Is Obama doing a good job handling the BP oil spill? (Contest Question!)?

Considering the enormity of such a situation, and that something like this has never happened before, one could say he is doing a good job. However, the facts need to be brought to face, instead of ignored. Starting at the beginning, lets take a look at the history of the oil rig, the Deepwater Horizon.

Construction started on it in December of 1998 in Ulsan, South Korea. It was delivered in February of 2001 to Transocean after they acquired R&B Falcon, whom it was originally built for. BP leased it in 2008, and extended their contract to 2013 in October 2009.

Which leaves us where we are today, in a huge heaping mess of finger pointing. BP was first on the scene. It took Obama about a week to recognize there was a problem, and about another week after that for us to even hear that he acknowledged it.

Also to please some conspiracy theorists, this very well could have been a terroristic attack on the South Koreans. The rig was built in South Korea, and was destroyed shortly after a threat from North Korea to South Korea. I mean seriously, how could a pipe with 10ft thick walls seperate at the bottom of the shaft?

Ok, back to facts. From day 5 (or 6 or 7 etc. ) Obama was pointing his finger at BP claiming it was their fault something like this happened.In reality, the finger should be pointed at both parties, BP and Obama. Obama has been too lax in the rules and regulations regarding oil drilling safety.

There should have been a number of skimmers down in the Gulf of Mexico long before this happened. Yet there wasn't a single skimmer when the pipe blew. BP also was riding that same bandwagon.

Because it wasn't required to follow some of the safety 'recommendations', BP chose not to. Now once this happened, BP came to Obama with their plan of action, and Obama turned them down, and told them to try other means to fix the pipe. What did they end up doing?

Covering the hole with a cap, which was their first PoA. On top of all this, BP CEO Tony Hayward has to deal with the pressure of taking care of the spill in the Gulf, AND all the pressure that the president, his administration, he press, you guys, and just about everybody else is putting on him. I would like to see somebody step into his shoes RIGHT NOW, and not feel the same way he is right now.

Obama is currently working to stop drilling in the US completely. He has already stopped Alaskan drilling, and US Gulf drilling. This is going to cause the prices of gas and other oil-based products to inflate dramatically, which will cause the economy to sink further into the ground.

What Obama needs to do is either A) get him and his administration out of office and replaced with people who know how to run a country, or B) take the puppet masters hand out of his back and start running the country he promised he was going to run. He is planning to increase the national debt by 20% by 2015 and as much as 100% by 2020. Do we not see a problem here?

He is PLANNING on running us into the ground. I would like to be disproved when I state that we have more debt than there is money on this planet. The oil spill is going to be an eye opener for many people who don't know what goes on in the process of drilling oil, and what is REALLY going on behind the closed doors of the White House Administration.

(Which were actually promised to be open doors by the way).

I don't think so. S reaction and response have been unbelievably slow for the magnitude of such an environmental catastrophe. Using the word "ass" does not create magic.

I think there are times when the use of such word is warranted, but this is not the right time. It was probably well-meant, but it sounds like a childish reaction to such a serious problem. Definitely not a good example for kids from one to ninety-two.

We need to clean up and fix, not engage in a blame game right now. They're more focused on measuring the amount of damage in thousands of barrels every day than on *fast* searching for the best technologies available to undo the dirt *fast* and implementing them *fast*. I know the limits of the US president's power.

He is far from being the world's most powerful person. The world's richest people, the real ones, are the most powerful, but a US president can stand up to his job and do what he has to do. Obama has the voice that can break the limits of his power.

S words endeared him to America and the world, he should choose them more carefully now. youtube.com/watch?v=MV1DeWJj46A.

I think the whole world is doing a bad job handling the oil spill. I understand that there are so many wars and economies failing and threats of nuclear war with which the countries of the world are dealing. The world is in turmoil.

