Newspaper: Gulf oil spill is Obama's Katrina

As the Gulf Coast braced for an ecological disaster, President Obama yukked it up with White House correspondents, notes Investor's Business Daily, adding that Obama's Saturday radio address didn't even mention the oil spill. "President Bush, call your office."

Exhibit A in the latest case of liberal media bias is the free pass Obama and his administration have received following the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

From an editorial in Investor's Business Daily:

Rarely has media sycophancy been on such sharp display as in the largely indifferent response to President Obama's own indifference to the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The coverage has been far different from that given to President Bush's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Other than mobilize the resources of the federal government, there's little the president personally could have done. But words are important, Obama has said, and pictures are worth thousands of words. We remember President Reagan's stirring words and the images of a nation comforted after the Challenger disaster. We will not remember the jokes at Saturday's correspondents dinner.

We also remember the harsh and largely unwarranted criticism of President Bush after Hurricane Katrina, although the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, both governed by Democrats, dropped the ball as first and primary responders.

During his presidential campaign, Obama vowed that the federal government would never again let the residents of the Gulf Coast down, a pointed rehash of criticism that the Bush administration had been slow to respond to Katrina. On this vow, the jury is still out.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says it could be 90 days before a relief well is completed to address the Gulf spill. Nearly two weeks after the oil rig exploded, Obama appears at the site of a disaster not yet under control. Heckuva job, Mr. President.

Read the full editorial, "Obama's Katrina," at the newspaper's Web site.