Obama's fifth(?) response.

"Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless," he told Grand Isle, La., locals in the video, released Friday. "So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw. All I can do is make sure that I put honest, hard-working smart people in place ... to implement this thing."

I'm sure that the management of BP would say something very similar, except that it HAS sucked a lot of oil up through the equivalent of a straw. I don't think it does anybody good to dump blame on each other. The oil industry has been very good to Louisiana and Texas, and it's not as if BP and its contractors thought they were operating recklessly. It's easy in hindsight to say they should have made more provisions to clean up a spill, but that criticism applies to the federal agencies with responsibility over this industry and this sector.

Obama's mishandling of this mishap consisted in that he at first seemed to think it would be handled by someone else. After being bitterly criticized, he tried to reverse the criticisms by showing more empathy, and then by overstating the degree to which he was in charge, claiming that he and his underlings were pulling all of BP's levers, then blasting BP as the ecological corporate villain of the Century. This video seems to take a more sensible and honest approach. He knows now that the president isn't above a crisis like this and must be actively engaged in events, but also that the government doesn't have all the expertise and technology to handle everything that happens. If he learns some humility from this, as well as from the way his stimulus plans and health care reform aren't turning out to be the magical solutions he expected. some good will have been done. I think he sounds more real now that he knows the limits of what government can do and yet is committed to do what it can for the people who are suffering from this spill.

Of course, he also gave this interview in which he made one of the most inept gaffes in the history of politics, by trying to blame his failure to anticipate and prepare for this disaster on the supposed opposition of Republicans in congress if he had done those things. For a man in his forties, he sounds about as puerile and whiny as can be imagined.

I think the best thing that could happen to him at this point would be for Democrats to lose control of Congress. At least then, he might have a plausible excuse for his failures.