In his column today, Deroy Murdock excoriates the Obama administration for its blundering and bungling in dealing with the oil spill.
Although he doesn’t precisely say so, the problem is the death of federalism. In the nation that the Founders envisioned, a problem like this would be entirely the responsibility of affected states and individuals. Federal bureaucrats were never supposed to have the power to tell a state, a city, or a property owner whether it was permissible to do anything to guard against contamination by oil.
One of the things we ought to have learned from Katrina is that we get much better results from the spontaneous reactions of many individuals, firms, and voluntary organizations than we do by relying on Washington. Actually, quite a few people have learned that lesson, but not one of them has any influence over Obama.
