Ben casselman, russell gold

With oil now lapping the Louisiana shore, a political oil panic is beginning to wash over the GOP. Somewhere, Rahm Emanuel is wondering if the Gulf spill is another crisis he won't have to let go to waste.

Start with Sarah Palin, who spent most of 2008 rapping Democrats for not being more supportive of domestic energy production, only to turn around and suggest President Obama was in bed with Big Oil. The argument seems to be that anyone who accepts oil contributions must be in favor of oil spills.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski rushed to back Interior Secretary's Ken Salazar's comment about putting his "boot on the neck" of BP, lecturing anyone not "angry" about the accident as lacking in "emotion." Louisiana Sen. David Vitter jumped into a debate over the liability cap. Democrats proposed an arbitrary $10 billion; Mr. Vitter countered with an arbitrary four quarters of company profit. This allowed Democrats to accuse the GOP of flacking for Big Oil.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions publicly berated an industry witness at a hearing for not knowing his "business." Over in the House, California Rep. Darrell Issa has taken the bold step of blaming federal employees, singling out the Minerals Management Service (MMS).

Yes, the politics of this are tricky for the GOP. The caucus is acutely aware that "drill, baby, drill" sits badly in black water. Gulf state politicians such as Mr. Vitter, up for election, are under intense pressure to be seen to be doing something, preferably to BP. Yet grandstanding is rarely smart politics.

Republicans have invested too many years supporting responsible energy development to now sound believable bashing the industry. And as the Vitter episode shows, there is little gained in engaging Democrats in legislative one-upmanship. In a competition over who is more irrationally "tough" on Big Oil, Republicans will not win.

As for conservatives who think there is black gold in politicizing this (Mrs. Palin), think again. Right now the story line is President Obama versus the Oil Spill, and that hurts him. Those hurling accusations threaten to turn it into President Obama versus the GOP, a fight the White House would prefer. Beltway politicking during a crisis just annoys the public.

What some Republicans are really risking is future energy development, and their role managing it. Oil slick or no, our energy needs remain the same. Americans get that, which is why even amid 24/7 slick coverage a CNN poll found a majority still supports offshore drilling. That number will rise with gas prices.

The left is already using this to impose the restrictions it has long desired. President Obama yesterday said he'd continue a deep water moratorium and announced a suspension in new Arctic drilling. That's surely just a start. And Republicans currently saying the industry doesn't know its business will be hard pressed to complain.

As for making a convenient target of the MMS, they might consider it is one of the few agencies worth its pay, a body that works with the industry to produce safe, affordable energy, rather than against it. It also has a great track record. The political pile-on instead resulted in the firing yesterday of the MMS head and guarantees a MMS larded down with new regulations. Next time gas hits $4 a gallon, Republicans (who may be in charge) will wish they had this ally.

The real worry is that Republicans are making themselves vulnerable to Mr. Obama's last big agenda item: cap and tax. The president has never made secret his desire to replace cheap and sure fossil fuels with expensive and unreliable energy sources. Up to now the GOP has offered good opposition.

Yet not wanting any crisis to go to waste, Mr. Obama has been out beating the industry and arguing the spill backs his call for climate legislation. This is a repeat of financial regulation, an attempt to force Republicans to either go along or get slammed for siding with Wall Street (in this case Big Oil). The more Republicans join the drill bash, the more opportunity Mr. Obama has to peel off votes.

If the GOP is looking for a political role model, they might try Sen. Mary Landrieu. The Louisiana Democrat has been a beacon of calm and sense. She's stayed focused on the immediate, avoided early accusations, and tried to keep the accident in perspective. At a recent Senate Environment hearing she summed it up neatly.

"I know that this committee has its eyes on the environment. We in Louisiana . . . not only have our eyes on it, we have our heart invested in it and we are making a living on that delta. But we need the oil that comes from offshore to keep this economy moving. We must examine what went wrong, weigh the risk and rewards, fix what is broken and move on . . . If we could do without this oil, we would. But we simply cannot—not today, not in the near future."

How principled. How refreshing.

BP and the Coast Guard yesterday were cautiously optimistic that the "top kill" maneuver could stanch the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, and let us hope this is the beginning of the end of the disaster. In Washington, meanwhile, the White House's panicked efforts to put a tourniquet on the political consequences were notably less successful.

