately after the spill. What that means is unclear: the government’s official totals of the well’s daily output is finally reaching that of independent investigators, after several revisions. It was BP who led the technological charge to stop or contain the flow, finding only limited success. Chu has been visiting alternative-energy projects in the past months; does his inclusion in last night’s speech mean that he’ll be influencing policy even more? Or was it just a namecheck to give the speech a little green cred?

Trustworthy? He’s got all the right credentials and a very impressive CV (including a Nobel Prize). But what has he been doing this whole time?

“The Chairman of BP”
Carl-Henric Svanberg

The executive that dare not speak his name—Obama didn’t call out Svanberg in his speech but mentioned that the two would meet today. The president didn’t specifiy where, but context clues indicate that the woodshed is not outside the realm of possibility. “I will inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness,” the president said. (Beleaguered CEO Tony Hayward didn’t even get an oblique nod, but he will be there as well.) Svanberg is an advocate for green issues, according to The Wall Street Journal , but how that plays into his actions as BP chairman is unclear. He’s also been busy behind the scenes, letting Hayward be the public face of the company—poor business savvy, or a strong sense of survivalism?

Trustworthy? Probably not. He’s a BP guy, and who knows what he’s been up to behind the scenes.

Barack Obama
President

The fact that the oil spill prompted his first Oval Office speech shows that the president thinks the spill is of utmost importance. But the speech itself? Eh ... Obama has faced criticism before for being too calm, cool, and collected, a charge that also plagued his presidential campaign. The real problem with the speech wasn’t the lack of urgency but the lack of specifics. It felt less like a battle plan and more like a book report: a list of who did what and who’s going to do something, possibly, to be specified later. Obama seemed eager to prove that he and his administration had done what they could since the spill began, but considering that there are still hundreds of gallons of oil spilling into the gulf, maybe the time for base-covering is later.

Trustworthy? Let’s see how fast his new emissaries spring into action.

Previous Editions:

Volume seven: A journalist shines, BP stock gets slashed
Volume six: The Spills keep coming
Volume five: Lubchenco Retains Some Scientific Cred; Relief Payments Leave Workers Scrambling
Volume four: The Head of NOAA and the Governor of Mississippi Play Down the Disaster
Volume three: Google vs. the Containment Cap—What’s More Reliable?
Volume two: Landry Steps Back. Suttles Lays Low.
Volume one: Academics, Admirals, and Angry Politicians