With Katrina comparisons inevitable, Obama plans oil spill visit

President Obama will visit the developing oil spill disaster in Louisiana in the next 48 hours to show his command of a situation that threatens the economy and ecology of the Gulf Coast.

British Petroleum, which was leasing the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to poke the Mississippi Canyon for deepwater oil deposits, "is ultimately responsible under the law for paying the costs of response and cleanup operations" for the Jamaica-sized oil spill now sloshing up against the US Gulf Coast, Obama said last week.

But even as public pressure stepped up on the oil giant for failures to take greater safety precautions and for overestimating its ability to contain a major blowout, the Obama administration also moved to contain what some described as a "sense of déjà vu all over again" among Americans as federal response once again seemed overwhelmed by a major disaster.

IN PICTURES: Louisiana oil spill

After the White House said Friday the President will stick to his weekend plans, the sudden decision to travel to the Gulf is an acknowledgement that natural disasters are historically a key indicator of presidential leadership.

"You can see how people are putting a spin on this, calling it a very serious situation, but they won't use the word disaster," says Steven Picou, a sociology professor at the University of South Alabama in Mobile.. "Yes, they don't want people to panic, but [it also] adds to the perception that our government … could care less about the American public."

The Deepwater Horizon is President Obama's first major domestic disaster, and the stakes are high as the spill threatens the fragile ecology and economy of the Gulf Coast. To be sure, Obama hasn't had a "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie!" moment that came to define the Bush administration’s outwardly out-of-touch response to hurricane Katrina.

(Bush visited the disaster zone five days after Katrina hit. If Obama arrives in Louisiana on Sunday, nine days will have passed since the Coast Guard announced the leak.)

Republicans in Congress have so far stayed criticisms of the White House response. And so far, the administration has pushed back hard against all such comparisons from the media.

"I guess I'd want to remember that 1,800 – more than 1,800 people died in Katrina," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. "We were there ... right after the incident happened," he continued, referring to the oil spill. "This notion that somehow we're playing catch-up is badly uninformed."

Indeed, the federal response is now unprecedented, says Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen.

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