James Carvelle Says BP Gulf Oil Spill High Risk Event for Obama

James Carville, the well known outspoken Louisianian who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on AC360 Thursday that the administration’s response to the spill has been “lackadaisical” and that Obama was “naive” to trust BP to effectively manage the massive oil spill clean-up effort.

On CNN James Carville said “I’m as good a Democrat as most people, and I think this administration has done some good things. They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this, and Doug is right, they seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they’ve got to go to Plan B.”

The crude oil has now been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month. There is a growing sense that the Obama administration has stopped treating the spill as an urgent national emergency even as the impact of the disaster has magnified.

Not until yesterday, critics note, a full 30 days after the oil rig explosion, did federal officials establish a technical team to measure the full extent of the spill. BP has maintained that about 5000 barrels per day is spilling into the Gulf while outside experts estimates are as high as 70,000 barrels per day. What seems obvious, is that BP has attempted to downplay the consequences of the oil spill disaster, even as evidence mounts by the day that the environmental impact is extremely serious and may well last for decades.

It is also obvious that BP is growing increasingly nervous about the potentially billions of dollars in cleanup costs that they are expected to pay as well as the litigation costs of defending themselves against a growing mountain of civil lawsuits. President Obama has even hinted that criminal charges may eventually be filed against BP depending upon the findings of a special presidential commission assigned to investigate the Deepwater Horizon incident.

When a long-term Obama supporter such as James Carville calls the Obama administration naïve in relying on BP to properly clean up the oil spill and to take full responsibility for the disastrous consequences you can bet that there will be serious repercussions for the Obama administration in its handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Not only do we have an environmental disaster on our hands but the Obama administration likely faces a political disaster of the first magnitude unless the oil spill can be soon capped and an effective cleanup somehow be accomplished. Obama critics have already labeled the Deepwater Horizon event as President Obama’s Katrina.