Obama's Katrina

We've been hearing it for weeks - the oil spill will be President Obama's Katrina. What exactly does that mean?

Hurricane Katrina marked the beginning of a long slide in President Bush's popularity. Let's quickly review what happened. The Bush administration suffered from internal failures, problems beyond its control, and from bad press.

The internal failures came early. Bush was partying in Arizona at McCain's birthday when the levees broke. The next day the White House released pictures of Bush looking at the damage through the windows of Air Force One from a high altitude. He had good reasons for not landing and inspecting the damage first-hand but he didn't share them until years later. To make things worse, he publicly praised the head of FEMA while press reports indicated that he was giving the effort less than his full attention.

A lot of problems were beyond the White House's control but they were blamed for them, anyway. FEMA was never meant to be a first-responder but people expected it to be on the ground hours after the storm cleared. The governor of Louisiana lost time in requesting the National Guard because of disputed over jurisdiction. The guard had to clear its way into the state through blocked roads. The Guard and FEMA arrived about as soon as possible but, to a nation glued to the TV, this was days too late.

The extreme Bush-haters wet on to blame Bush for every aspect of the disaster. He was blamed for the hurricane itself (if only Kyoto had been ratified then global warming would have already been solved) and for underfunding levee repair. Some insisted that he had ordered the levees dynamited in order to get rid of the minorities.

On top of all that, the press coverage failed to shine. Rumors were breathlessly repeated without any attempt at verification. TV anchors mislead their audience. For days they showed the Superdome and the convention center full of people waiting to be taken elsewhere. They failed to mention that these were holding areas for people who had been rescued from their flooded houses and that they were being transported out almost as fast as they came in.

Obama has not had to deal with bad press but the story is hurting his credibility in many ways. Like Bush, he is a victim of unrealistic expectations.

Technically the federal government is not responsible for fixing the leak. According to a law passed during the Clinton administration, BP is responsible for stopping the leak and cleaning up the oil. The government's job is to sit on the sidelines and supervise. Further, as poor a job as BP has done, I doubt that the government could have done any better.

The American people do not want to hear this. With the exception of a few on the right, people want the problem solved and they don't understand why Obama has not fixed it. After all, he stopped the economy form crashing, he saved GM and Chrysler, he took over health care and he is regulating Wall Street. The letter of the law didn't stop him when he gave GM TARP funds or when he rewrote bankruptcy laws on their behalf.

The Obama Administration talks tough. The President talks about arresting anyone who broke any laws and changing the law if need be (one hopes that he understands that he cannot make something retroactively illegal) but his administration still has to defer to BP.

When the oil spill is the top story night after night, there is no way to stay aloof from it.

Obama himself is in a difficult position. He talks like someone who hates capitalism but his took more oil dollars than anyone ever had before and he had announced a plan to allow new off-shore drilling just days before the disaster. Taken together with the Wall Street bail-outs and Obama's actions some across as pro-big business regardless of what he says.

There is speculation that oil will continue to erupt until August. This would hurt any president but Obama is uniquely vulnerable. He came into office claiming to be the one who would fix the world's ills. Now the spill shows that he is mortal, after all.