Results are all that matter

Opinion: June 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

In the past week, Barack Obama has derided media criticism of his handling of the gulf oil spill, declaring his goal is to find the best answers to a very difficult problem, rather than stage a show or conduct a college seminar.

“This is not theater,” the president pointedly told NBC’s Matt Lauer.

Later, in an interview with Politico’s Roger Simon, Obama accused the media of “demanding things that the public isn’t demanding” in assailing his methodical, low-key efforts.

But Obama’s decision to raise public visibility of his efforts, climaxed Tuesday night by his first Oval Office address, suggests more concern than the White House has acknowledged about the potential long-term political hazards in his “no-drama” approach.

At first blush, the criticism may have done Obama a favor, allowing him to face the nation and make the case that his administration is on top of what he termed the “oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.”

Though Obama issued his first directive for concerted federal action within two days of the spill, he was not totally persuasive in delineating his administration’s efforts, ignoring criticism from the region’s officials and residents that it has been too slow and ignored many proposed remedies.

Many on the Gulf Coast still seemed skeptical, and, besides, Obama lacks the power to do the thing that would help most of all. “Nobody’s going to be satisfied with anything until the well is capped,” said Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s astute Republican governor.

Negative GOP reaction

And for all of the president’s fervent rhetoric on the long-overdue need to end U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, the predictably negative Republican reaction underscored his difficulty in gaining action on Capitol Hill, even if he drops the unpopular “cap and trade” portion of his energy plan.

The speech did enable Obama to promise jittery Gulf Coast residents anew that “we will offer every assistance they desire” and met public demands for a firm stand toward BP. He said he would meet with BP’s chairman “and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required.” That meeting led the oil giant to agree to provide $20 billion to meet damage claims over the next few years.

Typically, Obama avoided most specific promises, though even his vague statement that ongoing efforts “should capture” up to 90 percent of the leaking oil “in the coming days and weeks” could create problems.

In the long run, despite some overheated predictions that this speech could be a defining moment, Obama’s presidency still seems far more likely to hinge on his efforts to overcome the recession and reform the nation’s health care system.

Indeed, polling evidence so far indicates that the public’s generally critical view of how Obama has handled the spill has had little impact on the way Americans regard his presidency overall. His job approval in the latest USA Today /Gallup poll is 50 percent, roughly where it has been for nine months.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that criticism, much of it from normally supportive political and media voices, precipitated his decision to make the speech.

Early critics

Louisiana natives James Carville and Donna Brazile were early critics. On Sunday, The New York Times said in an editorial that Obama needed to display “competence and leadership” to offset his failure to move more quickly in mobilizing federal resources and confronting BP.

That came two days after a Washington Post report noted that he had yet to use the Oval Office setting favored by predecessors to rally public support in times of crisis.

Though Obama now has done so, presidential historian Michael Beschloss probably had it right Wednesday on MSNBC when he said, “In the end, results are what’s going to matter.”

That’s true for efforts to stop the spill and clean up the mess, but probably even more for Obama’s broad array of initiatives to deal with both inherited and underlying national problems.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.