As Richard M. Nixon could have told Barack Obama, any time you’re on the beach in dress clothes and the press is watching, it’s probably not good news.

In this case, in an embarrassingly small-ball version of “Message: I Care,” President Obama got himself caught on video explaining to Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph how tar balls could be cleaned up manually from the beaches where they’ve washed up.

If Ms. Randolph asked the president, “Um… but what about the marshes around the corner drenched in floating oil, or the massive underwater plumes — how do we clean those up?!”, it didn’t make it into this clip.

But, to be fair, in his prepared remarks at the scene, Obama made a seemingly honest effort to recognize the grave toll of the catastrophe wrought by Big Oil, and how the government he heads is obligated to respond:

As I’ve said before, BP is the responsible party for this disaster.  What that means is they’re legally responsible for stopping the leak and they’re financially responsible for the enormous damage that they’ve created.  And we’re going to hold them accountable, along with any other party responsible for the initial explosion and loss of life on that platform.

But as I said yesterday, and as I repeated in the meeting that we just left, I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis.  I’m the President and the buck stops with me.  So I give the people of this community and the entire Gulf my word that we’re going to hold ourselves accountable to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to stop this catastrophe, to defend our natural resources, to repair the damage, and to keep this region on its feet.  Justice will be done for those whose lives have been upended by this disaster, for the families of those whose lives have been lost — that is a solemn pledge that I am making.

. . . To the people of the Gulf Coast:  I know that you’ve weathered your fair share of trials and tragedy.  I know there have been times where you’ve wondered if you were being asked to face them alone.  I am here to tell you that you’re not alone.  You will not be abandoned.  You will not be left behind.  The cameras at some point may leave; the media may get tired of the story; but we will not.  We are on your side and we will see this through.  We’re going to keep at this every day until the leak has stopped, until this coastline is clean, and your communities are made whole again.  That’s my promise to you.  And that is a promise on behalf of a nation.  It is one that we will keep.

Fine, Mr. President; we’ll be watching to make sure you do.

And for myself, I acknowledge that an epic, slow-motion disaster like this is a tough situation to deal with, and I’m sure President Obama feels like he’s doing the best he can within the constraints he has to operate under… just like with everything else.  It’s just painfully awkward to watch, that’s all.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

That random shouted question about Tiger Woods at the WH Easter Egg Roll didn’t go over so well…

(Photo by Larry Downing for Reuters.)

There’s always one newbie who falls for the “Easter egg hunt in the IED field” gag…

(President Obama in Afghanistan this morning, via the White House.)

(From the White House, via TPM.)

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

That’s just rhetoric, Mr. President, Congress wants whatever their corporate masters tell them to want.  And in spite of what Justice Alito  may have been muttering during your speech, that’s regardless of where those corporate masters may live.  Multinationals just follow the money.

(Images via Witty Comics.)

Just assume a kayak and 2,756 miles' worth of stamina, and you're there!

Speaking of Fubar (as Green Boy was just below), about a month ago he passed along an off-site remark about Google Maps providing “driving directions” from San Francisco to Hawaii — including the awkwardly roundabout need to kayak from Washington state across the Pacific.  My reply, based on that week’s progressive disappointment in the White House, was that  President Obama must have used similar software in figuring out his escalate-in-order-to-withdraw strategy in Afghanistan.

Little did I know that despite my terminal procrastination in posting about that topic, the same half-hearted snark would be appropriate with regard to the state of healthcare reform… and even that requires a large quantity of optimism.

As you undoubtedly know by now (um, unless you’ve been depending on this blog to keep you informed of breaking news developments), separate reform proposals have passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate — with the latter bill’s benefits so thoroughly diminished that whether it’s any improvement at all over the present system is a matter of fierce debate in the progressive blogiverse.  In fact, Obama himself is under intense criticism for having exerted so little visible effort to avoid the legislative emasculation that occurred in the Senate.

In Obama’s defense, though, this is a situation that he apparently planned for early on in the year, as Brian Beutler reported for TPM back in August:

Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number two Democrat in the Senate, says President Obama wants to move forward with some form of health care bill quickly, and then fight the fight over particulars in negotiations with the House of Representatives. . . .

“… we are trying to walk this tightrope to get this bill through. The House [of Representatives] is likely to include it [a public option]. The Senate may not. Then we go into conference committee and President Obama has to roll up his sleeves and see if he can bring us all together. And when I’ve spoken to him about this a couple times, all he’s said is: ‘Get me to a conference committee. Let me bring these folks into a room, and let me work and get it done.‘”

Okay, so the Democrats in Congress have gotten healthcare reform to a conference committee, as Obama claims to have wanted.  Indeed, in his own comments on the subject, the president echoed Durbin’s language:

“… we hope to have a whole bunch of folks over here in the West Wing, and I’ll be rolling up my sleeves and spending some time before the full Congress even gets into session…. I intend to work as hard as I have to work, especially after coming this far over the course of the year, to make sure that we finally close the deal.”

