That's President Obama's billing rate. Not bad, huh?
This will be a short diary, but I think a neat one. No one seems to have commented on this before, but when Obama met with the BP team in the White House yesterday, he spent four hours with them.
Last night, in his first-ever Oval Office address, he laid out his plan to contain and repair the damage from the spill. This morning, he had a four-hour meeting with BP, and the company agreed to a fund whose size, $20 billion, was on the high-end of White House wish lists. [Emphasis added] NPR
Four hours, for which BP paid $20 billion (for starters), which works out to Five Billion Dollars an hour.
(Full disclosure: I got the idea for the title from talking to a friend of mine who pointed out the per-hour value.)
The president's time is one of the most precious assets in the White House arsenal. Every minute is budgeted in the President's Daily Schedule (which later will go into the archives as one of the most important papers for historical research). Staffers fight for 30 seconds of "face time." Politicians and ordinary folks vie for the chance to shake the presidential hand, to spend just a few seconds having the attention of the busiest, most powerful, most important person in the world, a memory they will treasure (always provided that wasn't a moment in the presidential woodshed).
(I once got to meet Barack Obama during the campaign, and for 30 seconds I had his undivided attention. That is a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. And he wasn't even president yet.)
Given that, think of the investment made here - four whole hours of the president's time, devoted to nothing else but taking BP to the woodshed.
No wonder they coughed up the money.
Not at all by the way - THIS is what has the Republicans so upset. Forget about the manufactured outrage over "Chicago-style shakedown" and "wealth redistribution." They've just watched Obama in action when he's really mad. He convinced a foreign corporation, which has the worst reputation in its field, and which we've all watched repeatedly dodging its obligations, a corporation over which he has no legal threat - he convinced them by the sheer weight of his office, the power of his personality, and by the strength of reason, to voluntarily give up huge amounts of money. And with no promise not to pursue them further; in fact, both sides acknowledged that this was the start, not the end, of BP payments to those it had wronged.
Now put yourselves in the shoes of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, as they contemplate the president doing the same thing to them.
And he think he will. Up to now he's tried the bipartisanship route, too much so in the eyes of many of us here, and it hasn't worked. (He did get the first health care reform law in 50 years, which ain't bad.)
Now he's mad at the Republicans (in the usual, quiet, no-drama way he gets mad). Just like he got mad at BP. No wonder they're bat-shitting in their pants.