A tale of two pols

Other than a gooey and smelly mess, Mayflower presents a couple of political case studies. One is of the differences in corporate allegiance and populist intensity between a hamstrung modern Republican and a liberated lame-duck Democrat.

The hamstrung modern Republican shows us more corporate allegiance. The liberated lame-duck Democrat shows us more populist intensity.

The other is of the difference between an elected job with prescribed responsibilities, meaning state attorney general, and a federally elected one in Congress to “represent.”

That sometimes can raise a perfectly appropriate and open question: Represent whom?

—————— Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, the lame-duck Democrat, went to the site of the oil spill Wednesday. He did so as an adversary of Exxon Mobil Corp.

That was his job. State government conceivably could sustain damages or costs requiring his office’s legal combat with the giant corporation.

Thus the Democratic chief legal officer refused to take a guided tour of the affected area in a van offered, indeed initially insisted on, by a contractor working for Exxon Mobil.

He declared himself on site for an independent and official investigation, not group sightseeing.

He and a lawyer and an investigator from his office went into the evacuated area on their own, and, he said, got headaches from the fumes.

U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, the Republican congressman representing the area, went to the spill site on the same day. Griffin accepted the guided tour, as did other politicians in the area.

He behaved not as Exxon Mobil’s adversary, but seemingly as its ally and defender.

That was how he chose to perform his job, which, as one of political representation, is less clearly defined than McDaniel’s.

The attorney general’s job description is a matter of law. The congressman’s job is a matter of art.

Actually, it’s the prevailing contemporary Republican way to ally with, defend and indeed honor the corporation as the real source of meaningful public convenience and opportunity in this country.

The congressman also has a personal political complication. He pretty much based his entire re-election campaign last year on incessant television advertising touting the Keystone pipeline. That’s a proposal to carry a larger volume of this same kind of slimy, smelly crude through an aquifer in Nebraska.

National news organizations have speculated—and environmentalists have expressed hope—that the Mayflower incident might doom Keystone.

Griffin told the media that we want and need oil, that oil must be transported and that beneath-ground pipelines are safer than big oil-filled rigs barreling down the interstate highways.

He said accidents happen. He said people don’t stop driving because of car wrecks.

Without oil, he said, we could all take bicycles to Memphis.

True—every word. But the point was the congressman’s emphasis. It was almost as if he had been elected by the oil company, not the residents whose subdivision had been slimed.

But he is not without political instinct.

By the next day, Griffin seemed to have assessed the politics more thoroughly and to be backtracking, or at least sidetracking, or at least modulating.

Exxon Mobil is “making progress, but there’s a ways to go,” he told me in a phone conversation.

Everything he had said publicly had been based on accounts by local elected officials, he said. He trusts information from the county judge, he said.

Griffin told me he is in direct contact with affected homeowners and is sensitive to their concerns about plummeting housing values.

McDaniel, meantime, is of the more naturally populist leanings, at least by party affiliation.

He also is a politician recently ruined by sex scandal who is not running for anything—unless this matter should revive and rehabilitate him.

That’s unlikely. It’s too soon. Shame and penitence are incomplete.

He says litigation will almost certainly arise from this incident. He’s asking about inspections and safety precautions and liabilities for damage to the natural environment and the public interest.

Those homeowners? By law he only represents state government interests, not individuals.

But his advice to the homeowners is to seek legal advice to make sure they protect their interests.

So McDaniel came on site to fight. He represented a view that a corporation can hurt you and that government can help the little guy.

Griffin came on site to assuage. He represented a view that the corporation had a little boo-boo, yes, but is still the little guy’s friend and provider.

The congressman represented a view that opportunity will still trickle down, even if oil sometimes oozes out.