Where Was Barack For 8 Days?

As the oil flowed toward the Gulf Coast, Obama was busy on the campaign trail. Now, it's too late.

With a quick solution to shut off the spill looking out of reach Friday, the government and the oil industry struggled to contain the resulting slick and keep it from shore. The American Petroleum Institute alerted members that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wanted advice from the industry on how to manage the spill by the end of Friday.

On Friday evening, the National Guard was mobilized to assist in the cleanup, and the Pentagon said BP would have to bear the cost. Earlier Friday, a small drilling rig tipped over in inland waters near Morgan City, La., the Coast Guard said, though no oil was spilled.

The Deep Horizon slick began threatening the wetlands of the Louisiana coast, raising fears of environmental disaster in some of America's richest shrimp, oyster and fish breeding grounds.

Strong winds and choppy seas hampered efforts to hem in the oil. Several vinyl containment barriers, known as booms, broke up in the rough weather. Others remained on shore, as high waves—expected to continue through the weekend—made it impossible to lay them in the Gulf.

Update: The New York Times has questions for Obama.

[A] review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.