Obama Primed to Take More Active Role on Oil Spill

It's been five weeks since the explosion in the Gulf that caused 11 deaths and led to what may be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, President Obama has visited the region only once since then, a brief trip on a Sunday more than 3 weeks ago.

He has also declined to answer questions from the press, today in the Rose Garden ignoring the question: "Mr. President, do you have confidence in BP to plug that hole?" (I know he heard me - I was only 10 feet away as he quietly shook hands after an event with small business owners.)

I don't like shouting questions - my mother tells me it's rude, and she's right. But my job is to get answers to questions the American people are asking, and so far the president has given us no other opportunity to do so.

Today in fact he came so close to the cameras - and reporters - I thought he was hinting that he wanted to take a question. I was wrong.

Mark Knoller, CBS News White House correspondent and indefatigable presidential record-keeper (one of my great fortunes is that I get to sit a few feet from Mark-the-human-encyclopedia) says that Mr. Obama has addressed the spill a mere six times in 5 weeks. Only 3 were exclusively devoted to the spill: the Sunday visit on May 2; the "angry and frustrated" statement in the Rose Garden May 14; and his weekly radio/internet address May 22.

Yes, it's true as the White House said in a statement today: "The Administration has mobilized one of the largest responses to a catastrophic event in history, with more than 1,200 vessels in the region and more than 22,000 people, including many of the brightest scientific minds from both the public and private sector, working around the clock to mitigate the oil's impact."

Is Blame Shifting From BP to the Government?
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Washington Unplugged: White House Feeling the Heat
Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

But a growing number of environmentalists, political commentators and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are surprised - some are angry - that the president himself isn't taking a more hands-on approach to such a momentous disaster. It may be, as various commentators have suggested, that the president is keeping his distance so that this remains BP's disaster, not his.

In fact, the new CBS News poll shows BP is clearly the primary villain in the minds of the American people - 18 percent approve of BP's handling of the spill, 70 percent disapprove. But the news for the president is not good either: only 35 percent approve of the administration's handling of the spill, while 45 percent disapprove.

CBS's producers and reporters covering the story from the Gulf tell me that BP is seen as the main bad guy there too. But they also say criticism of the president is growing - over his failure to spend time there, and his failure to give it a daily sense of extreme urgency with his own personal stamp.

All that may change this week. Thursday the president is scheduled to receive a report from Interior Secretary Salazar on the spill, and Robert Gibbs said during Monday's briefing that we can expect the president to speak about the report AND take some questions. When he said that some reporters were so taken aback they didn't believe their ears - and waited for the transcript for confirmation before reporting it.

Then on Friday the president will go to Louisiana, for only the second time since it all began. (He'll fly there from Chicago where he's spending the Memorial Day weekend.)

Is this an indication that he's finally ready, figuratively speaking, to jump into the spill with both feet? I wish I could tell you.

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Chip Reid is CBS News' chief White House correspondent. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here.

[maxboll]

WE STRONGELY ASK CBSNEWS; THAT THEY WORK WITH FAIR PLAY WITH THE UNITED STATES GAVERMENT. DO NOT ABSOLUTLY TRY TO PRESURE THE PRESIDENT, BECOUSE CBSNEWS NEVER EVER DID BEFORE.

[RobAla]

Actually, Washington has no clue what to do to stop the leak. Only the experts at BP have any hope of stopping it. However, Washington could do more to help in the cleanup. BP has 22,000 people working this. The laws indicate that Washington has responsibility in cleaning up after a disaster, and this is a disaster.

[metermender]

Obama jumped on this thing right away and has thousands of people working on it and he is in constant contact with the people in charge.I'm sure he has a lot more things to do than fly down there every day and get in the way. The republicans are just trying to make him look worse than Bush, as if that is possible. If he did go down there often, they would blast him for that.

[jgg000101]

actually, bush went to louisiana 7X in the first 36 days after katrina and obama has visited the gulf once. If anyone is making obama look bad it is himself. And it's funny how he has time to appear on the superbowl, the NCAA championships, SNL, Celebrity Chef and Letterman but he doesn't have time for a press conference. Hate to burst your obama bubble but he's making bush look like a rocket scientist.

[Perish1]

Just Obama waiting on the issue to resolve itself. Hasn't worked and thepolls show his popularity slipping. Now he has to make a show of acringbut it will probably be only a show. Of course the hard core Obama followers will make excuses for him and blame every republican back to Abe Lincoln for going to a night at the theater.

[Perish1]

It should say" make a show of caring"

[MurdochSucks]

Had Obama gotten involved any earlier, the right-wing pr!cks like Rand Paul and his tea toting lunatics would be screaming Socialist! Marxist! Communist! Fascist! It's ridiculous that you are now screaming about him taking too long.

[wfw3536]

Maybe he should have thought of this 30 some days ago. His administration has been asleep at the switch trusting BP. His administration approved this well. The folks down there have been waiting over 2 weeks to get permission to build a barrier to protect our wetland, and yet no action by the federal government. How sad that this admistration does not have a clue.

[rightbehind]

The US government doesn't even own equipment to deal with oil spills. Ronny raygun made big government get out of the way. He said government was the problem. I don't think the tax payers are going to stand for the government not being able to deal with this in the future.

[MurdochSucks]

BP is supposed to be the expert here, and Obama was trying to save some taxpayer dollars and allow business to do the right thing. Obviously they haven't so now they need the government that they hate to step in and take care of things on the taxpayer's dole. Thank you Repubicans for deregulating and sterilizing the federal government over the last 30 years.

@wfw: BP is one of the largest donors of the Republican party as well. Nice try lying through omission, though.

@rightbehind: I agree, R2 was a mess for our tax code, our national debt, our anti-trust laws, and prisons (the "war on drugs" has led to an extremely high incarceration rate among civilized nations), our environment and our future in general. And he is the demigod of the Republican party, the litmus that they judge themselves by. Sure he got the Russians to "tear down that wall" but he also destroyed our nation's ability for a fruitful time for ages. Thank you Ronald.

[rightbehind]

He can start by increasing the size of the Federal government to include tankers with built in water oil separators that can clean up oil slicks and hold 1 million gallons of oil each. Take it out of the budget for the military industrial complex and assign them to the coast guard. Place them within 1 hour of any oil spill along our coast. It should also include Deep sea research vehicles and associated robots. Immediately federal inspectors should be hired to start inspecting all of these off shore rigs. There are approximately 4000 well heads off our coast. This was just 1 and the rest are not getting any younger.

[votedforobama]

Great Idea Mr. Spock. Sulu, power up the Enterprise. Scotty, beam Mr. Obama down to the well head right away!

[scottyusa]

Why does Obama always have to be pushed into taking an active roll in important matters? This guy is way too slow. Same thing with the border. He has his priorities messed up for sure and he is no leader I might add.

[rightbehind]

Those offshore oil rigs were covered by contract long before this guy took office. Contracts controlled by global corporations who do business from island tax havens.

[tsigili]

Just another photo op......because he is getting lots of criticism, he wants to deflect.

[stn_sage]

Five weeks into the worst oil spill in American history, and he's thinking about taking a more active role?!

YIKES! What's there to mull over?! It's a 'no-brainer'!

With 'W', we knew we had 'an empty suit'!
With Obama, we've had to find out the hard way!

OUCH! What a disappointment he's turned out to be!