Obama and the oil gusher

Calling the BP drilling disaster "Obama's Katrina" is unfair, although there are similarities and increasing concerns that he has been too uninvolved. But there are major differences. With Katrina, it was the total responsibility of the government to fix the problem and rescue the people. In the oil disaster, BP has the first line of responsibility to fix the problem. And, as devastating as it is proving to be for the coast and wetlands of Louisiana, it was not an immediate matter of rescuing people who would die.

Having said that, time has run out to say it's BP's responsibility. Up until now, there may not have been much the government could do that BP wasn't doing -- or trying to do. Experts have had few suggestions that weren't being tried. But now it's time for Obama to take charge of the operation.

As Dan Froomkin writes on Huffington Post, it's also time for Obama to use this disaster as a teachable moment.

• As environmentalists have been saying for weeks, the spill is a teachable moment that Obama could use to galvanize the nation behind significant energy and climate-change legislation that would aggressively wean the nation off fossil fuels.
• Similarly, Obama missed an opportunity to call attention to the near-complete regulatory failure that led up to the disaster, as a way of reminding the nation of the need for a government that actively protects the interests of its people against those who would otherwise pursue profit without limits. . . .
  
• But little of this is likely to happen. Instead, the Gulf oil spill risks turning into an object lesson in ineffective leadership and the corporate capture of government -- precisely the opposite of the lessons we expected Obama to teach the nation.

Indeed. Obama will have a news conference today. Let's see if he steps up to the plate, as he has so often done on other issues that threatened to swamp his presidency.

Ralph