"I take responsibility," President Obama said at his press conference yesterday—though responsibility for what? As he explained it, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was predominantly a failure of government, namely, the "scandalously close relationship between oil companies and the agency that regulates them." Mr. Obama is referring to the Minerals Management Service, or MMS, and he claims the Administration had a plan to end this putative regulatory capture.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar "was in the process of making these reforms," Mr. Obama continued. "But the point that I'm making is, is that, obviously, they weren't happening fast enough. If they had been happening fast enough, this might have been caught." In other words, this is really the fault of the Bush Administration, like everything else.

It would certainly be interesting to hear more details about this no doubt ambitious and unprecedented reform that no one knew anything about until this oil disaster. Mr. Obama made no mention of it when he announced in late March that new offshore areas would be opened to oil and gas development.

"This is not a decision that I've made lightly," the President said at the time. "It's one that Ken and I—as well as Carol Browner, my energy adviser, and others in my Administration—looked at closely for more than a year."

The ex post facto reform effort did get off to a start yesterday with Elizabeth Birnbaum's sacking as the head of MMS. The Administration wants Americans to believe that, finally, someone less corrupted by industry will run the joint—though it has been run for years, under Democratic and Republican Administrations, with rules established by Congress.

But is this the same Elizabeth Birnbaum who Mr. Salazar nominated to run MMS last June? Why yes, it is. "Her in-depth knowledge of energy issues, natural resource policy and environmental law as well as her managerial expertise and work in coalition building," Mr. Salazar said then, "will be especially important as we advance President Obama's new energy frontier and lay the foundation for a clean energy economy."

Mr. Obama's faith in government is so expansive that he thinks it can build a "new energy economy," so perhaps it's not surprising that he also thinks government could have averted the Gulf spill:

To wit, that a far-flung bureaucracy like MMS would have prevented a platform 40 miles offshore—using the planet's most advanced engineering technology to execute the undersea equivalent of landing on the moon—from suffering a massive explosion that killed 11 people and caused the rig to sink 4,993 feet to the ocean floor. Presumably, too, this oversight would have ensured that the cement around the wellhead's casing pipe sealed properly, and that the blowout preventer didn't malfunction, among other miracles.

Mr. Obama added yesterday, with his customary modesty, that "we're also moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again." This mainly seems to mean delaying or banning any offshore drilling leases in America.

The White House extended its moratorium on deep water drilling permits for another six months, suspended upcoming lease sales in the Gulf, suspended indefinitely 33 deep water exploratory wells, and delayed a drilling program in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort seas that was scheduled for next month. The green lobby has been obsessed with the last item for years; a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

Drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf accounts for about 27% of U.S. domestic oil production, and overreacting politically to a genuine disaster isn't in anyone's interests. Senator Mary Landrieu (D., La.) noted in a recent letter to Mr. Salazar that the moratorium even on the 57 Gulf platforms drilling in shallow water, which is much safer and with fewer risks, will result in more than 5,000 lost jobs if work doesn't resume within six weeks.

More broadly, whatever Mr. Obama's ambitions for windmills and plug-in cars, the world is dependent on oil. Most of the demand growth is coming from China, India and the developing world, and if America doesn't produce its own energy it will merely import it from somewhere else.

Messrs. Obama and Salazar claim to believe that one more bureaucratic reshuffle can prevent oil spills. They would be more honest, and reduce cynicism about government, if they acknowledged that no human endeavor is without risk, and that government can't prevent every accident.

©2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved.

GRAND ISLE, La.—BP PLC struggled for a second day Friday to stop the oil gushing from the area where the Deepwater Horizon blew up, as President Obama traveled here to try to assure residents the federal government is doing everything it can to protect them.

The president's visit to Grand Isle, a thin barrier island on the far southern tip of Louisiana about two and a half hours south of New Orleans, came as BP faced a day of stops and starts in its latest effort to stem the flow of oil. In the operation, known as a "top kill," heavy drilling liquids were being pumped into the well to stem the gushing oil.

The president's trip came after several days of rising criticism in Washington and from local and state officials, coastal residents and fishermen that his administration hasn't taken command of the Gulf spill. It was Mr. Obama's second trip to the Louisiana coast since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11, rupturing the pipe below and setting off the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

After picking up tar balls on a beach here, Mr. Obama met the governors of Louisiana, Alabama and Florida and local officials. Nearby, a young man held a hand-written sign reading, "Clean up the Gulf," in black letters resembling dripping oil.

Flanked by the governors, the president acknowledged the frustration and anger wouldn't lift until the flow is stopped and the oil is cleaned. But he gave what he called a solemn pledge: "We will hold ourselves responsible to do what it takes, as long as it takes, to stop this catastrophe, to repair the damage and to keep this region on its feet."

