While the people of the Gulf coast along with the rest of the nation watch the federal government's painfully fractured response to the BP oil spill, President Barack Obama continues to act as if he is being criticized for not personally diving into the slick waters and plugging the hole. In fact, the criticism is that he personally has demonstrated zero leadership, horrendous communication abilities and allowed the crisis to be mismanaged by committee.

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According to Alabama Governor Bob Riley (R) on CNN’s State of the Union, "What we have is a committee. It's a committee that essentially consists of all the different federal agencies sitting down here and as a committee each one has a veto over whatever policies we have. You can’t continue to do that." He added, "Someone is going to have to be in charge of each one of these operations. They’re going to have to make a determination about what we’re going to do and they're going to have to set priorities." (source)

Meanwhile, White House adviser David Axelrod appeared on NBC's Meet the Press this morning to announce that President Barack Obama will deliver a speech Tuesday night to lay out steps that the government will take to cope with the fallout from the spill. (source) Over 50 days since the explosion which killed eleven crewmen on the Deepwater Horizon rig and caused the largest ecological disaster in our nation's history and the president is going to give a speech about what steps the government will take.

While the people on the front lines of this disaster are dealing with bureaucratic nightmares and federal agencies jockeying for power positions, the president will be preparing yet another speech sure to be filled with finger pointing, self-serving proclamations and personal stories meant to tug at the heartstrings while distracting his audience from the fact that his response to this disaster so far has been a dismal failure.

In defending his decision not to meet with the head of BP until almost 2 months after the crisis began, Mr. Obama said, "When you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's going to say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions." (source) The same could be said about what the American people are interested in from their president. But the only thing we are guaranteed to get from this president is a lot more words. Whether or not the right actions will follow remains to be seen.