Two Presidents. Two Disasters. Two Failures.

Bush and the Republicans paid a heavy price for the failures following Katrina. Now, with the BP oil spill, Obama is trying to deflect similar responsibility by blaming anything and anyone, totally outside of his Administration, having anything at all to do with the disaster.

However, in both cases, the problem is one of government response. Bush and his "Brownie" were late to the game in protecting New Orleans and, subsequently, the political punishment was severe. Now, Obama finds himself in a similar pickle because of his Administration's lack of response to the oil spill disaster. In yesterday's press conference, Obama, again, tried to have it both ways. On the one hand, he made the claim that his people were in charge from day one but, at the same time, he clearly implied that BP was on their own when he said it was BP's responsibility to stop the spill and clean up the environment. Either the government is in charge or BP is? Which is it?

Obama is the most powerful man in the world in terms of what is at his disposal to fix any problem. He has 3 million active and reserve military that he could have tapped into for any abatement and cleanup. But, Obama didn't use the military service except to rely on a few Coast Guard personnel to work on the spill. He could have commandeered any number of oil booms from around the country and used the Air Force to airlift them to the gulf for deployment.

He could also have enlisted the talents of other oil companies in finding a solution.
From day one, Obama should have been on the horn talking to the CEO's of all the top American oil companies to ask them to join in on a task force to fix this blowout problem. He should have made it clear that all oil companies have a vested stake in this because it could affect the future of all drilling in this country. That would have been true leadership. But, Obama and all the Democrats are always at odds with the oil companies because of their "environmentalist" campaign contributions. However, oil is one of the most strategic commodities in all the world and absolutely essential to our national security; and, having an adversarial relationship with the industry is beyond belief.

Obama deserves the blame he's now getting and, by rights, a lot more. His ineptness is not only being criticized by the right, but by members of his own party. To say that this isn't his Katrina is just putting the hiding of Obama's ineptness above the destruction of the ecology and livelihoods of the Gulf region.