Well, don’t ask me*: ask Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post.  Yes.  The Huffington Post.

President Barack Obama took to the Oval Office to address a nation worried to death over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a location used so much more often by Saturday Night Live than by actual presidents that my brain actually released a small dollop of dopamine in anticipation of comedic parody. And then, over the next seventeen minutes, nothing much happened to challenge my brain’s autonomic preconceptions.

There’s some really good quotes in there; heck, even the obligatory swipe at the Republicans was tolerable, if rather rough language (hey, Jason, at least my side has a plan). More seriously, the White House should now really start acting like this crisis is going to hurt them long-term, because from what I can tell the Democratic base is fuming at how badly the Obama administration is handling the spill.  Olbermann & Matthews were particularly entertainingly distraught, disbelieving, and distressed over the whole thing – and if they’re having moments of clarity, so are a lot more progressive activists.

Unfortunately for the White House, their standard solution [to] problems like this is to have Obama give a speech.

Moe Lane

PS: Hopefully, somebody will give this Andrew Malcolm reaction the attention it deserves.  Andrew does some really good blogging work for the LA Times, which is another way of saying that he’s a pilgrim in an unholy land.

*I didn’t bother to watch it, on the (apparently-vindicated) notion that twenty minutes of lifespan is twenty minutes of lifespan, and that until the universe starts offering refunds of wasted minutes I need to practice proper lifetime management.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.