But I think that there should be a world priority list that overrides everything else. Included on this list should be the preservation of clean WATER. It seems that the entire reaction to the oil spill is so blazier.

This is mind boggling. BP is using a chemical, Corexit 9500, to disperse the oil. Corexit is a toxic chemical and causes irritation to not only human skin, but to the respiratory system, and chemical pneumonia.

Workers complained of headaches, nausea, and breathing problems when using this chemical. BP has already used almost 900,000 gallons of this stuff. Guess where this stuff goes during the natural process of evaporation.It goes into the clouds, along with our RAIN.

With hurricane season already upon us and oil AND toxic chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico it would seem that everyone would be worried about the water supplies of the world. But they're not. This is not the time to be looking for someone to blame, this is the time to get in there and fix it.

There's plenty of blame to go around and should be doled out later. Fire fighters put an arson fire out before they go after the arsonist. Where's Green Peace?

Where are all the Green people? Where's everyone who drinks water? It's outrageous that millions of gallons of oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and the state of California is boycotting Arizona.

And where's this oil coming from? I thought we didn't have any oil, that's why we are buying it from everyone else. Duped, again, I guess.

It seems to me that Obama has just recently realized that he was elected as the president of the United States, not president of the Student Council. The man does not have a clue as to what to do about anything. He tried to appease the country by saying that he has the Nobel Prize winner, Energy Secretary Steven Chu working on the problem.

I've lost some confidence in the Nobel process since they gave Obama one. So there's two Nobel prize winners working on the problem, so what? I don't get it.

"Actions speak louder than words" they say. So why doesn't everyone just shut up and DO SOMETHING.

First, the blame should be placed on the builders of the oil platform and rigging, Transocean Ltd (see source 1, below). Second, BP is no more at fault for the spill than anyone else who rents property. Imagine if you rented an apartment, and inspectors found building/zoning code violations in it.

Who should the blame go to? You? The landlord?

The builder? The previous building/zoning inspector(s)? However, thanks to a US law (see source 2, below), the blame goes to the owner, BP, who is, ultimately, deemed responsible.As bizarre as that seems, given my apartment rental example, the law was passed to avoid having to do research to find the responsible parties, which is understandable.

This is similar to a multiple car accident: The police will file a report, blame the most likely driver, then leave it to the insurance companies and courts to decide who is to blame, who needs to pay the others, and who will get paid as a result of the accident. Third, given the above two, it is equally impossible for anyone not directly connected with the oil spill to do anything about it, other than to requisition aid in whatever forms are necessary, which President Obama, Congress, the Senate, and State and local governments have done. Of course, that won't help the fisherman and others whose livelihoods are being destroyed along with the environment.

Even though some are being paid for the use of their boats at $1,000/day - 3,000/day (see sources 3 and 4, below), that will not help with long-term issues, including the affects of the oil spill on the health of all clean-up workers, as well as future catches. Can the US government, or anyone else for that matter, do anything more than point fingers?No. Should President Obama accept blame for the incident under his "watch"?

While it is nice to think that any good Captain or Commander-in-Chief might do so, realistically speaking, the answer is "no". Assuming this was truly an "accident" (i.e. , as opposed to sabotage in an effort to raise gas prices or collect insurance money, which, I'm sure, will be among the next major topic for conspiracy theorists/nuts), there is nothing anyone can do, at this point, except keep pumping money, manpower, and resources, into the clean-up efforts, and do whatever is necessary to prevent such in the future, such as preventing any further deep water oil platforms from being constructed, and putting additional safeguards into existing ones.

Ironically, President Obama removed a 20-year ban preventing offshore oil drilling just days before this current incident (see source 4, below). Of course, lifting the ban at that time had nothing to do with this current incident, though, in hindsight, his legacy will be viewed as being environmentally unfriendly in the wake of it.So, is President Obama (and the current administration) doing a good job handling this current crisis? Considering there is little anyone can do about it, the conclusion is, yes, he is doing as good a job as anyone could do, at this point.

