At first, it was Rush Limbaugh who tagged the gusher in the Gulf "Obama's Katrina" -- but now two lions of the left are warning the White House that the administration's handing of the environmental catastrophe is inflicting long-term political damage.
James Carville, a stalwart Obama defender -- and Louisiana native -- and MSNBC's Chris Mathews both voiced concerns about the president's handling of the spill, and Obama's decision to allow BP to take the lead on plugging the pipe, which has been pouring oil into the sea for a month.
Their statements came on a day when the press corps spent the better part of an hour grilling White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the administration's response to the Deepwater Horizons disaster -- and the cloud of confusion over the amount of oil spilling from the severed exploration pipe and BP's efforts to staunch the flow.
Matthews, speaking during an appearance with Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show," said Obama's response "scares me. He's been acting a little like a Vatican Observer here. When is he actually going to do something?"
Carville, one of the President Bush's harshest critics in the wake of the 2005 hurricane that decimated New Orleans, called Obama's response "lackadaisical."
"They are risking everything by this 'go along with BP' strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this," Carville told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday. "They seem like they're inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it'll all go away. It's not going away. It's growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they've got to go to Plan B." - Politico Story
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