From this morning’s Jolt:

From Top Kill to Bottom of the Barrel
Late last week, BP gave “Top Kill” a shot, and it seemed to be working, and hours later, President Obama holds his first televised press conference in nearly a year, and he’s pretty clear where the buck stops: “Make no mistake. BP is operating at our direction.” I wondered if he would be saying the same words if it was clear Top Kill wasn’t working.
Well, Top Kill bottomed out. Ed Morrissey knows the score: “Thursday’s announcement came just hours before Barack Obama assured Americans that the federal government was completely in charge of the Gulf disaster response, and that BP didn’t do anything without a by-your-leave from Admiral Allen. It then became obvious that BP had interrupted the “top kill” procedure for almost a day without anyone from the government team noticing it. By Friday, most people had already figured out from the live camera that Allen and BP had declared victory much too early, and that the sudden silence afterward meant that Plan B had already failed. This just confirms what was plain to see on Friday. Plan C involves sealing the breach with a cap that will allow BP to channel the oil flow in a manner that will keep it secure and retrievable. They took pains to emphasize that it would only capture “a great majority” of the crude oil at best, which means that the spill will continue to unfold until BP can drill relief wells to divert the flow and dramatically decrease pressure at the blowout. Unfortunately, that won’t happen until August at the earliest. Plan A, readers will remember, also involved installing a cap on the blowout, a maneuver that failed in the first weeks of the crisis. Let’s hope this idea works better — and let’s hope that this time, the administration keeps its high-fives in its pockets.”
I can’t agree with every detail in this argument from Don Surber, but I think the broad outline is right: “We have seen Four Crises as handled by The Won in the last 6 months: The Fort Hood Massacre, Christmas Day Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, and the BP Oil Spill. The president has underestimated the problem each time out. Not all of these things are his fault — or the federal government’s. But each called for a reaction that was greater and later than the president gave. The Christmas Day bomber went through Amsterdam security, not ours. The Times Square Bomber was a U.S. citizen. BP is responsible for its rig. The presidential reaction in each case was in slow motion. The president failed to quickly see that this was an emergency and that cost him the ability to lead. We saw this first with the jihadist major who slaughtered 13 people at Fort Hood — which was the government’s fault; we should never chose PC over security. That day, the president came out of a meeting with Native Americans (photo op of the day; all presidents do this) and gave a press conference. His first words were not,’holy crap, there has been a massacre at Fort Hood,’ but rather a “shout out” to one of the participants in his photo op of the day.”

I don’t think I want my president beginning his statements to the public with that exclamation, but it was, I think many would agree, a tone-deaf moment.