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Do something, baby, do something: That's the cry from Obama supporters and opponents alike as the oil keeps gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
The political firestorm kept growing yesterday, with supporter James Carville ranting that the administraion has been "lackadaisical" and "naive" in its response to the disaster. He urged it to rapidly "move to Plan B."
But that suggests there was ever a Plan A.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is so frustrated with the lack of response to his plan to stop the slick with sand barriers that yesterday he called on the White House and BP to either "stop the oil spill or get out of the way."
"Plug the damn hole," President Obama reportedly barked at staffers in frustration after the explosion. That's right up there with "Heckuva job, Brownie" in terms of clueless statements uttered by presidents in the midst of nationally televised disasters.
Meanwhile, White House regret over Obama's politically expedient embrace of the "Drill, baby, drill" trope is growing faster than the vast oil slick.
Back on March 31, Obama announced -- to the horror of many of his supporters -- that he was expanding offshore drilling along the coastlines of the south and mid-Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico. Worse, he painted a (too) rosy scenario of offshore drilling being eminently safe.
True, it is rare that a full-blown environmental catastrophe results from an offshore oil well. But it can happen -- and a Democratic president who's embracing drilling ought to know the risks, and be prepared for the worst. But rather than planning for a spill, Obama parroted McCain-Palin talking points about how safe offshore drilling is.
Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration back in 1994 drafted plans for responding to a major Gulf oil spill, a response called "In-Situ Burn."
Ron Gourget, a former federal oil-spill-response coordinator and one author of the draft, told the Times of London: "The whole reason the plan was created was so that we could pull the trigger right away." The idea was to use barriers called "fire booms" to collect and contain the spill at sea -- then burn it off. He believes this could have captured 95 percent of the oil from this spill.
But at the time of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the federal government didn't have a single fire boom on hand. Nor is there any evidence that the government required BP to have any clear plan to deal with a massive spill. How is this OK?
The administration's chief response so far was to send out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to do his best impersonation of a totalitarian thug, proclaiming that the government would "have its boot on the throat of BP."
(Fun fact: While in the Senate, Salazar backed an increase in oil and gas leases in the Gulf Coast region by promoting and voting for the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.)
Since the "blame BP" strategy isn't working, Obama will today announce tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections for offshore drilling operations. Sounds nice -- except the problem isn't a lack of safety requirements, it's that the experts at the US Minerals Management Service ignored the existing requirements.
In fact, it was under Salazar's reign that the MMS approved BP's drilling without getting the permits required by law for drilling that might harm endangered species. The agency routinely overruled warnings regarding the safety and environmental impact of drilling proposals in the Gulf.
None of this was a secret.
It also shouldn't be a secret that no matter how many inspections and safety requirements you have, you can't ever completely prevent disasters like this one. If you're going to permit offshore drilling, be prepared to respond to a spill.
If he promised us anything, Obama promised us competence. Instead, we've gotten the Keystone Cops.