A defensive President Obama sought Thursday to quell doubts about his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, insisting that his administration has been "in charge" from the moment it began and bristling that critics who accuse it of being sluggish to react "don't know the facts." If this becomes his "Katrina" it's only because his ego got in the way.
The news conference marked a sharp departure in tone from the first days after an oil rig explosion caused the spill, when the White House seemed determined to fix the blame and keep the public outrage directed at the oil company involved.
Did he ever ask BP, "What can we do to help?" Too big an ego for that, Mr. Resolute and In Charge?
This is the familiar Obama: resolute and in charge. But six weeks after the spill began, those words seemed to highlight the difficulty he has had in convincing the country that he is on top of the situation. As oil continues to foul the gulf, the conflicting signals coming from the president and his team have imperiled his reputation for competence and coolness in the face of crisis.
In the early weeks after the rig sank, polls showed the public saw a clear villain - BP - and approved of the administration's approach to the situation, which emphasized ensuring that the oil company would bear the cost of stopping the spill, cleaning it up and repairing the damage. Some in the White House were so confident of their ability to stay ahead of the crisis that they welcomed comparisons with George W. Bush's bungling of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Bring ot baby! We're too kewl!
But the latest surveys show that public confidence in Washington's handling of the spill has dropped sharply. And there has also been a fraying of what had begun as a relatively smooth working relationship among the government, BP, and state and local officials in the region. "The president has not been as visible as he should have been on this," Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told Politico, "and he's going to pay a political price for it, unfortunately."
His choice to flip-flop won't help.