President Obama was adamant that those who feel the Federal government has been sluggish in responding to the deep water oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico simply do not have the facts. He has been involved in meetings since day one. He was also adamant that British Petroleum [BP] has been operating under the supervision of the Federal government.
He was clear that the Federal government does not have the expertise to deal with this situation, but the administration has made sure that it supervised and BP followed the government's instructions. Of course, when efforts failed, it was BP's fault... and BP will pay for the failures.
To be fair, this is the same situation the Federal government faced with hurricane Katrina except the "fix" was not to stop the hurricane. The fix was to make decisions regarding the affected areas. In true Federal government fashion, the response to Katrina was slow, costly, and has resulted in a lot of relocated people being on the government "payroll" for years.
The question is whether the oil gusher situation will be another Katrina ... and will the next president be talking about the failure of Obama to lead in times of crisis? Hard to say.George Bush couldn't say that the Federal government had to wait for the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana to request assistance ... which was exactly the case ... so why should President Obama get a pass about not having the expertise to respond even though in this case the Federal government was directly responsible and has been an obstacle for the State of Louisiana's efforts to take action to protect its shores?
The reality is that it generally makes little difference what the disaster is. The real expertise of the Federal government bureaucracy is to fix the blame... not fix the problem.