President Obama on one of his visits to the Gulf Coast. Courtesy: The White House

Dear Mr. President,

I'm writing you from a fish shack, deep in a Louisiana marsh, where I sit on a dock that juts out over the water, a mile or so away from even the nearest marina.  Some say that the worst of the Gulf spill has passed, that it is time to turn the national spotlight elsewhere, but that is not how the men who fish from these camps feel.

You would like it here, Mr. President.  While it isn't quite the place apart from the world that it was a few months ago, you would find some quiet, away from the clamor of judging reporters and reports, far from the din and hectoring of life in the spotlight.  No microphones, and no Fox News.  But lots of egrets and herons and one hungry alligator cruising for dinner a hundred yards up the canal.  I like to think that you would spend your time in this dilapidated fish camp that somehow survived Katrina (though its roof did not), by soaking in the quiet and reflecting on your presidency so far.  And I like to think you would be quite proud of what you have accomplished, which, despite the carpers, is quite a lot, possibly more than any Democratic president in my lifetime.  But I also like to think that you might re-consider a few of your choices, particularly those that involve the clean-up going on only a few miles from this shack, out on the dark and necrotic fringe of the great but dying marsh.

I do not blame you for the oil spill, Mr. President, no more than I blame your predecessor for a hurricane.  But my hosts at this camp, Anthony, a precocious sixteen-year-old who has captained boats since he was eight and who, like the young Mark Twain, dreams of being a Mississippi river boat captain, and his uncle, do blame you.    To be honest, they would probably still blame you if you threw on a scuba outfit and swam down to the cap to plug all the leaks and then used your custom homemade oil vacuum to suck up the rest of the spill.  And, frankly, Anthony and his uncle are not your problem, at least from an electoral point of view, since they wouldn't vote for you under any circumstances. Nor am I your problem, since I, a Northeasterner from the other end of the political spectrum, will likely vote for you no matter what.

But what should concern you, Mr. President, and concern you quite a bit, I think, is not the divide between me and my hosts here, but just how much we agree.  What we agree about, as Anthony's uncle and I sip our beers and stare out as the light dies on the marsh, is that the clean-up of the spill has been deeply mishandled, in ways not yet understood by you and the rest of the country.  What should concern you is a deep and building anger, not just toward BP, but toward your ceding of power to BP, an anger that I might have found exaggerated in the media before heading down here three weeks ago, but that I now believe to be understated.

You'll be happy to hear that our first area of agreement has nothing to do with you, Mr. President, but with our mutual dislike of Peyton Manning, me as a Patriots' fan and Anthony as a deep admirer of Drew Brees and the Saints, who bested Manning, a former hometown hero, in the Super Bowl.  But our second overlapping opinion should concern you more.   It has to do with that much-bandied-about word "freedom," and the lack of it, the sense that most people down here have that, on top of the deep depression   that comes with loss of livelihood, there is also now a crippling sense of servitude.   Servitude toward one's country, toward the mission of cleaning up these beautiful and abundant waters, would be one thing, Anthony's uncle and I agree. But the serf-like sense that one has to serve the very master who spoiled those waters in the first place is another entirely.  We also agree on this: one of the small, sad sights down here these days is watching the captains of the so-called "Vessels of Opportunity" hired to help clean up the spill, who have likely not worn life jackets since they were toddlers, all buckled up as they putter out to sea each morning.  It seems a badge of shame, of not being in control, which of course they aren't, beholden as they are, not to their own government, but to a multinational corporation.

It's my understanding, from talking to people down here, that each and every one of these captains is required to sign an agreement that -- as temporary BP employees paid for their part in the clean-up effort -- they will not criticize the company and, of course, will not press further claims against it.  At first, choosing to work on those vessels seemed like the commonsense choice -- after all, their normal livelihood of catching fish was not an option, with the fishing grounds closed due to oil. But just recently, at an EPA meeting, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told the audience he was concerned that every penny earned on one of those vessels would be counted against future compensation, while the damage to boats would go uncompensated, which means those who chose not to work for BP may do better in the long haul. The long haul is not a popular topic down here.  Already there is talk of full compensation packages for two years, as if the damage to the Gulf's reputation, if not its ecosystem, won't last for decades.

You are a reasonable man, Mr. President -- too reasonable according to some.  But I am not asking you to stomp your feet and wave your fist and claim to be in charge.  What I am asking instead is for you to examine this situation logically and then take charge, real charge.  You will say that the template for this disaster was built during the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago, and you are right, but this is a new disaster with new circumstances that requires a new template.  Let BP pay for its mess, as they should, but they should not be in charge of every detail.  They should not be out on scientific survey boats, noting when the scientists forget to put on their plastic gloves so that this fact might be used as evidence in some future lawsuit.  They should not be running the show at Fort Pickens, a national seashore in the Florida panhandle where the fort was built to protect us from foreign invasion, and did so successfully until three months ago, and where the rangers, who know and love that land, have been beaten down to docility by the corporation now in control of their national park.  They should not be bringing in outsiders to clean up waters that the locals have known since they were kids; they should be listening rather than ordering, taking advantage of this crucial knowledge of tides and winds.  And they should not have the power to influence the bird surveyor that I spoke to the other day, who couldn't give me any real numbers on bird deaths he had witnessed, because, as he sheepishly admitted, BP is on his organization's board of trustees.

I am a houseguest tonight, out here on the marsh, and let me use this experience to suggest an analogy with BP's behavior.  It would be as if in the middle of the night I decided to defecate in Anthony's bathtub and then, loudly and boorishly, ordered him to clean it up in the morning.  Worse still it would be as if, tomorrow morning, I were to slip him a fifty, and get him to sign something that said I could sue him if he ever mentioned what I'd done.  In short, it both doesn't make sense and is morally abhorrent, Mr. President.

So don't accept it.  Gather your top scientists, environmentalists, policy makers, and make use of the people who know these waters.  Demand BP's money -- of course they should pay for their own mess -- but take charge of your own shores, showing that you are beholden, not to their corporation, but to your people.  Because for all the differences that my hosts and I have, we all agree on one thing.  It would make a world of difference if, tomorrow morning at dawn, when the Vessels of Opportunity putter past this dock on their daily commute to lay boom and spot oil, they were flying their country's colors and not the corporate flag of green and yellow.

Sincerely,
David Gessner

Read more of Gessner's Gulf reporting in his online journal.