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May 06, 2010 10:29 PM UTC

Tom Strickland's Nationally Lampooned Vacation?

  • 26 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As ABC News reported yesterday evening:

Though his agency was charged with coordinating the federal response to the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Department of the Interior chief of staff Tom Strickland was in the Grand Canyon with his wife last week participating in activities that included white-water rafting, ABC News has learned.

Other leaders of the Interior Department were focused on the Gulf, joined by other agencies and literally thousands of other employees. But Strickland’s participation in a trip that administration officials insisted was “work-focused” raised eyebrows among other Obama administration officials and even within even his own department, sources told ABC News.

Strickland, who also serves as Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, was in the Grand Canyon with his wife Beth for a total of three days, including one day of rafting. Beth Strickland paid her own way, Obama administration officials said.

The Stricklands departed for the Grand Canyon three days after the leaks in the Deepwater Horizon pipeline were discovered.  Ultimately, after the government realized that the spill was worse than had been previously thought, officials decided that Strickland was needed in the Gulf so Strickland was taken out of the Grand Canyon by a National Park Service helicopter.

One government official, asking for anonymity because of the political sensitivities involved, told ABC News that some Interior Department employees thought it was “irresponsible” for Strickland to have gone on the trip, given the crisis in the Gulf, which was fully apparent at the time he departed for the Grand Canyon.

You don’t really think we’re going to defend Tom Strickland, do you? It seems as though there was some delay in recognition that this oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was as serious a disaster as we now know it to be–part of which may be attributable to underestimates provided by oil companies to the government of the rate oil was spilling into the Gulf. We get that. But to leave on a ‘light work’ trip to the Grand Canyon three days into the incident, then to have to be airlifted out once the extent of the problem was known (and, of course, the election-minded criticism had started to flow)–nope. Sorry to upset any local Friends of Tom, but this has a danger of going down as a big red-letter screwup, awful appearances that vengeful Republicans would be fools not to exploit, and not against Strickland either but his bosses. This kind of politically thoughtless miscalculation is…well, it’s not Strickland’s reputation–he’s supposed to be quite a bit smarter.

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26 thoughts on “Tom Strickland’s Nationally Lampooned Vacation?”

    1. There are a number of possible mitigators (and aggravators) yet to unfold here for Strickland. What we’re saying is that the initial optics of this are bad for him, are subject to nasty spin that he can’t control, and appear to have been avoidable.

      1. Stupid thing to do and he should have known better.

        Now he looks bad, Ken Salazar looks bad for bringing him to Washington and Obama will be pilloried too.

        Way to go, Tom. Hope you enjoyed the raft trip.

        1. I have never liked Strickland, and I’m not the only one.  

          Maine 20th put this up this morning and a lot of us conceeded on this blog that that yes you have a good point about this.  It isn’t excusable.

    1. Just thinking about pulling the lever for Tom Strickland makes me want to go home and take a shower.  We still had levers on the machines in Denver back then, so it’s not just a figurative reference.

        1. Dumb as a box of rocks and as far right as they come. No way. I’d have left the Senate line blank if I hadn’t voted for Lawyer/Lobbyist.

  4. would be red flagged as important by these folks.

    If nothing else they can fly to New Orleans and photo op packing emergency boxes like McLame did.  Better yet actually work to mitigate the consequences of this disaster.  Good government requires good effort.

  7. Tom Strickland played football at LSU and was all Big 8 and started in the Orange Bowl.  This could have been a great photo opportunity for Big Tom

  8. There is a scathing indictment of Ken Salazar over at Buzzflash

    http://blog.buzzflash.com/cont…

    It is a bitter disappointment that the Interior department under Salazar rode along with lax regulations and a tardy response to this environmental catastrophe.  It is worse than the Iceland volcano because it is man made and was preventable.  I had higher hopes from Salazar then this dismal performance.

    The other bitter lesson is that unregulated capitalism isn’t the answer.  BP was cost cutting when they nixed installing prevention equipment or developing contingency plans.  Corporations need to be regulated period.

    This is another one of those moments when you can say that Ritter did the right thing to stiffen Oil & Gas regulations to protect our mountains and plains.  He should get some respect for bucking lax business practices before it gets costly.

    We have to hope that the containment box being put in place can slow this gusher and give some relief to the threatened coastlines.  These men deploying the box are kind of like front line soldiers on the battlefield.  They are fighting for our planet as surely as a soldier fights for his country.  Let us hope that they have the Yankee ingenuity and determination to succeed with this risky and never been tried that deep before procedure.  God bless the men on the front lines of this environmental battle in their work and keep them safe as they engage in this difficult and dangerous work.

  9. ..but I don’t understand what the big deal is.  It’s not as if he caused the spill or could have anything to mitigate the damage if only he had not been rafting.  So silly…

    1. He didn’t cause the spill but he shared responsibility for the government response.  Granted no one else died in the aftermath but the response time to deploy government assets to protect America from this threat should have been something that they (government bureaucrats) understood was critical particularly post Katrina.  It shouldn’t have taken a week to understand this gusher was a serious threat to America.

        1. I want to people in the federal government responsible for fixing it up 100% focused on the effort. The entire chain of command.

          How hard do you expect DOI people involved to work when their boss is out rafting?

          1. …in the past 2 weeks.  Or gone home.  Or gone to church or to the grocery store.  How can subordinates be expected to work when their boss is not standing over them?  That never happens.

            1. It’s a red herring.  There’s no point in debating the issue on its merits.

              The spill is not big oil’s fault.  It’s the fault of some poor bastard who went on a government-paid rafting trip.

              Can’t you see that?

  10. Strickland works for the Department of the Interior. Absolutely: rafting in the Grand Canyon takes precedence over a disaster taking place somewhere, oh, off the coast, somewhere way down and over there…

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