Suggested Responses

It doesn't really make up for the problems and the response to date, but this is a start and as it becomes clear that this is the biggest environmental disaster in United States History,  the biggest part of the problem of mounting a real response was the continuing level of dishonesty and  spin control by British Petroleum as they tried feverishly to  "protect their investment".  On this blog I have repeatedly demanded that the well be destroyed immediately. BP has acted so irresponsibly and with such arrogantly tantamount greed, that I would not be surprised if they tried to claim that the oil that is cleaned off of the beaches is their "property".

He strode into the East Room to mount a robust defense of his handling of the largest oil spill in American history, reassuring the nation that he was in charge and would do “whatever is necessary” to stop and clean up the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But by the time he walked out an hour later, he had balanced that with a fairly unusual presidential self-critique.

He was wrong, he said, to assume that oil companies were prepared for the worst as he tried to expand offshore drilling. His team did not move with “sufficient urgency” to reform regulation of the industry. In dealing with BP, his administration “should have pushed them sooner” to provide images of the leak, and “it took too long for us” to measure the size of the spill.

“In case you’re wondering who’s responsible, I take responsibility,” Mr. Obama said as he concluded the news conference. “It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away or the way I’d like it to happen. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make mistakes. But there shouldn’t be any confusion here. The federal government is fully engaged, and I’m fully engaged."

Jeff Zelaney of the NY Times commented on Barack Obama's press conference yesterday:

... it remains an open question whether the measured tone that has become the soundtrack of Mr. Obama's presidency -- a detached, calm, observational pitch -- served to drive the point home that he is sufficiently enraged by the fury in the Gulf Coast.

At least he resisted the urge to compare Obama to Spock.

... Kevin Drum watched the CNN coverage, and saw the various on-air personalities "solemnly advising us one after one that Obama really needed to be more emotional because that's what the American people want." ...

Hey, the press has a point -- there are a lot of other things Obama could do besides calmly demonstrating a grasp of the situation. He could:

* loudly and melodramatically suspend the entire federal government, demanding a combined legislative/executive branch summit to deal with the problem, at which he'll prove to be thoroughly unprepared.

* put up a bunch of Facebook posts with lots of capital letters and exclamation points.

*break down and cry.

Any one of those approaches would make the oil dissipate faster -- right?