However, it remains to be seen how he will affect US or international laws concerning offshore drilling, so that future generations will not have another such accident to deal with.

I would say no. The problem has been all the politics that went on in the first month rather than addressing the problem. I took a month to get down there.

All we here is how bad BP is. Yes that diverts the blame but what other fixing the problem and then recriminations. It is terrible the way the oysters, fish, birds are all getting destroyed.

Secondly the six month ban on top of destroyed industries has left the Gulf economy shot. Now S&P has downgraded the drillers which flows on to the whole industry and the US. Obviously it is so distressing but we should be proactive and he we are after a month doing thinks.It concerns me all the noise without substance.

I did expect more from him.

In general, I don't believe he is handling much of anything politically except his own campaign. He has been very slow to react to this magnitude of a crisis and has not really shown ANYthing he is doing to help, assist, give suggestions, or offer assistance to anyone or anything related to the oil spill. I'm not saying anyone else is doing any better but it sure seems like the President would have a more powerful impact.

He answers stategically placed questions with well thought out, generic, although well written responses. This does not make him a great leader for his issue. A catastrophe of this magnitude needs a lot more input from our LEADER than what has been given or shown.

A leader, THE leader, should be giving much more concern and leadership to this situation. I think it really struck me when he sent the Vice President to the Veteran's ceremony on Memorial Day while he was "otherwise detained". This oil spill in the Gulf is a disaster and will affect many aspects of our environment.

This should take some sort of presidence over any many of the issues he has been handling.

Jesus... everyone in the US thinks the president is supposed to fix everything. What in the hell is he supposed to do, get in the water and fix it himself? I'm not supporting BP here, I'm just saying that Obama can't possibly fix everything!

The US has bigger problems like our economy, how many things can the guy focus on at one time? I bet if you ask the BP folks they'll tell you that Obama is up in there dish. I think the problem is that politicians campaign promising to fix everything... so I'll give you that.

The ironic thing is that we'd never vote for a guy who would campaign based on this premise "... I'm gonna do the best job I can, but I'm not going to be able to fix everything. " We'd never vote for a guy with that honesty... we WANT a guy to tell us he'll fix everything... we WANT a guy who says he'll lower taxes, fix unemployment, the economy, the environment and oh yeah... don't forget stop terrorism.No ONE person can fix all of these monumental issues, throw on top of him this BP issue.... forget about it!

S good job will be related to whether or not he can sit down with the BP CEO, look him straight in the face, and while toasting to a brew of Yingling say, "You acted stupidly," all-the-while with VP Joe B sitting upwind so his hair transplants won't become disturbed for the photo op.

I would say that he is handling it pretty terribly. He has started to see that and is starting to do more stuff with the communities, but it took him over a month to even act like this really happened. I think in his response time and what he has done, it has been worse than Bush's Katrina response, but obviously there is no loss of life aspect.

In my opinion, President Obama is doing a good job handling the Crisis in the Gulf. The U.S. Government does not have the equipment or expertise to handle a disaster like this, but must depend on private industry. I think the U.S. Government and the Obama White House have done a good job placing officials to work with BP to identify areas of need and assist in coordinating relief.It's unfortunate that the government didn't publicly acknowledge that they, like the rest of us, lost faith in the information BP was giving out earlier.

Perhaps they were worried the company would pack up their ball and go home. Or, perhaps, this White House waits for the facts before making accusations. The country is facing many dilemmas needing the attention of the President of the United States, including involvement in 2 wars, slow emergence from a near economic collapse, instability in other parts of the world and congressional gridlock.

I have confidence that President Obama will not drop the ball on any of these issues.

At first I thought well we will give him the benefit of the doubt. The government does not have the skill, or equipment to battle this thing, BP does. But as we go on and I continue to watch and learn new things I have to say absolutely not.

