Analysis: Obama's Oil Spill Speech Reflects New Battle Plan

June 16, 2010 -- For President Obama, the Oval Office address Tuesday night was about more than the oil spill.

His ability to project more command, competency and compassion in response to the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico— and the eventual success of the administration's actions — will have repercussions for his ability to do anything else, from pushing legislation on energy and jobs to holding down Democratic losses in the midterm elections.

So his tone was unyielding toward BP and his language almost military, calling the current effort a "battle we're waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens."

In his first address from the Oval Office, a forum presidents reserve for the most consequential of messages, he promised a skeptical nation that he would marshal government resources to guarantee the Gulf coast recovers.

"Make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes," he declared. "We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs described the speech as an "inflection point," a moment when the initial response is replaced by more decisive action. Obama announced a BP-financed compensation fund — though with no details about who will run it and what it will cover — and named Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, to head a long-term restoration program.

The speech was laced with impressive statistics: 90 percent of the spill to be capped within weeks; 17,000 National Guard members authorized to help; 5.5 million feet of boom laid in the water.

Eight weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, however, he acknowledged there was no immediate end in sight to the nation's worst environmental disaster. Cable stations displayed logos Tuesday that declared "Day 57" as a live video feed from the seafloor showed oil spewing into the water.

Obama said the oil spill was more like an epidemic than an earthquake, not a single event but a problem "that we will be fighting for months and even years."

He has been hammered by critics, including fellow Democrats such as Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who said he was too slow to get fully engaged, too deferential to BP and too cerebral in his response to a catastrophe that threatens a region's way of life. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken last weekend, 53 percent of Americans rated Obama's performance on the oil spill as "poor" or "very poor," including one of four Democrats. Seventy-one percent said he hadn't been tough enough on BP.