His brief visit, interrupting a Memorial Day vacation in Chicago, followed a series of moves Thursday that included slamming the brakes on offshore oil drilling and accepting the resignation of his top oil regulator.

Though some Louisianans have expressed warinesss of the government since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it has taken time for anger over the spill to build. Some residents were initially optimistic about the Obama administration's promise to respond swiftly to the disaster.

Weeks later, the oil threatens to degrade Louisiana's fragile marshlands, doing long term damage to the state's vital fishing and tourism industries. And initial hopefulness has eroded in recent days as the federal government has continued looking for direction to BP, which has been unable to put a stop to the runaway spill despite company and government spending of more than $930 million.

President Obama said experts were ready to intervene if the "top kill" operation failed. Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said Friday afternoon it was still unclear whether the procedure had been a success, although it was "going basically according to plan."

The company has already started discussing a new back-up plan, which could be deployed in a couple of days, and would involve cutting and removing the damaged pipe from which the crude is leaking. BP would then lower a containment dome onto the top of the huge stack of valves standing on the seabed known as a blow-out preventer and bring oil and gas through it up to a vessel on the surface.

In the meantime, BP continued Friday periodically pumping heavy fluid under pressure into the blowout preventer and then monitoring the results. Theoretically, the fluid should be heavy enough to counteract the pressure of the oil surging upwards. If the operation proves successful, cement would then be injected into the well to seal it.

The company was also injecting junk, such as golf balls and shredded tires, to plug leaks in the blowout preventer. Mr. Suttles said that was "helping to some degree."

All these procedures would still be stop-gap measures until a relief well can be drilled, which will take two months or more.

Meanwhile, as oil has begun washing ashore, state and local officials have begun complaining more vocally about a lack of assistance from the federal government.

Louisiana U.S. Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, called the federal response "B.S." and suggested the president cancel his weekend vacation Friday during a radio interview with always-lively New Orleans talk radio station WWL, which serves as a lightning rod for local angst.

One caller grumbled, "Is the Louisiana fishing industry not on the 'too big to fail' list?"

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, this past week criticized federal authorities for not providing enough boom to protect the Louisiana coastline, while local parish leaders complained that it is taking too long to cut through federal red tape and obtain permission to build sand berms along the coast to block oil from moving inside.

"I'm not for bigger government, but it is time for the president to take over," Billy Ward said Friday as he walked along Grand Isle's beach. "BP cut corners and now all of southern Louisiana is suffering. If you can't fish here, this island is dead."

The beaches here, which would have swelled this holiday weekend with visitors, were blocked off with wooden "Beach Closed" signs largely and devoid of visitors Friday other than cleanup crews.

An unusually high number of crews arrived in yellow school buses Friday morning, worked feverishly to tidy up the beaches prior to the president's arrival, and then quickly left after he flew past, angering some locals.

"Right when the helicopters got out of view, they took their work clothes off and threw them in the trash," said Bill Hadaway, 58, an electrical contractor.

©2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Gulf oil spill may be a good deal bigger even than the numbers issued Thursday suggest, some of the scientists who worked on the estimate said.

BP PLC's oil well is leaking between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of oil a day, according to initial estimates announced by the U.S. Geological Survey on Thursday. Even using the more conservative figure, of 12,000 barrels a day, the spill already has become the largest in U.S. history, surpassing that of the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska in 1989. The USGS statement Thursday called the numbers "the overall best initial estimate for the lower and upper boundaries."

But some of the researchers who came up with the range of 12,000 to 19,000 say that is merely the minimum amount gushing out, not the lower and upper limits.

"It would be irresponsible and unscientific to claim an upper bound," Ira Leifer, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said in an interview. Dr. Leifer is a part of the National Incident Command's Flow Rate Technical Group, which produced the estimate.

UC-Santa Barbara issued a statement Thursday in which Dr. Leifer said that "it's safe to say that the total amount is significantly larger" than 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. He urged that the statement be issued because "I wanted to stand up for academic integrity," he said in the interview.

The university is providing, upon request, a document that explains how scientists who reported to the USGS arrived at their estimate by observing the plume of oil from the leak site on videos provided by BP. In the document, the research team, led by William J. Lehr, senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Response and Restoration, states that it is providing "a range of values that represent an estimated minimum."

"There are and will continue to be differing estimates and conclusions within the group," USGS spokeswoman Julie Rodriguez said in a written statement. These disagreements "represent a healthy and important part of the process that will continue to help us get closer to more and more accurate estimates," Ms. Rodriguez said.

