Opinion: Now even more Democrats slamming Obama for Gulf oil spill response

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Remember that scene in the movie ‘Airplane!’ in which passengers lined up to assist that panicked woman who wanted off the aircraft?

The only problem was the way they were assisting her – mainly just repeatedly slapping her in the face.

President Obama probably feels like that woman with all the help he’s getting from fellow Democrats lately.

On Wednesday, James Carville ripped into Obama’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill calling it “political stupidity.”

‘The President of the United States could’ve come down here, he could’ve been involved with the families of these 11 people’ who died on the rig after an explosion,” he said on ‘Good Morning America.’ ‘He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard ... doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they’re begging for something down here, and it just looks like he’s not involved in this.

‘Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We’re about to die down here!” he said.

You know the wheels have fallen off when Sarah Palin agrees with Carville.

“President may put down the golf clubs & fundraiser fork 40 days into Gulf gusher to finally grasp this tragedy? Carville’s right on this,” she tweeted.

Now add Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, to the list of Democrats who want to help.

In an interview with The Hill, he first appeared to stand up for the president.

“In fairness, there’s not a lot we can do,” Rendell said. “The federal government has no vehicle capable of going down there. None of our submarines can go down there. That is a preexisting condition that was not the fault of the Obama administration.”

Then comes the slap, comparing Obama to a former Democratic president.

“As we know, politics is as much perception as reality,” he said.

“If Bill Clinton was president, he’d have been in a wetsuit, you know, trying to get down to see the spill.”

-- Jimmy Orr

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