As he travels the Gulf Coast on Friday, President Obama is trying to reinforce the message he pushed during a White House news conference Thursday: that he and his administration are "fully engaged" in trying to fix, and clean up, the increasingly devastating oil spill. "I take responsibility," Obama said. "It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down."
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But stepping forward with a more prominent message of responsibility is also politically tricky, because the spill is a situation that neither he nor anybody in his administration seems able to really control. As Obama acknowledged Thursday, the government does not have the technology to take over BP's attempts to plug the underwater well. And it's BP that's in charge of the coastal cleanup.
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In making his second trip to the region, Obama could also be exposing himself to even greater political fallout, especially if BP can't get the spill stopped. No doubt a presidential photo-op can be helpful in pushing the main players in an emergency to get their acts together. But if these moves are ultimately meaningless in fixing a situation, it's damaging to the White House.
Obama has so far avoided most of the public relations pitfalls that plagued the Bush administration after 2005's Hurricane Katrina in the same region. So far, there has been nothing as damaging as the now-infamous image of Bush's Air Force One flyover of New Orleans. But it's worth remembering that it wasn't just the slow initial response that hurt Bush in the public eye. Bush was also damaged by promises of rapid action to help restore Katrina victims to their homes and former lives — pledges that became the subject of bitter mockery in the Gulf after years of bureaucratic delay and botched execution.
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