Washington Whispers

Voters Give Obama a Pass on Gulf Oil Spill

By Paul Bedard, Alex Kingsbury, Jessica Rettig

June 23, 2010 RSS Feed Print

By Alex Kingsbury, Washington Whispers

Despite the slow-motion environmental cataclysm unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and the widely panned Oval Office address this week, President Obama's approval ratings haven't taken too much of a hit. Both before and after the spill, his numbers are relatively flat, says Andrew Kohut, the polling guru from the Pew Research Center. "The public understands the difficulties associated with this,and they think the fault lies with BP rather than the government."

Indeed, BP CEO Tony Hayward took a historic public flogging before a House committee on Thursday. As for comparisons with the situation five years ago in Louisiana, they don't stack up. "So far," Kohut says, "it's not Katrina."

Tags:
Pew Research Center,
BP,
Gulf of Mexico,
Barack Obama,
oil

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Nice spin to make it appear that no one cares.

The fact is that the latest presidential poll numbers have the super duper one coming in a 40% approval.

Must we wait until Nov or the oil slick hitting the MA. shores before someone

yells foul?

All this for the infamous cap 'n trade.

Destroy millions of lives so that the rich democrats can get richer.

Sally Barton of FL 8:42AM July 03, 2010

Too bad we didn't know 5 months ago just how incompetent our gov. was. The federal gov. knew on Feb. 13 that BP was fighting cracks at the base of the well and that oil and gas was leaking onto the ocean floor. Why wasn't MMS included in the inquisition as well as BP?

Bonnie Keeler of OK 1:13AM June 30, 2010

I'm sure if we'd all known 2 months ago how incompetent and dishonest BP was, things might have been different, but BP was in the best position to stop this disaster from the beginning. The Coast Guard has been involved since day 1. Unless Obama had magic space powers to stop oil leaks with his super-presidential laser vision, I'm not sure what people expected him to do. And even if he HAD sent the government in right away to take over the clean-up, everyone would be screaming about how we should have let BP clean up its own mess instead of having the tax-payers paying for it. Instead, everyone's screaming about how the government should've done more sooner (with hardly a clue as to what those steps might have been).

Denny Keaton of MO 12:02AM June 25, 2010

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