The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada, June 8, on the Obama administration response to the Gulf oil disaster:

Neither the executive branch of the U.S. government nor BP can be proud of the way they have handled the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. President Barack Obama’s escalating tough talk against BP, in particular, is a weak political maneuver that only magnifies his administration’s inaction on the big questions that have arisen from the oil spill.

Things are going badly — oil is still gushing and washing ashore, birds are dying and an entire fishery and way of life is at risk — so the public is looking for someone to blame. In a television interview, Obama said he wanted to know “whose ass to kick” — better it be someone else’s than his own — and directed his foot at BP CEO Tony Hayward, saying he “wouldn’t be working for me.”

Obama’s rhetoric is unbecoming and ineffective. His apparent anger is rising in direct proportion to demands that he must appear angry. That Obama has yet to even pick up the phone to speak to Hayward shows the extent to which the comments are damage control, albeit not of an environmental kind. …

With regard to the conditions that allowed the spill to happen, and what should happen to ensure a spill of such magnitude never happens again, Obama has also deferred: to a commission that will report in six months. A full investigation is welcome, but it does nothing to reduce the risk of further disaster now.

Obama’s energy policy has been similarly rudderless. …

BP deserves little credit — it has over-promised and under-delivered. But for all of its shortcomings, the U.S. administration has failed to plot a course that shows leadership. …

Online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com