Michael Barone analyzes the comparisons of Obama's handling of the BP oil spill with George Bush's management of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

On Obama's behalf, it can be said that plugging underwater oil wells is not a government responsibility and that the extent of the disaster became clear much more slowly than was the case with Katrina.

All that said, Obama's press conference -- his first in the White House in 309 days -- did not make him look any more in command of things than the photos of Bush's flyover visit to New Orleans. The candidate who told us his electoral victory would be seen as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal" is now the president who seems helpless to prevent the oil slick from spreading.

Both of them were let down by the bureaucrats. Katrina had been foreseen and yet the canal wall that failed and flooded the city hadn't been strengthened. Oil spills are one of the major reasons for enacting regulations and requiring permits governing the petroleum industry. If it's true that BP was cutting corners and buying influence to circumvent those laws, it will have squandered far more than it could ever have saved. The company may not survive this.

If you can't trust federal bureaucrats and you can't trust big business, who can you trust? The cure for bad business practices is failure. The cure for bad government is to throw the bums out. That's no solace to the people of the Gulf Coast who are seeing their livelihoods ruined, but we should get over the idea that any politician or party can really protect us from the vicissitudes of life. Progressives keep assuring us of the ability of the elite to plan everything and eliminate all hardship. First, as this spill shows, they can't keep that promise, and second, even if they could, it would cost us our freedom and most of our property, the very things that has made America the world leader that it is.