Interactive: How oil has tarred presidents
John Blake
CNN
The president was young, a Harvard-educated intellectual admired for his charisma and skill with the written word.
His foe was pious but ruthless, the head of a massive oil corporation that supplied 90 percent of America's oil.
When Theodore Roosevelt tangled with oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, near the turn of the 20th century, he became the first president to pit the power of the White House against the power of oil.
Roosevelt ultimately won that battle in 1911 when the U.S. Supreme Court approved the breakup of the Standard Oil Company, Rockefeller's company. But oil has tarred other presidents, and may do the same to President Obama as he tries to manage the Gulf of Mexico disaster, says Nancy Koehn, a historian at Harvard Business School.
|
|
Filed under: Gulf Oil Spill • President Barack Obama |
About this Show:
Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
Questions or comments? Send an email
Want to know more? Go behind the scenes with AC361°
Subscribe to the podcast
On Twitter
Go behind the scenes: AC361°
Gumby celebrates Isha Sesay's birthday
Anderson Cooper's birthday surprise
You asked, Anderson answersForeman's Letters to the President
Popular Posts
Search the AC360 blog
Mr. Cooper,
My biggest questions are, how much natural gas(methane) is leaking with the oil? At 1800 psi of pressure, i would imagine 2 to3 times as much as the oil, to be able to jet that much oil out at those pressures. Just an educated guess. Also, why aren't scientists talking about the effect on global warming this will cause? Do people really think all this violent weather, and heat are a coincidence? Just one of those years? Methane is 30 times more effective a greenhouse gas, than carbon dioxide.