The question is, rolling up his sleeves to do what?   Conventional wisdom has already hardened that whatever comes out of the House-Senate negotiations will be essentially identical to what passed the Senate (even if that bill is at least slightly improved over its worst incarnation) — lest it fall prey again to the unpredictable whims of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman as they threaten to join a Republican filibuster.

It seems like daydreaming at this point to imagine that Obama could move the bill in a more robust (and progressive) direction, then finally mount the bully pulpit, using the inherent popularity of a “public option” and similar features to pressure the centrist corporatist Dems into allowing a simple majority vote.  And yet, Obama’s speech to Congress in September showed that he could move the needle of popular opinion on healthcare reform, if only he cared enough to try.

Another possibility is the strategy that Nate Silver outlined a couple of weeks ago:

… the idea is to “surprise” the Senate by unexpectedly introducing additional provisions under reconciliation once you’ve already got the main portion of the bill passed. Does this sound attractive to you? Well then, the best thing to do would be topass the bill as is now, since that is the first step in the strategy. To repeat: the most promising application of the split-bill/reconciliation strategy involves passing what you can now — not killing it.

Silver sees this as also being unlikely, but it was also proposed by wonk-blogger Mark Schmitt back in July…

Use the 60-vote Senate to pass whatever they can pass now — we liberals will grumble but live with it — and then use reconciliation next year to fix it. With the exchange structure and subsidies established, it wouldn’t be hard to add an employer mandate, which would save money. With the rudiments of even a weak public plan in place, it wouldn’t be complicated to expand it and modify its eligibility rules, in ways that might save or cost money but in either event, involve budget changes to an existing program rather than creating something new. Aggregating small changes over the next few years (on the model of the steady expansion of Medicaid engineered by Henry Waxman and others over the 1980s and 1990s) could non-controversially build the kind of robust and equitable system we dream of.

… and Sen. Tom Harkin, a public option supporter, hinted at it two weeks ago (“We have to get this bill passed, and then we’ll come back and revisit the public option at some point.”)

Assuming the House and Senate finish making their legislative sausage by Obama’s “State of the Union” address to Congress, wouldn’t it be something of a political masterstroke for the president to announce a plan to strengthen and complete the watered-down bill by passing an expansion of Medicare using budget reconciliation rules?  That would be a classic example of doing the hard, unpleasant work during the off year, and delivering the most popular aspect of reform right before the 2010 elections.

If Obama lacks the chutzpah to even try that, instead settling for the cautious, least-resistance path of accepting whatever meager reforms the Congress will pass on its own, then he deserves whatever he gets — in terms of public opinion and a demotivated base going into the 2010 elections — for his failure to lead.  Just standing by and watching as others do all the rowing isn’t enough; at some point, the president has to grab an oar, too, or we’ll never get anywhere.

“We’ve traced the posts to this location… does anyone here go by the nickname of ‘Green Boy’?”

(Via Reuters.)

Some encouraging news via the Washington Post today:

President Obama is likely to endorse using a portion of the government’s $700 billion financial bailout for a new jobs creation program during a speech about the economy next week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday morning.

“The president thinks we should and must do everything in our power to create an environment for job growth and job creation,” Gibbs said. When asked whether Obama will talk about the use of TARP funds on Tuesday, Gibbs said, “I think that’s likely.”

About $139 billion of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, remains unallocated and available to the administration. Banks have paid another $10 billion in interest and dividends to the Treasury and returned about $71 billion in aid, the Treasury reported in November. This week, Bank of America announced it would repay its $45 billion package.

As recently as this week, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said he wants to dedicate much of the unspent TARP money to reduce the national debt. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and other top Democrats have been crafting a jobs bill that would tap the bailout program. The size of the repayments from once shaky banks may make it possible to accomplish both goals.

. . . Gibbs said the president is likely to talk about multiple ideas for job creation, some of which would require congressional approval. The Tuesday speech at the Brookings Institution follows a day-long jobs summit Thursday and a trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday to highlight the plight of workers.

This weeklong focus on creating jobs is a refreshing sign that Obama and his top advisers did not, in fact, forget all of their political skills shortly after taking office.

Matt Yglesias adds that the President may be remembering a thing or two about basic messaging as well:

… once Obama’s Allentown event got into the Q&A section it got really good. What was interesting about it was that everything Obama said was so banal. It was elementary, back-to-basics, “I’m a Democrat” kind of stuff… He wasn’t even really all that feisty. But he got out and talked basic politics—who’s on your side, who’s fighting for change, and who’s responsible for protecting the status quo.

In other words, Obama is rediscovering the importance of the fundamental things that got him elected.

There’s a massive element of political calculation involved here, obviously — not just a president taking action to stop the downward drift of his poll numbers, but the Democrats in general needing to provide a positive political message going into 2010.

Even if the stimulative impact of whatever “jobs bill” gets passed is relatively small, much of the money from last spring’s economic-recovery package is still due to be spent this coming year.  Giving voters a fresh reminder that Democrats took action will be important for them in taking credit for whatever improvement occurs in the job market, regardless of the cause.

But at least this is the good kind of political calculation… the kind that comes from elected officials realizing they’re accountable for producing positive results for the people who put them in power.  Frankly, we could do with a bit more of it.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)