The White House is taking some heat over its mishandling of the oil spill in the Gulf.
Until this week, the Obama administration had largely managed to deflect responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon disaster onto others — vowing to keep a “boot on the throat” of BP, while slamming lax oversight on the part of federal regulators during the Bush administration.
But now, with crude lapping into the bayou, even Obama’s defenders have turned critical. A White House that prides itself on operational competence and message discipline has been frustrated by an environmental catastrophe it can’t predict, can’t control and can’t out-message — and the strain is showing.
A majority of Americans, by 51 percent to 46 percent, now disapprove of Obama’s handling of the crisis, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll.
This is change you can believe in? Yep, this is what you voted for!
As Hugh Hewitt puts it:
The president's timidity comes from his fear that he will be held accountable for a failure to stop the disaster --that this will become his Katrina. It already is, except that President Bush stepped up only two days after the locals failed to execute their evacuation plans. Here the crisis has been a federal responsibility from day one minute one and the president has watched and hoped that BP would figure something out.
This is what leadership from someone without experience doing anything looks like. Obama's idea of leading is to blame someone else and dither.
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