Jules Witcover

The economy of the Gulf of Mexico Coast is not the only matter in peril as a result of the gigantic offshore oil spill there. As President Obama's latest news conference performance showed, his leadership and celebrated reputation for coolness under fire are in jeopardy as well.

Obama's tardy acknowledgment that the buck stops at his desk in terms of ultimate responsibility for the disaster trumped his original efforts to dump the mess in the lap of British Petroleum. Focusing on the company's acceptance of responsibility for the cleanup and financial restitution of losses did not absolve him of growing criticism of his own role.

Even in his mea culpa, saying "I take responsibility" and "it is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this (runaway well) down," the president said his mistake was in putting too much trust in BP's capabilities and word.

"Where I was wrong," he said, "was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-cast scenarios." But he was wrong as well if he assumed the leaking oil would not stick to him politically. His insistence that "this has been our highest priority since crisis occurred" did not square with the public impression that BP was in charge, and that it was OK with him.

It fell to his secretary of interior, Ken Salazar, to say in response to the public dissatisfaction that the administration had its "boot on the neck" of BP. Salazar's reward was a news-conference rebuke from Obama that "we don't need to use language like that."

The president clearly had a strong point in emphasizing that BP had both the technical equipment and know-how to take the lead in the effort to cap the well. But he also left the sense that the administration was fine with that, an impression he subsequently denied. Those who believed that "we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don't know the facts," he said in the news conference.

If that was the case, perhaps the fault was the failure of this administration, which takes pride in its public relations prowess, to spell out early and adequately what it was doing to mobilize other resources in and out of the government to deal with the emergency.

There was also a public-relations lapse in Obama's failure, after an initial short trip to Louisiana early in the month, to return to the Gulf Coast sooner to assess the damage and provide personal evidence of his compassion for the victims and determination to find a solution.

All the disavowals that the oil spill was not comparable to the damage delivered by Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas did not survive the weeks of the continuing failure to cap the well. But, inevitably, Obama's public attitude may well have revived memories of George W. Bush giving New Orleans a mere fly-by in Air Force One at the time of Katrina.

Obama's other trips out of Washington for fund-raising and other political purposes, and then a trip with his family back to Chicago, which he interrupted finally to go to the Gulf Coast on Friday, only compounded the image problem.

Perhaps the Obama strategists came to believe they had been putting too much stock in the president's ability to make things right by mere intervention of his personal magic. Its limits politically had been well demonstrated in his failed overnight dash to Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympics for his hometown.

In acknowledging that he had relied too much on BP in the crisis, the president echoed his earlier criticism of the banking and investment industry on Wall Street. And his more recent acquiescence to more offshore drilling sought by leading Republicans has proved politically embarrassing, obliging him to rescind his go-ahead signal.

In all this, Obama has demonstrated he has heard a wakeup call on the public's slipping confidence, as voiced by his own daughter Malia's question to him: "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

 

 

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