Mark Bunger  Drilling, spilling, and tilling: Will Obama act on
the BP oil catastrophe with rhyme and reason?  It’s said that
history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. Shortly
after the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico,
biofuel supporters were chanting “Till, Baby, Till!” in a parody
of offshore drilling supporters’ cries of “Drill, Baby, Drill!”
at Sarah Palin rallies last year. In the same spirit, political
commentators have sought the right rhyme for the giant oil spill
itself among prior comparable catastrophes. The disaster was
initially called “Obama’s Katrina” by the President’s political
enemies, comparing his inaction to President Bush’s widely
criticized slow response to Hurricane Katrina. When the scale of
the disaster became known, BP’s chairman made a comparison to
“Three-Mile Island,” implying that this disaster could put a
stop to petroleum as the 1970s disaster effectively froze the
U.S. nuclear industry. And now, as the spill has become the
worst environmenta