Leadership and Crisis Read Free Page B

there was some action. The federal government seemed to be motivated by the potential for bad media coverage but ... at least we were finally getting their attention.
    During the president’s second trip to Louisiana, on May 28, we were down in Grand Isle and were meeting with the parish presidents whose parishes were being affected by the spill. It was a strange presidential visit in that before the president arrived, a group of workers were bussed in to clean the beach before the president walked it. (As of this writing, as far as I know, the president has never actually seen heavy oil from the spill; my staff and I, however, went almost daily to show the world and the nation the true caliber of this disaster.) The meeting included local officials, but Billy Nungusser and St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro had to crash it, even though their parishes had been heavily affected by the oil. They showed up without an invite to represent their people. That’s Billy and Craig.
    Before the meeting broke up, President Obama singled out Billy and me and told us to stop going on television and criticizing him. “I go home every night and I see on TV people saying I’m not doing anything,” he said. “I don’t need to see you guys on CNN criticizing us.” For some reason he was particularly miffed that Billy was going on with Anderson Cooper. It was the oddest conversation. Actually, it was not really a conversation. It was more like a lecture. Before we had a chance to reply and explain that this seemed to be the only way to get federal action, the president adjourned the meeting. Again, the White House seemed to focus on the wrong things. I felt like we needed to be on a wartime footing against the oil, and the president was wondering,
why is everybody criticizing me? The irony is that right after that exchange, someone from the White House staff came over to prepare us for the all important photo opportunity where the president would make remarks to the national press. The staff member was insistent that I stand next to the president. But before the photographers arrived, Florida Governor Charlie Crist edged me out of the way. I was happy to yield the ground.
    Billy was honest and open in his views on the failure of the federal government to adequately respond to the situation. At one point he had a conversation with Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry who was upset about his criticisms and asked him to tone them down in the meeting with the president. She said he was criticizing thousands of people in the Coast Guard, but Billy told her he was only criticizing her. At the end of the meeting they patched things up. The Coast Guard admiral later asked him for a hug. “Everyone needs a hug,” Billy told the admiral.
    Because of his frustration with the federal response, Mayor David Camardelle of Grand Isle pushed a plan to place rocks (temporarily) in western Barataria Bay to protect some of the most sensitive and productive fishing estuaries in the world. The idea was to narrow the passes and use vacuum barges in the gaps to fight the oil from getting to our interior marshes. This defense would be especially important when the boom and skimmers were rendered ineffective by storm surges. To implement his plan, Camardelle needed the approval of the federal government. The president promised that he would get a call within hours about the plan. Weeks later they were still telling us to wait. The mayor was repeatedly told that his plan was on the verge of getting approved, so he actually had BP go buy and move the rocks.
It wasn’t until July 6—weeks later—that we got an answer. It was no. And they offered no real alternative solutions.
    I will let the experts debate whether the plan was a good one or not. But the fact that they took forever to give him an answer and encouraged him to believe that the plan would be approved was ridiculous.
    It was enormously frustrating, and it was becoming a pattern. The federal