I’m still skeptical, but if you want a good case for putting all of this at Obama’s feet, see Kirsten Powers today. An excerpt:

Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration back in 1994 drafted plans for responding to a major Gulf oil spill, a response called “In-Situ Burn.”
Ron Gourget, a former federal oil-spill-response coordinator and one author of the draft, told the Times of London: “The whole reason the plan was created was so that we could pull the trigger right away.” The idea was to use barriers called “fire booms” to collect and contain the spill at sea — then burn it off. He believes this could have captured 95 percent of the oil from this spill.
But at the time of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the federal government didn’t have a single fire boom on hand. Nor is there any evidence that the government required BP to have any clear plan to deal with a massive spill. How is this OK?
The administration’s chief response so far was to send out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to do his best impersonation of a totalitarian thug, proclaiming that the government would “have its boot on the throat of BP.”
(Fun fact: While in the Senate, Salazar backed an increase in oil and gas leases in the Gulf Coast region by promoting and voting for the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.)
Since the “blame BP” strategy isn’t working, Obama will today announce tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections for offshore drilling operations. Sounds nice — except the problem isn’t a lack of safety requirements, it’s that the experts at the US Minerals Management Service ignored the existing requirements.

And then there’s this, from a reader:

You say that you’re hard pressed to see that the BP spill is an indictment of Obama. I say ” are you nuts”???
Its been over 30 days without clear direction from this administration to BP. Other than the usual soundbites that Obama and his lackeys come to the television cameras with (to make it look like they are doing something), they have done nothing but either get in the way of the situation or have done nothing to streamline the processes by which things could be done. The oil rig is in federal waters. This means that the federal government has jurisdiction. Meaning, the federal government is IN CHARGE !!! BP has to pay for the cleanup, but the federal government SHOULD be in charge. Instead, this administration has done nothing but duck and point fingers at BP (and even Bush and Cheney) rather than actually address the problem. As Karl Rove points out in his article today, barrier berms were requested to be built to protect the wetlands. Louisiana officials requested their cosntruction on May 11. The administration has yet to get back to them.
In my line of work, in an emergency you do not wait that long to make a decision. Anyone who dithers that long in an emergency should be fired. As your other reader points out, the suspension of regulations would have gone a long way towards expediting a response to this spill. So this administration does nothing about this spill… while scoring political points with the anti-drill caucus by highlighting why we shouldn’t drill offshore (“see this big spill, see why we shouldn’t drill?”)… then points fingers at BP and acts like it can do nothing and that BP is in charge… then focuses its talking points on future safety and inspections requirements rather than what it is doing now to stop the oil flow. And you want us to believe the administration hasn’t dropped the ball?
I’ll give you an example of a similar situation (admittedly the analogy is coarse, but I’m writing this fairly quick);
A smoker drops his cigarette and it catches the rug on fire. He calls 911 and the fire department dithers about how it was his own stupid fault for dropping the cigarette and they tell him that his automatic sprinkler system in his house should’ve gone off and doused the flames. The fire then spreads to the whole house while the fire department does nothing. The man (and his neighbors) are insistent that the fire department come and put the flames out. The fire department tells the man “you have a water hose at your house, put it out yourself”. The fire department lieutenant then goes on TV and talks about how in the future, the city should have better inspections of home fire sprinkler systems to prevent just such a tragedy. Meanwhile, the fire still rages on. Then the fire department finally shows up and the Captain of the department talks a big game about how his department has been engaged from the very minute the fire started. Meanwhile, the house has already burnt down to cinders…
Yeah…not Obama’s fault at all. What was I thinking??