Obama has already handled the BP oil spill in the Gulf pretty abysmally as it is. He’s blasted BP for not doing enough, but his administration has slacked off — heck, the Interior Department Chief of Staff was white-water rafting at the Grand Canyon while the spill spread. He’s pointed the finger at everyone else, even though his administration exempted BP’s gulf drilling from an environmental impact study. He also is the top recipient of donations from BP. But with Obama, it’s been nothing but a blame game. He’s throwing everyone under the bus, left and right, while bleating on that he’s doing everything he can to get the problem solved. (In Obamaspeak, this means telling someone to “plug the damn hole”, because clearly no one would have thought of that before.)

It’s interesting to note, then, that he put more effort into a photo op than he has put into the entire clean-up effort.

Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn’t look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national news crews following him.

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts, whose district encompasses Grand Isle, told Yahoo! News that BP bused in “hundreds” of temporary workers to clean up local beaches. And as soon as the president was en route back to Washington, the workers were clearing out of Grand Isle too, Roberts said.

“The level of cleanup and cooperation we’ve gotten from BP in the past is in no way consistent to the effort shown on the island today,” Roberts said by telephone. “As soon as the president left, they were immediately put back on the buses and sent home.”

Roberts says the overnight contingent of workers was there mainly to furnish a Potemkin-style backdrop for the event — while also making it appear that BP was firmly in command of spill cleanup efforts.

Incredible. Obama buses in workers to clean up solely because he wants it to look nice for his photo op. (I guess his SEIU thugs must have been busy.) He had proposed downsizing the Coast Guard crisis center just a few short months before the spill. Good thing that didn’t happen, or who knows what the clean-up effort would be like. It hasn’t exactly made it a top priority. With Obama, he only puts this kind of effort in to make sure that it looks like he’s doing a good job. See? Look at how serious and dedicated he seems:

It’s pathetic, really. He tries so hard to keep up the appearance of a president devoted to the crisis. Maybe if he put this kind of effort into the actual clean up, and not just a photo op, the clean up effort would be going much better.

This just goes to show the total absence of leadership in the Obama presidency. It’s another half-assed pretend effort by a half-assed, pretend president.

Hat Tip: Jammie Wearing Fool