I have to say also if he does not do something drastic I am afraid he is risking his re-election. It has been said that BP can actually blow up the well caving it in, and permanently capping it. They don't want to though because they lose all their initial investment.It always has to be about money, and quite frankly it just makes me personally get madder.

The birds are drowning in oil and Obama makes some angry words. It is all for show if you ask me. I am not even sure if he can make them do anything despite saying he can.

They told them to stop using the very toxic dispersents banned in other countries, they basically flipped Obama off and keep right on using them. Now they have this cap on which they say they are collecting most of the oil. Really it is spewing right out the sides of the thing.

It is such a mess.

YES, he's doing a good job, given the situation, and acting with optimism. This is a tough inquiry to give an answer to because of potentially limited information and the tentative nature of the situation. President Obama has limited control over what happens for several reasons.

For one thing, the damage has for the most part been done and most of the work with the areas the spill has already hit involves cleanup and rescuing wildlife, which has nothing to do with political decisions, and so he's doing good. I see how people can assert that he's not doing his job fully because he has to give the go ahead for obvious actions such as burning it. Yes this is emitting a hell of a lot of CO2 by doing this, but we can't have this much oil just sit there and gradually spread out.As for other actions he could be ordering and permitting, such as assigning an engineering team of oil drilling experts outside of BP to come up with a "blocking" solution, who's to say that he hasn't already implemented this particular "route" of action.

As for ordering all the technical data from BP, which would contribute to(what I just said) about engineering an alternative collaborative solution of some kind, like said, (and not with pleasure) the damage is done-this is what happens eventually when you rely on an unsustainable energy fuel source- perplexed catastrophic disasters. The Jamaican sized blob was there within five days, and would have eventually manifested before any possible solution made possible by the president or whoever. Ultimately if you're going to even assume that there's enough power lying in the hands of one person that can effect a nation's well-being so eminently that he gets the majority of the publicity from the press and blame from people who want you to forget that they voted for George W.

Bush and so on and so forth, then the executive power should be done away with. I don't care how American you think it is. The power of the "presidency" is too concentrated.

I wrote a whole thesis paper on this. Maybe he should be giving the go ahead for one of the plans of action I mentioned, but his part in this situation shouldn't be outstaged by the GENERAL DEMAND FOR PETROL and BP who (unless there's some sort of corrupt conspiracy occurring here-which I wouldn't rule out) is doing everything that could possibly be implement and executed at this point. If you want to say President Obama's doing a bad job then you're pretty much saying he should go into a telephone booth, throw on a mask and some tights, and dive into the water with a giant DELUXEâ„¢ Red, White & Blue Juggernaut shield for blocking oil.

What I think he is really doing is making an unfortunately bold, yet robust statement that this is what can happen with the constant, and ongoing dependency on oil and we need to invest in renewable energy sources for the future. The claim that he's being neglectful is mostly irrational and soon he will do something following this bold statement. Plus, like people on here have already covered, sometimes reacting with certain decisions is less of a benefit to the ultimate solution.

No president is God. Things will happen like aids, Katrina, oil spills, etc. Making the wrong decision may in fact make things worse. Speed of reaction is the one fault presidents have had in all these situations not the quality of the action.

What does annoy me to no end is the talking heads that somehow think they know better. Too much bandwidth is given to finger pointing when it sould be invested in solving the problem at hand.

Absolutely not. As the president of the U.S. He has unlimited resources, has access to any and every expert with this kind of problem. This should have been taken care of weeks ago.It just breaks my heart seeing those birds in that oily water.

It is a disaster created by BP and until that gushing oil well is stopped we can only try to lessen the impact on our shores. That is where his responsibility lies.As I said elsewhere today, this is a disaster created by mankind and no matter how much you want it to go away, it never will. The effects of the Exxon Valdez "spill" are still being felt in Alaska today.

We needed to stop relying on dirty oil decades ago, but the greedy wouldn't hear of it, and the ignorant couldn't see it.

