President Obama and the lack of leadership on the Oil Spill

Bob, that is NOT TRUE at all!! BP has NOT done everything it could, and a bunch of southern mayors called them out on it. Many people down there are expressing the same anger with BP over their handling of the situation. What do you want Obama to do? You attack him for not doing anything, then say that BP is doing everything they can. BP are the EXPERTS in this industry and they told the president that they were working on it. If Mr. Obama would have taken over the clean up than the American people would again be bailing out a very profitable private corporation (can you say BAIL OUT!!!!). If he sits back and allows the EXPERTS handle the mess you attack him for not showing leadership. Please Bob, what really do you want him to do????

Bob not sure if your right. Obama has a lot on his plate. I cannot imagine how it must feel to be him for one day! now, imagine for years! He was handle a country full of issues and now this! Cut him some slacks will you.

I agree, stop the blaming and start the fixing. He is a talking head and maybe this is one of those "tests" Biden mentioned!

I think 0bama should just STFU and let the experts handle it. The government has already admitted that they don't have the equipment needed to contain this spill, so BP is the one that has to do it. 0bama's threat to kick some as$ is nothing more than empty rhetoric, while his threats to pursue criminal charges if they can come up with any is counterproductive and badly timed. The time to fix blame and all of the rest is AFTER the spill is contained, not while BP is trying to solve the problem. Then there is the little matter of why this administration disregarded the regulations granted a waiver for this company to operate when there was some questions about operational safety of the rig to begin with. While 0bama is pointing fingers at BP, he personally received the most campaign financing from BP of any candidate, which puts him firmly in the pocket of "Big Oil"... a charge that has been leveled at the republicans by these clueless hypocritical liberals on a regular basis. Whether he likes it or not, 0bama owns this spill, and it is the worst environmental catastrophe in our history, far outstripping Katrina, which the Liberals severely castigated Bush for. Katrina was a natural disaster, whereas this oil spill is man made... and 0bama bears the responsibility for it.

I don't know much about these happenings but president obama isn't an oil expert people. He doesn't have the solution to problems like these. its like you expect him ti swim down there himself and stop the leak. who would you rather have in charge, oil companies who have an idea of what they're talking about, or the president who is just gunna act as middle man

Leadership is when someone's following. No one's following...I call that lack of leadership. Now the blame game...Barack's an expert at that. Unfortunately, I've worked for "bosses" like Barack...and to say the least, I hated every moment of it. Leadership? Are you kidding me?

I am not surprised. He actually hasn't shown much true leadership. He has done some arm twisting, made about a million promises, and a zillion speeches but not a single one of these things were about being a leader. The oil spill is a big, big deal and the President is not equipped to handle it. However, lack of leadership aside, I am not certain that anyone is equipped to handle it. But the lack of leadership certainly is making things more complicated.

I say we play the blame game later...like after the leak is stopped and the effected areas cleaned up. that is what they need to be focusing on right now. They can figure out the rest later. I would say there is plenty of blame to go around. BP should have already had a solid plan in place on what to do if something like this happened. they didn't. yes they have tried like heck to stop it....but they were chasing their tails trying to figure out how to do it. they should have been better prepared. They also should not have been trying to "control" the facts that were released. I know they did it try and save their stock prices...but still..it was wrong. Obama has shown a lack of leadership. He needed to get out in front of this issue and he has failed to do it. The state governments of the effected areas are screaming about the lack of response from the federal government. It has been slow and in some cases almost non existant. Obama talked about how Bush's response to Katrina was bad...well he does not have much room to talk about that anymore. Obama's response to this has been bad. He has dropped the ball. He knows it..that is why he is spending all his time trying to play the blame game. Because if we are all looking at who he is blaming (and they probly do share some of the blame) than we are not looking at how he is also to blame.

FINALLY, someone who doesn't follow the herd and put all the blame on the oil company. What I don't get, are those who are so quick to jump on the blame bandwagon driving cars? Using plastics in any way? Relying on medicines and machinery in anyway? Do they not realize if America has to rely on Middle East oil completely, we'll be back in Little House on the Prarie days and shoveling horse poop? Oh, I know...jobs! It will provide more jobs for the American people if we have to hire poop scoopers in every town and city across the land! I don't necessarily 100% exempt the oil company from responsibility, but seems to me that the current Administration (who love to fly in that big jet btw) wants the industry to go under so he can control who we buy our oil from?

Obama has a lot to answer for in his handling of this crisis. First he said publicly that he "accepted responsibility". Now he's looking for someone else to blame. His government is pursuing criminal charges against BP employees. That is not helpful at the moment. Clearly Obama has no clue what to do. A recent ABC news poll showed more Americans, 69%, are critical of Obama's handling of this oil crisis than they were (62%) with Bush's handling of Katrina. There are parallels between Obama's lack of leadership and authority over this as and Jimmy Carter's handling of the Iran hostage crisis. Obama is going to struggle in 2012.

For me I don't care about it because they want only to be rich rather than other.

The only thing he can and should be doing is helping to keep the oil from getting onto our shores if that is at all possible. Also he could have been intervening between oil companies and experts on the matter to get a solution to this by opening communication between BP and others who are experts in the field. BP is responsible, not the president. This is something out of his level of expertise and he should leave it up to those who have experience in this particular matter. Now, if he had been involved in oil then he would have the knowledge to deal with it. As it is, what can he possibly know about it, except for what we all do--oil spills cause things to die. It's an accident, not intentional. However, my personal view on this is why in the world did these corporations who have pipelines below sea level not have a plan for this? BP is not the one who has a pipeline below the sea.