Take charge, avoid blame — a fine line

The White House is walking a precarious path through the politics of the vast Gulf oil slick, casting itself as firmly in control of the spill response even while emphasizing it is BP’s spill and the company’s responsibility to cap the leak and clean up the mess.

Top administration officials kept the pressure on the oil giant, both from the White House briefing room and at a press conference on the Louisiana shore — where Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) criticized the company’s response by saying BP must stand for “Beyond Patience.”

{mosads} “BP is the responsible party,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said after touring the spill site with Durbin and several other senators. “BP is charged with capping the leaking oil well and paying for the response and for the recovery without limitation. They will be held accountable. We will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done.”

But at the same time, Salazar stressed that the administration is at the helm.

“When [Coast Guard] Adm. [Thad] Allen, as the commander of this situation, is not satisfied with the actions of BP, he calls and will call BP and pushes them to take every appropriate step. He will order them to take the appropriate steps,” Salazar continued.



“I also have made it clear that we are not standing on the sidelines and letting BP do what BP wants to do,” he added.

A poll released Monday suggests the White House faces some political peril in the Gulf crisis and underscores the reason for keeping the focus on BP.

Fifty-one percent of respondents in the new CNN/Opinion Research survey said they disapprove of the president’s handling of the crisis, with 46 percent approving.

But BP fared much worse: Seventy-six percent said they disapproved of the way the company has responded to the oil spill, which has yet to be contained more than a month after it began.

President Barack Obama spoke Monday with the governors of Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi — and the White House circulated a photo of the president on the phone.

“The president reiterated the administration’s sense of urgency for dealing with the oil spill, assured the governors that the federal government is bringing the best science and expertise to the table and underscored his commitment to continuing our strong collaboration with the state and local governments,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

The administration backed away from Salazar’s suggestion over the weekend that the administration could “push [BP] out of the way appropriately” if its response is not adequate, conceding Monday that that isn’t really an option.

It’s BP and the oil industry — not the U.S. government — with the tools to attempt the incredibly complex and so far unsuccessful efforts to cap a damaged well some 5,000 feet below the ocean floor.

“They are in an impossible position, because the U.S. government does not have the technical expertise, the personnel or the material to stop the flow. Only the oil industry has that,” said one former environmental official in the Clinton White House.

“Right now they [the White House and BP] are unwilling and unlikely bedfellows, and there is nothing they can do about it,” the former White House aide said.

Allen on Monday said Salazar’s remark was more of a “metaphor” and an expression of frustration shared by the federal officials.



“To push BP out of the way would raise the question: ‘Replace them with what?’” Allen told reporters at the White House briefing. “I’m the national incident commander, and right now the relationship with BP is the way I think we should move forward.”

Leading Capitol Hill Democrats on Monday sought to keep the focus on BP.

“BP in my mind no longer stands for British Petroleum. It stands for ‘Beyond Patience.’ People have been waiting 34 days for British Petroleum to cap this well and stop the damage happening across the Gulf of Mexico,” Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, said during his visit to Louisiana to assess the damage. “Excuses don’t count anymore. You caused this mess — now stop the damage, and clean up the mess.”

But at the same event, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) trained his fire on the Obama administration. He’s angry that the administration has not yet approved a plan for enhancing the barrier islands along Louisiana’s coast to protect sensitive marshlands.



Vitter said he had appreciated Obama’s commitment to an aggressive response to the spill, but is now losing faith.



“That commitment is now being broken because we cannot get, so far, a timely, clear answer from the Corps of Engineers and others on this emergency-dredging, barrier-island plan,” Vitter said.