Last Monday in Washington, White House press briefing, US Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen spoke about the oil disaster. During the Q&A a reporter ask,

“Is there to this point, thought of whether the government can do more, can it push BP out of the way like Salazar said if it feels like the company’s not doing their job? What’s your response to that?”

ALLEN:

Well, to push BP out of the way would raise the question, “To replace them with what?”

REPORTER:

Do you think that this government right now is doing the best it can?

ALLEN:

I’ve been involved with the technical decisions made, especially in relation to the deal with the leak, and they are pressing ahead, we’re overseeing them, they are exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak.

So Salazar said if they don’t get it done we’ll just push ’em out of the way and we’ll bring in people with the appropriate action to get it done. Coast Guard says, “Replace them with what?”

He obviously was not aware of what Salazar had said at BP headquarters in Houston.  Last weekend, Bob Schieffer talked to Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary:

“Do you think this could be your administration’s Katrina?”

GIBBS:

Well, I think if you look back at what happened in Katrina, the government wasn’t there to respond to what was happening. That, quite frankly, was the problem, even tracking the hurricane for days and knowing fairly precisely where it was going to hit. I think the difference in this case is we were there immediately, we have been there ever since.

That is a LIE. They’re still not there.

The government did get there in the case of Katrina. They did get there as quickly as they could and the local officials told them to get out. Blanco said get outta here, I don’t want you guys getting credit for this, I’m a Democrat governor, I’ll take care of this. While School Bus Nagin was running around just beside himself here trying to explain why the buses weren’t used.

“The difference here is we were there immediately.”

They were not there immediately. And when they were there they sent Salazar and Carol Browner to survey the problem. The head guy, Tom Strickland – responsible for coordinating the federal response, was vacationing in the Grand Canyon and didn’t think it was serious enough to cut his trip short.

Obama is going on vacation for the second time since the oil spill happened and is reluctantly going to visit there on his way to vacation for the Memorial Day weekend and to check out the growing disaster.

Douglas Brinkley, on CNN with Anderson Cooper says,

“You have the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, saying we’re putting the boot on BP’s neck. It doesn’t seem like there’s much pressure being applied to that boot if there’s any at all.”

BRINKLEY:

We haven’t had a bullhorn moment from President Obama, we haven’t heard the passion, and you know he’s sickened by all this. It’s a time we don’t need the cool collected Obama, we need the orator and the leader who’s emotive.

Who is famous for using the bullhorn?

Yeah, it’s Bush. George Bush at Ground Zero, 9/11, the bullhorn moment. The idiot, the dunce, the cowboy, all of those insulting things that were said about Bush.

How do you know that?  Does he act sickened by it? Or does he see an opportunity here to blame Big Oil, to stop offshore drilling, and to once again point the fingers at capitalism for being greedy and unkind, selfish, etc.

Is he really sickened by it? We need a bullhorn moment? We need a leader who’s emotive? You know Obama’s got it in him, we just know he’s got it in him, why doesn’t he show up?

Maybe that’s not who he is.

COOPER:

“It’s sort of fascinating, David, for a president who watched Katrina and saw the failures of the Bush administration, failures at the state and local level, for a president who saw that and was very critical of it, to now find himself in a situation in which he’s being criticized for the lack of response or lack of coordination is kind of stunning.”

GERGEN:

The critics who are saying this is sort of a coming Katrina in slow motion have a point. I’m very sympathetic with what the administration has — this is tough, it’s very tough. And President Obama clearly cares and we have to appreciate that. But it’s not enough simply to care; you’ve gotta take charge. And we’ve reached that moment in this crisis when I think he has to take charge.

He doesn’t act like he’s caring about it much. He doesn’t act like he’s sickened. If anything, he sounds angry that he is being distracted by this. As president, you sit there and say, how is this gonna get fixed? He wants it fixed so he can move on with the rest of his destructive domestic agenda.

This is all politically inconvenient and we’ve reached the moment in crisis, gotta take charge. He’s not a take-charge guy. He’s an organizer and a Chicago thug.

He’s not a leader.