WASHINGTON — Who’s sorry now? Rep. Joe Barton, that’s who.
The Texas Republican, the House’s top recipient of oil-industry campaign contributions since 1990, apologized Thursday for apologizing to the chief of the British company that befouled the Gulf of Mexico with a massive oil spill.
His double mea culpa plus a retraction, executed under pressure from fuming GOP leaders, succeeded in shifting attention from the tragedy, BP’s many missteps and the stoic British oil chief at the witness table to his own party’s close connection to the oil industry.
Barton started the ruckus at midmorning when he took aim at the $20 billion relief fund for victims of the spill sought by the White House and agreed to by BP.
“I apologize,” Barton said to BP chief executive Tony Hayward, who was sitting at a witness table for another of Congress’ ritual floggings of wayward corporate heads.
“I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is — again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown,” Barton said. “So I apologize.”
Incensed at the gift Barton had given Democrats, GOP leaders summoned Barton to the Capitol and demanded he apologize in specific terms.
The leaders threatened to begin a process to strip Barton of his post as chairman-in-waiting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to two knowledgeable Republican officials who demanded anonymity so they could speak freely about private meetings.
It was the notion of a U.S. lawmaker apologizing to a foreign head of a corporation that had caused great hardships for millions of Gulf Coast residents that incited rare Republican-on-Republican rage.
As Barton returned to the committee, the leaders issued their own statement: “Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong.”
Vice President Joe Biden weighed in — lightheartedly at first, red-faced by the end. “I find it incredibly insensitive, incredibly out of touch,” Biden said. “There’s no shakedown. It’s insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused.”
By midafternoon, Barton was back on the dais with a statement that was something short of what the leaders had demanded.
“I want the record to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident,” he said. “If anything I said this morning has been misconstrued, in opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction.”
Barton then issued a somewhat different written statement apologizing for using the term “shakedown” and retracting his apology to BP.
