Of course it’s his fault. Some excerpts:

By 2009, of course, Barack Obama was already in the White House. But it takes time to staff an administration and take charge of an agency. Current MMS director Liz Birnbaum didn’t take office until July 2009, months after the exclusion was granted. More to the point, the dysfunctional attitude of MMS managers reflected problems that were deeply ingrained under the previous administration.

And. . .

The RIK scam, of course, was not the cause of the oil spill any more than failure to consult NOAA about endangered species implications did the deed. Both incidents, however, reflect the existence of a culture of indifference to the substantive missions of government agencies. This, of course, was the very essence of the Bush administration approach to government. When a regulator could be staffed by shills for the industry it was supposed to oversee, it was. When no industry particularly wanted to own an agency, like FEMA, it was handed over to a random crony. The results were disastrous and we’re still paying the price today.

This leaves out the big question, however, of what President Obama was told regarding the safety of offshore drilling before he announced his new drilling policy. If the MMS is as messed up as Yglesias argues, shouldn’t Team Obama have caught a whiff of that when they were reviewing what to do next?