The Pew Research Center for People & The Press has a big new poll out on a number of issues regarding the body politic. Towards the end it asks Americans about the oil gusher in the Gulf. 44% say BP has done a poor job in handling the crises, with 26% rating it only as fair and 19% call it excellent. Pew says it's fairly nonpartisan in terms of that reaction.
But with everything involving the President, the partisan divide comes into play when, in this case it's evaluating the federal government's response. Overall, 31% says the feds have been excellent, 31% say just fair, and 26% say poor.
But when it comes to the commentariat in this country, the liberals are perhaps louder in the growing frustration that nothing seems to be able to be done to stop the leak from producing what some scientists fear could be as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says it's time for Obama to take action, and uses the "d" word that only Dick Cheney previously has used about this administration - "dither." Read below:
President Obama should have taken charge of the response to the oil spill — which he called a “potentially unprecedented” environmental calamity — from jump street. He should have called in the very best minds and operatives from the corporate and scientific worlds and imposed an emergency plan of action — to be carried out by BP and all others who might be required. Instead, after all this time, after more than a month of BP’s demonstrated incompetence, the administration continues to dither.
