The Muck Stops Here

New York Post headline on BP's failure to 'plug the damn hole.'  Now BP says not until August. How is the Obama WH handling it?  NYT  Not well.

'The Obama presidency is facing a real crisis.' Dem pollster Doug Shoen

• Wash Post columnist Dana Milbank: For eight years we had a president who refused to accept blame. Now we have one who seems to enjoy it. In the hour President Obama spent at the podium in the East Room last week holding a news conference on the Gulf oil spill, he practiced every form of self-flagellation short of bringing out a cat-o'-nine-tails.
• He decorated the East Room with wuddas, cuddas and shuddas: "We should have busted through those constraints. . . . pre-deploying boom would have been the right thing to do . . . I do think our efforts fell short. . . . They should have pushed them sooner. . . . I think that it took too long. . . . Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together."
• No wonder Americans are growing dissatisfied with his handling of the spill. Even his daughter holds him responsible. "When I woke this morning and I'm shaving," he said, "Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head and she says, 'Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?' "
• That's very clear, sir. But why not share some with the guys at BP who actually are responsible for the spill?
• In a sense, it's refreshing to have a president who is candid about shortcomings. Yet Obama's news conference may have been the weakest hour of his presidency.
• As I sat in the fourth row on Thursday, I was struck by the weirdly passive figure before me. He delivered lawyerly phrases and spoke of his anger about the oil spill but showed none in his voice or on his face. He was, presumably, there to show how aggressively he has handled the disaster, but he seemed cool, almost bloodless.
• He also retreated from the tough talk his administration has used on BP. Asked about the White House's vow to keep its "boot on the neck" of BP, Obama replied: "I would say that, you know, we don't need to use language like that."
• Yes we do! And we need tough deeds to match the tough talk.
• Louisianan James Carville exploded Wednesday on "Good Morning America" about Obama's "political stupidity" in the spill. "He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people. . . . It just looks like he's not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this."
• Instead, Obama rhetorically took the boot off BP's throat. His Republican critics like to call him a socialist, but in this case he hasn't been enough of one.
• True, Obama needs BP's technical expertise to plug the leak. But questioner after questioner at the news conference pressed the president on why he doesn't take on BP. "How do you explain that we're more than five weeks into this crisis and that BP is not always doing as you're asking?" inquired the AP's Jennifer Loven. NBC's Chuck Todd skipped the usual "thank you, Mr. President" before asking, "Why not ask BP to simply step aside on the onshore stuff?"
• In reply, Obama was passive. "If BP's contractors are not moving as nimbly and as effectively as they need to be, then it is already the power of the federal government to redirect those resources," he argued. "I guess the point being that the Coast Guard and our military are potentially already in charge."
• Potentially in charge? Maybe it's time to put them actually in charge.

NYT Frank Rich in claiming Obama is 'infinitely more capable of handling catastrophe than his predecessor' whines the oil spill is ruining Obama's 'principal mission':  The only good news from the oil spill is that when catastrophe strikes, even some hard-line conservatives, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, start begging for the federal government to act, and act big. It’s the crunch moment for government to make its case — as Obama belatedly started to do on Thursday. But words are no match for results. As long as the stain washes up on shore, the hole in BP’s pipe will serve the right as a gaping hole in the president’s argument for expanded government supervision of, for starters, Big Oil and big banks. It’s not just the gulf that could suffer for decades to come.

NYT's Maureen Dowd: President Spock’s behavior is illogical. At a press conference, Obama said Malia had asked him, as he shaved, “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” (That hole should be plugged with a junk-shot of Glenn Beck, who crudely mocked the adorable Malia.) Oddly, the good father who wrote so poignantly about growing up without a daddy scorns the paternal aspect of the presidency.

• Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed.
• For five weeks, it looked as though Obama considered the gushing that became the worst oil spill in U.S. history a distraction, like a fire alarm going off in the middle of a law seminar he was teaching. He’ll deal with it, but he’s annoyed because it’s not on his syllabus.
• He’s spending the holiday weekend in Chicago when he should be commemorating Memorial Day here with the families of troops killed in battle and with veterans at Arlington Cemetery.
• Republican senators who had a contentious lunch with the president last week described him as whiny, thin-skinned and in over his head, and there was extreme Democratic angst at the White House’s dilatory and deferential attitude on the spill.
• Even more than with the greedy financiers and arrogant carmakers, it was important to offend and slap back the deceptive malefactors at BP.
• Obama and top aides who believe in his divinity make a mistake to dismiss complaints of his aloofness as Washington white noise. He treats the press as a nuisance rather than examining his own inability to encapsulate Americans’ feelings.
• “The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,” he told Gulf Coast residents when he visited on Friday. Actually, if it weren’t for the media, the president would probably never have woken up from his torpor and flown down there.
• Instead of getting Bill Clinton to offer Joe Sestak a job, Obama should be offering Clinton one. Bill would certainly know how to gush at a gusher gone haywire. Let him resume a cameo role as Feeler in Chief. The post is open.

BP has greased the palms of not only Obama but of Congress. Now BP will try to cap the gusher.

Related:  Washington Post  NYDN