No, he is not. However, I think his only real mistake was implying that he could handle it. This is a highly technical and complicated problem, and our information at this point is that BP is the only one who can fix it.

President Obama should have been up front about what governments can and cannot do, instead of trying to make it seem like they are omnipotent. It is like a professor who claims to know everything and then gets stumped on a student question. What Obama could do to re-establish trust is promise to reduce the risk of future catastrophes by proposing laws to alllow drilling in safer places, like in more shallow ocean or on land, like in ANWR.

Drilling miles out and miles deep, while it satisfies environmental activists, is tremendously risky compared to land or shallow sea.

No, he hasn't done a good job. He has complained that the different companies involved have passed the blame around but then not taken any leadership in solving the problem. BP has given out reports that have been found to be lacking in credibility but they are still in charge of the cleanup and stoppage of the leak.

Where is the leadership there. Then the head of small agency that nobody ever heard about was found to be in charge of the oil so she was fired -- not for doing a bad job, but for being a convenient scape goat. Where is the leadership in that.

There is the old saying that talk is cheap. We have heard a lot of talk so the administration has gotten off cheaply. When are we going to see some action that actually accomplishes something?

I would have to say no. There is much evidence that there was tampering involved in the actual cause of this catastrophe. There are many reasons to believe that this was not so much of an accident.

BP Shares were dumped DAYS before the event occurred. If Obama was doing a good job he would get down to the actual cause of this and NOT leave the cleanup almost entirely in the hands of BP.

Obama has not demonstrated strong leadership in the face of this crises. He needs to lead the way to a clean and ultimately place the bill for that clean up on BP's shoulders. Determining who is at fault is secondary to containing the spill and cleaning it up.

The American people did not elect him because he promised to sit back and take a wait-and-see approach to geverning. He's not doing his job, in my opinion.

After reading about how Obama's Surgeon General handled the SB1070, I think he needs a new Surgeon General. He needs some professionals on his team who are compassionate and intelligent. And Obama needs to be skeptical of any person in a position of control trying to make a profit for themselves over a crisis such as this.

He should fire them on the spot if they are making bad decisions which hurt people. People in positions of political power and authority need to have compassion, and their choices in their subordinates need to be on the same page, especially with moral and ethical issues, and with issues involving the safety and well being of others. It seems to me that Europe has a plan which is in place that prevents oil spills.

They have less oil spills. So, the solution would be to have an international meeting on how we (the US and Europe) together could get to the root of the problem. Also, an even more futuristic plan would be to have a large dialysis (filtering machine) machine which would filter the ocean water, remove all of the debris, and put the water back in to the ocean.An engineer from NASA could probably make a machine to do that.

It might take a rocket scientist, but the problem can be resolved!

Good question. I think BP is solely responsible and they should pay out the butt to make this right. I cannot believe that is it that hard to fix this.......well other than not being able to see down there.

BUT they had the means and know how to build this contraption down there to me I don't see any reason why they have been able to pull the wool over our eyes this long..............FINE THEM BIG TIME AND MAKE THEM PAY FOR EVERYTHING....no bail outs or tax breaks, nothing........the GOV'T or the American tax payers should not pay a penny for this fix and clean up nor should we pay for any rising costs in the near and far future. This is BP's neglect and they need to be held responsible BY ALL MEANS. Give our people jobs Mr. President and SEND BP THE BILL.

Keep an eye on all their expenses and lets just see how "living large or bonuses" they have till that last drop is gone.

For a president leading the most technologically advanced nation in the world , he has made the prudent decision to take the "least damaging path" to fixing the problem for good. Nuking the seabed could have sealed the leak near instantly ,but the area would be radiated and the oilfields lost for milleniums. Obama is a smart and prudent decision maker .

He obviously has to rely on experts who provide him the options that are possible to address a problem sitiuation. I continue to give him full marks for handling this event.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.