I'm not sure what the one has to do with the other.
In one case, a power plant near Rockford is associated with elevated levels of tritium, and Obama, a freshman senator with almost no regulatory affiliation to nuclear power generation, attempts to pass a bill requiring more stringent notification of possible radiation leaks. Meanwhile, state and federal regulatory bodies that Obama has no oversight over take over the incident, fine the plant, and create more stringent notification requirements.
In the other, Obama, now elected president, is forced to decide whether to allow an allegedly expert company with severe conflicts of interest to coordinate and direct the mitigation of the largest environmental disaster the country has ever faced, a disaster they themselves caused, or instead create from whole cloth the federal capability to coordinate and direct that mitigation.
The only thing these two stories have in common is that there's no "good guy", "bad guy" template to lay over them, unless you want to try for "cheap and inevitably unsafe energy bad", "bicycles good".
In one case, after a radioactive byproduct of an Illinois power plant leaked into his constituents' well water, Senator Obama sponsored legislation to require nuclear power plants to report all abnormal leaks, not just ones they determined to rise to 'emergency' levels. The power company, Exelon, believed that the leak arose from "millions of gallons of water that had leaked from the plant years earlier but went unreported at the time" because the leak was not considered an 'emergency'. Faced with stiff opposition to the bill from industry and Republicans, Obama "removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators," and added "new wording sought by Exelon making it clear that state and local authorities would have no regulatory oversight of nuclear power plants." Exelon subsequently became a big Obama supporter, with exectives in the company becoming important fund-raisers, and direct corporate contributions of $227,000 to his Senate and Presidential campaigns. The full Senate never voted on the bill.
In the other case, Obama, now elected President, fails to follow through on reform of an agency he had decried while running for office, and instead continues to allow the foxes to mind the hen house, as detailed in the Rolling Stone article.
What do the two articles have to do with one another? As you say, there's no "good guy" or "bad guy" template to lay over them. But there is a tension, or ambiguity, between whether Obama is a populist reformer, or a conservative (in the original sense of the word) pragmatist. These two articles show how Obama is good at rattling his saber and mobilizing the base while on the campaign trail, while also being willing to make deals and accommodate industry interests in order to get things done (and perhaps not incidentally accrue contributions to his campaign coffers).
This is a far subtler picture than the socialist caricature painted by the right, and the Messiah caricature painted by the left. It is probably incorrect in places. But these two articles help me to put that picture together. I think Obama would've been comfortable with the moderate Republicans of twenty years ago, ideologically and temperamentally. Today's moderates seem to need to play more strongly to their left- or right-wing bases than they used to in order to get elected. I'm starting to see this playbook, and starting to see Obama (and Clinton before him) as being a master of that playbook.
I'm no student of politics or history, this is just the gestalt I see.
(EDIT: delete first sentence, edit last sentence of next-to-last paragraph)
Your accounting of the Byron plant story drastically oversimplifies the actual events. It casts Obama as somehow central to the story when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation. It attempts to read tea leaves about Obama's mentality out of the progress of pushing a bill --- itself a meaningless political reaction to an event in his backyard, a sop to his constituents --- past stiff opposition, as if the alternative to "watering down" this bill was strong new legislation on nuclear regs, which of course it wasn't.
In short, it attempts to make Obama the go-along get-along energy-insider-pol "bad guy" in a story that not only has no good guys or bad guys, but also almost nothing at all to do with Obama.
"My" accounting is derived entirely from what I read in that New York Times article. I'm not clear if you're criticizing my read of the article, or the article itself. If the latter, do you have any other accounts that provide further detail? The vehemence of your responses suggests you might live in the area?
when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation
Elected members of a representative democracy are charged with producing the legislation that defines "formal oversight", and with using feedback from their constituents to do so. Who else should his aggrieved constituents have turned to in this case?
go-along get-along energy-insider-pol "bad guy"
Not really. His behavior is typical of politicians across the board (except the ones who don't get elected). I agree with you that his legislation might be characterized as "a sop to his constituents". This doesn't make him one of the bad guys, it just means he is not the leftist demagogue/messiah some make him out to be.
attempts to read tea leaves about Obama's mentality
Sure, I think this is fair game. He (like his predecessor) is a bit of a cipher.
Anyway, this thread started because you asked me what I saw in common between the two articles. That's what I saw in common. YMMV.
I live in Chicago, which is an hour or so from Rockford. I didn't actually manage to extract a "here's what Obama is about" narrative from the NYT article. Here's what I think:
• Take anything Obama touched during his time in the Senate.
• Note that we still have that problem. For instance: immigration, border security, mines, spending transparency, no-bid contracting, nonproliferation, and (of course) peace in West Asia. (Note how I cheated by reading 1 Wikipedia graf to generate that list. You could broaden the list by finding things he did in the Senate that weren't notable because they went nowhere.)
• For bonus points, find some large organization that contributes uniformly to major political candidates of one or both parties that is relevant to the problem Obama attempted to solve.
• Write a message board post with the same narrative as your original post.
It's an interesting summation of your perspective, thanks. You depict Obama as one molecule in a sort of political Brownian motion, with me & the Times acting as a cherry-picking Maxwell's Demon.
A hard thesis to disprove, and I'll let it go from here. But I'll note that in contrast to the examples in your list (with the possible issue of no-bid contracting, I don't know about this), this tritium issue was local, raised by Obama's constituents. Also, "Exelon’s support for Mr. Obama far exceed[ed] its support for any other presidential candidate."
It seems to me a 99.99999% near absolute certainty that he'd have been nowhere near nuclear regulation if this hadn't happened in his back yard. Which makes it, to my mind, a pretty silly thing to try to mine for insight. Any senator from any state would have had to react somehow to an incident like that.
(EDIT: deleted carping about moderator changing title of post.)