Dr. Leifer, in an interview, and the report also said BP provided low-quality video of the leak site that hindered efforts to make an estimate.

"After some initial hiccups around video resolution and file sizes, we have been supplying [researchers] with large quantities of data," BP spokesman John Curry said.

©2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved.

When Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen saw plumes of fire shooting from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, he knew oil would eventually start gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, he said in an interview.

But it wasn't until 10 days later that White House energy czar Carol Browner concluded that a serious situation was becoming a major disaster. BP PLC had assured her, she said in an interview, that a blow-out preventer atop the well could be used to stanch the gusher.

On April 30, she learned that wasn't so, she said.

A BP official said Friday that the device is designed to be activated by remotely operated submarines if it isn't triggered automatically. For at least the first week, that was the focus of efforts to stop the flow of oil.

To foes and even some friends, the White House has appeared reactive to what is now the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Until Thursday, President Barack Obama, while responding to developments, had refrained from making dramatic policy gestures.

On the Gulf Coast in particular, critics say, the federal effort has been uncoordinated and undirected. Top officials were late to grasp the magnitude of the problem and to respond to requests from local officials, and at times overestimated the federal government's ability to stem the gusher, say local officials.

But White House officials say the administration has responded aggressively from the moment the rig blew up.

In the 37 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people and touching off a huge undersea oil leak, Mr. Obama and White House officials have mobilized what they say is the largest oil-spill cleanup effort in U.S. history. But while the government response officially was launched April 22, the administration has struggled to convince Gulf Coast residents, and political figures on the left and right, that its efforts have been sufficient.

Mr. Obama made his second trip to the Louisiana coast Friday, picking up tar balls at Grand Isle and meeting with the governors of Louisiana, Alabama and Florida and local officials.

Administration officials now say they relied too heavily on statements by the Coast Guard and BP—which owns the well—that just 1,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking. On April 29, the official estimate of the flow rose to 5,000 barrels a day; on Thursday, government scientists said the figure was more likely 12,000 to 19,000 barrels.

At a congressional hearing Thursday, BP America Chairman Lamar McKay said the 1,000-barrels-a-day figure "was a unified-command estimate." He acknowledged BP "had input" on the figure, but said that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "contributed information" as well. He added that Adm. Allen "has been clear that whether it was one, five, 10 or 15 [thousand], it would not have changed the response."

On April 21, Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes flew to Louisiana, while the first Oval Office meeting on the issue was held April 22. Navy and Coast Guard boats were dispatched immediately to fight the fire.

John Brennan, the White House's counter-terrorism and emergency-incident chief, was put in charge. Ms. Browner joined as co-coordinator to assess policy implications.

Much of the command structure for the spill response is dictated by law. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 mandates the structure of a National Response Team, now headed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; a National Incident Commander, Adm. Allen; and an on-site coordinator, Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry.

But that law gives BP primary responsibility to prepare for such an event.

The White House's assessment of the unfolding crisis changed drastically April 28, when officials learned of a third leak. If true, the president said, the government had to plan for "catastrophic failure," according to National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

Louisiana officials had said all along that keeping oil away from the coastline should be the federal government's top priority. But late last week, in Terrebonne Parish, west of the Mississippi River along the coast, boom sat waiting to be installed for more than a day. Local leaders were incensed, and lashed out at federal officials and BP.

"Boom and workers sat for days waiting for orders," Gov. Bobby Jindal said on Monday. "We've been frustrated with the disjointed response to date."

The BP official defended the company's efforts, saying two million feet of hard boom and another million feet of soft, absorbent boom have been deployed. At least a dozen staging areas are in action, he said.

©2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Oil and gas companies Friday began shutting down 33 oil-exploration rigs operating in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico in response to government demands while bristling at the prospect of the six-month drilling ban.

The ban won't hurt domestic oil and gas production in the short-term, analysts said, but it provoked an outcry among energy companies and suppliers that operated in the region and raised the spectre of long-term production declines.

Offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico accounts for about one quarter of U.S. oil and gas production.

The drilling moratorium threatens new hardships for the hundreds oil-service companies, already hurt by the recession, that supply the steel-tubing, engineering services, drilling crews and marine supply boats critical to offshore exploration.

This week, shares of service firms Baker Hughes Inc. and Schlumberger Ltd. declined 8.8% and 7.2%, respectively, while contract-driller Noble Corp. fell 10%.

