Despite his attempts to indicate otherwise, Barack Obama is incapable of managing this situation, or any other. He is in way over his head.

Throughout the 2008 campaign Barack Obama was portrayed as the consummate intellect. No problem was too difficult for him to solve, and he could do anything without breaking a sweat. Then came the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform incident and suddenly we see a disaster that the “great intellect” can’t deal with to save his life. Along with that have appeared rumors that he has been throwing temper tantrums off camera, chain smoking, and otherwise behaving in a manner to be expected from a spoiled child rather than a world leader. Whether or not these rumors are true is unknown, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were. After all, we are dealing with someone who has never had to confront a situation such as this before, ever. He has no history of dealing with adversity. Considering how poorly he has handled such an impersonal enemy as a massive oil leak, imagine what would happen if he faced an intransigent and hostile foreign power with a military to back it up.

Let’s start at the beginning. When the oilrig blew up and the leak began it was a situation that obviously required immediate attention. Instead of acting decisively and bringing all available resources to bear Obama did essentially nothing. In fact, his first major action was counter-productive in refusing help from the Netherlands, which, three days post explosion, offered high tech skimmers that probably would have been able to reduce the potential for large scale, widespread environmental damage. In fact, it has been reported that he has refused assistance from as many as 17 different nations; so much for his “citizen of the world” attitude. A major chance to show international cooperation appears and he throws it all away.

Meanwhile, the Gulf Coast governors, spearheaded by Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal pleaded for federal regulators to get out of the way and allow them to protect their shorelines. Nothing was done. Supplies, such as the store of boom in Maine were left unused. New technology was not evaluated and existing tech was ignored. Regulatory agencies began to fight over who would have jurisdiction over what, and to make matters worse, the number one priority of Washington DC became the question of who to blame, and how grandstand finger pointing could make individual legislators look good. And Mr. Obama took time to play golf and hold more White House parties. Clearly there was a total failure of leadership.

So, what should have been done? The answer is quite simple. As soon as the leak manifested it would have taken about a couple of hours to do the following:

1) Contact the Gulf State governors and offer them all the help that the federal agencies had available.

2) Let the public know that any supplies and technology they could provide would be welcome and transported to where it could do the most good by military transports. (It might have taken a C-7 cargo jet to move the boom from Maine to the Gulf, but it would have got there quite fast.)

3) Suspend all regulations that might slow down or hamper efforts to control the leak. This would prevent agencies from competing over what was to be done and who was in charge. Waiving the Jones Act would allow foreign help to come in as well.

4) Invite in foreign help. Make it an example of international cooperation with credit for all who participate.

None of this happened, despite pleas from the regional governments. Texas State Assemblywoman Debbie Riddle, a former fire fighter, went all the way to DC with ideas and information. In her words:

“There are Houston-based businesses with some of the world’s top scientists and engineers who have developed real strategies for how to solve these problems, but they can’t get through the bureaucratic red-tape to get the ideas into the hands of the people who can really use them.

This is a trait typical of situations where no one is in charge and no one knows what the goal is. To this day the sum total of Mr. Obama’s efforts has been speech making, finger pointing and visiting the affected area, which looks good politically, but doesn’t really accomplish anything, and, of course, appointing commissions to study the matter. And the bureaucratic wrangling just never seems to quit. On or about June 17, 2010 the Coast Guard shut down the skimmer barges that were operating for a safety inspection to make sure that there were life vests and fire extinguishers on board. This is something that could be accomplished while the work progressed.

At the same time the disaster that need not have been a disaster has been exploited for political purposes; to take shots at the Bush administration, to promote job killing cap and trade legislation, and to threaten criminal prosecution of BP executives. None of this serves any real purpose toward solving the existing problem.

I recall one caller into a talk radio show the other day who said that this event was “unexpected and that Obama wasn’t prepared for it.” This kind of stupidity is hard to understand. True leadership is shown in adversity and in dealing with the unexpected in an effective way. Anyone who takes on a position of importance and is not ready to handle something that appears totally out of the blue with no advance warning doesn’t deserve the job. They should go to the Boy Scouts and spend a few years working their way up from assistant patrol leader.

The sad fact is that this event has shown that Barack Obama could not lead his way out of a wet paper bag, and is totally lost in dealing with the unexpected. His focus on politics and process gets in the way of actual results, and it could not be more apparent that he has absolutely no concern for the people of the Gulf Coast. If he were truly concerned he would focus on cleaning up the mess instead on his political reputation. But he is not smart enough to do what is necessary to obtain real results, even in the reputation department. Before this is over he may go down in history as not only the worst person to sit in the Oval Office but the stupidest as well.