Clutsy

OBAMA WANTS AN 'ASS TO KICK': Start with Tony Hayward: President Obama tells Today's Matt Lauer in an interview set to air Tuesday morning that he wants to know "whose ass to kick" over the BP oil spill. Responding to criticism that he is relying too heavily on experts, Obama said, "I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick." He also rebuts his critics who say he was too slow to act: "I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf." A new poll, meanwhile, shows that, one month out, more people disapprove of the federal government's handling of the oil spill than they did at the same time after Hurricane Katrina, 69 to 62 percent.

This exchange is tonally odd and clutsy. If, as it implies, the oil spill is someone's fault - as opposed to the nature of living in an industrial world where mistakes like this will happen - how can Obama not know where fault lies? It didn't happen yesterday. It happened weeks ago. Shouldn't fault be apparent already?

It makes Obama look like a drunk looking for a fight and stumbling around the bar asking everyone "who spilled a drink on me!"