Deutsche Bank energy economist Adam Sieminski said Friday the drilling pause ordered by President Barack Obama will cut oil production next year by 160,000 barrels a day, or about 8% of Gulf production.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Marathon Oil Corp., Statoil ASA, Eni Spa and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. were conducting exploratory drilling in the area where the halt was ordered, the Minerals and Mining Service said.

Mr. Obama on Thursday ordered rigs operating in the deepwater Gulf to stop drilling and banned further exploration in the Gulf for six months. The measures are believed to be the first step toward an overhaul of offshore drilling laws.

Among oil producers, Chevron is one of the most exposed to the drilling ban. It warned an offshore-drilling moratorium extension will have a "lasting" negative impact in the U.S. economy and the nation's efforts to enhance energy security.

Chevron has staked much of its production growth on exploration in the region. "We believe responsible drilling should be allowed to continue," said spokesman Mickey Driver.

The drilling halt, which includes offshore Alaska and Virginia, underscores the long-lasting impact the Deepwater Horizon explosion, now the worst oil spill in U.S. history, could have for the global oil industry. Major oil companies consider the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico a prime area for growth. It stands as one of the last oil-rich areas still open to investment, near existing infrastructure and subject to a stable tax regime.

In 2007, production in waters greater than 500-feet deep provided 70% of the oil and 36% of the natural gas from Gulf of Mexico. The 20 most-prolific producing areas in the Gulf are located in such waters, according to the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group.

Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie said the development of several oil discoveries in the area could be jeopardized by delays and substantial cost increases resulting from potentially stricter safety regulations. The delays and higher costs could defer as much as 19%, or 350,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, of projected deepwater Gulf production in 2015 and 2016, it said.

The consultancy also estimates that a 10% increase in overall capital expenditure would put several discoveries close to, or below, the profitability rates required to proceed with a project, according to the report.

Officials from states where energy is a large part of the economy joined with trade groups in warning of the consequences of an indefinite drilling suspension.

Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) said, "Further hindering domestic energy production will lead directly to job losses, lost revenue and higher fuel prices for all Americans."
©2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved.

WASHINGTON—The Interior Department on Friday named the head of its federal-land-management bureau as acting director of the Minerals Management Service, one day after the abrupt departure of the head of the troubled agency that oversees offshore drilling.

Bob Abbey, director of the Bureau of Land Management, will succeed former MMS Director Elizabeth Birnbaum on an acting basis. Mr. Abbey will manage a previously announced reorganization of the MMS into three separate agencies.

Ms. Birnbaum quit Thursday after being told by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's office not to accompany him to a congressional hearing on the causes of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the resulting Gulf oil spill, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Shortly before the 10 a.m. hearing, Ms. Birnbaum called the panel's chairman, Rep. James Moran (D., Va.), and told him she had been instructed by Mr. Salazar's office not to attend, these people said.

Mr. Moran, according to these people, then called Mr. Salazar's office seeking an explanation. Mr. Salazar spoke to Ms. Birnbaum and conveyed his displeasure with her handling of the matter, these people said. She then resigned.

President Barack Obama, during a news conference that began shortly before 1 p.m. Thursday, said he didn't know the circumstances surrounding Ms. Birnbaum's exit.

Mr. Moran couldn't be reached. A Salazar spokeswoman referred back to an earlier statement, in which Mr. Salazar said Ms. Birnbaum had resigned "on her own terms." Ms. Birnbaum couldn't be reached. An Interior Department spokeswoman said Mr. Abbey wasn't available.

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve.

And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public's fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don't get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.

In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—"catastrophe," etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." But his strategic problem was that he'd already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done.

The original sin in my view is that as soon as the oil rig accident happened the president tried to maintain distance between the gusher and his presidency. He wanted people to associate the disaster with BP and not him. When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way. In any case, the strategy was always a little mad. Americans would never think an international petroleum company based in London would worry as much about American shores and wildlife as, say, Americans would. They were never going to blame only BP, or trust it.

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet the need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: "We pay so much for the government and it can't cap an undersea oil well!"

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush's incompetence and conservatives' failure to "believe in government." But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.

Remarkable too is the way both BP and the government, 40 days in, continue to act shocked, shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If you're drilling for oil in the deep sea, of course something terrible can happen, so you have a plan on what to do when it does.

How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We're plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensable nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.

Mr. Obama himself, when running for president, made much of Bush administration distraction and detachment during Katrina. Now the Republican Party will, understandably, go to town on Mr. Obama's having gone before this week only once to the gulf, and the fund-raiser in San Francisco that seemed to take precedence, and the EPA chief who decided to cancel a New York fund-raiser only after the press reported that she planned to attend.

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: When you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.