Bring in Chuck Norris

Today's commentary centers on the mystery surrounding the President's handling of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not that this is a new issue -- the talking heads have been yammering on this topic for weeks now. What's making news is the perception that, because we are now in Day 54 of the oil leak, there is still no viable solution to the problem, nor is there anything being done to do something...anything...to fix it. Americans, whether they admit it or now, love the "Chuck Norris" mentality: we want to see someone kick butt, take names, and solve the problem. Unfortunately for us, this paticular problem has many caveats, known and unknown, and the solutions are not so easy to fix. Not making excuses here, but what we do know is that the leak is over 5000 feet below sea level, creating many logistics issues with pressure and distance that requires precise engineering and movements. One can make a point that we should NOT be allowing deep sea drilling if we don't have the capability to fix problems like this that the surrounding environment creates, but remember that BP had several redundancies in place and they all failed. To that, I say the President should immediately demand that all existing deep sea wells submit to thorough independent inspections so that this does not happen again. The President should also be doing several face to face meetings with the CEO of BP, so that we all see he's being a part of the resolution to this issue plus be our "spokesperson" to BP so that they see just how serious we are and that we want action. By taking a quiet, unassuming position in the background, the President is losing our confidence in his ability to carry a big stick (we know he can speak softly, but that's only half the solution). And who knows? He may not be able to handle a crisis like this, but he still needs to make appearances and give us the perception that he's engaged, even if he has one or more people actually running the day-to-day operations. It's the same SOP that is used for Military Operations -- we know he's not calling the day-to-day shots, but he's still briefed every day on them. Why not institute this policy here? But the main key is that he needs to SHOW us that he's doing something. I don't know if he's concerned about accountability down the road, or if he's just flat out getting bad advice, but he's very late to the party and it has started to erode confidence on both sides of the political spectrum. The President needs to shake his impotent team of advisors and bring in Chuck Norris to fix this issue and show BP just how serious we are about getting this done -- oh, and we're not paying for it, either.