This will mean a boost in tourism. It may be impossible to measure, but the cumulative message from the many different ways in which the Obama visit was publicized -- from traditional news coverage to reality TV -- is far beyond the 30-second Super Bowl TV ads trying to get people to visit the state.
Along this line, I was struck by a piece in the Huffington Post, in which Dhyana Taylor said the photos from Obama's trip on Instagram will make “mainland Americans wonder why they haven't moved there yet.”
It brought to mind the words of John McPhee 40 years ago about the charms of our largest city: “It might be a sorry town, but it has the greatest out-of-town any town has ever had.”
I wrote some time back that Alaska's congressional delegation would do well to declare a unilateral cease-fire of the “war on Alaska” talk directed at Obama.
While Rep. Don Young issued an unfortunate statement about Obama’s “song and dance on climate change,” Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Sullivan represented Alaska well, despite their political differences with Obama.
The Alaska delegation did object to Obama using Alaska as a backdrop and a prop, which struck me as a hollow complaint. Murkowski said the speech given by the president at the Anchorage conference “reinforced my belief that Alaska is being used as a backdrop for the administration's climate agenda.”
When picking backdrops for a climate agenda, the three rules of real estate apply -- location, location, location. If you need a place in the United States to show visible evidence of climate change, Alaska tops the list.
For decades, the members of our delegation have used Alaska as an all-purpose backdrop, whether it is caribou near the pipeline to show responsible development or fishing boats on the sea to show we can manage renewable resources.
Whenever our leaders plead for a certain type of federal overreach, they stand with maps showing Alaska superimposed on the Lower 48 or photos of villages without running water and other basic infrastructure.
"The vast majority of Americans have no idea there are dozens of communities in Alaska that live like this," Sullivan told the Associated Press. "It's unacceptable, and we need to do more to fix it."
Obama didn’t use those exact words, but he said much the same thing in various appearances about how we need to help people deal with the problems in rural Alaska. The "overreach" would include more government spending, either redirected from another state, added to the deficit or generated with taxes, but everyone ignores that difficult question.
President Warren Harding may have stopped in more towns during his ship and rail tour in 1923, but advances in transportation and communication made this the most expansive and expensive presidential trip to Alaska in history. Alaskans welcomed the nation's chief executive to the 49th state and treated him with the hospitality the state is known for.
Leave aside the political aspects for a moment. That was one of the most important things that happened this week.
A boom was deployed Wednesday to control any fuel spills, and the ship was tethered to the shore.
While 10-30 gallons of oil were released into the water, an additional 600 gallons of diesel fuel and 70 gallons of hydraulic and lube oils remained onboard.
On Thursday, the Pacific Venture was sitting under about 25 feet of water, roughly 1/2 mile from the mouth of the Indian River and 1 mile southwest of Sitka’s Jamestown Bay.
Some of the fuel vents had been plugged and other oil and fuels product remained in closed systems, the DEC wrote.
Steenson did not have any additional information.
Troopers spokesperson Megan Peters added that a trooper helicopter would take flight during search efforts today.