We need to get politicians out of government. They are the same as actors and news anchors. Worse, they mostly come from the attorney pool. Attorneys don't know nearly everything, but think they can. In geology or physics or any real science this is not the case. That also includes climate. (Gore had ONE science course. There is no justice in the world.) Having majored in both engineering and physics, I can say engineering is more difficult. He should have used a petroleum engineer in the case of the oil spill. Oh well. Our politicians, like our citizens, are largely ignorant. I guess the USA got what it deserved.

I don't think Payack is trying to excuse Obama's speech. He's panning it, just like everyone else. Communicating clearly with the American people is a necessary skill for any president, and Payack is saying that Obama failed to do that.

Sundog

Except for the reason that Payack was attempting to pan the speech on the basis of its presentation, not its content, you might be right. But the nation understood the speech with little problem, they just didn't like it. In other words, content was the issue not presentation.

Very typical of the academic left when faced with their obvious shortcomings: call the citizens ignorant rubes unable to understand the content when what is really being said is that the content is wrong/offensive/counter-productive.

Obama needed to (and needs to) assemble a team of cross disciplines: drilling experts, geologists, hydrologists, structural engineers, metallurgists, machinists, demolition experts, etc.

Put them together and figure out how to "plug the damn hole."

I guess having an MD prevented me from appreciating the crap his was dishing out.

The TOTUS is in morning ...

Among the seven countries surveyed with substantial Muslim populations, the U.S. was seen favorably by just 17 percent in Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan and 21 percent in Jordan. The U.S.'s positive rating was 52 percent in Lebanon, 59 percent in Indonesia and 81 percent in Nigeria, where Muslims comprise about half the population.

None of those figures was an improvement from last year. There were slight dips in Jordan and in Indonesia, where Obama spent several years growing up. Egypt saw a 10-point drop, even though Obama gave a widely promoted June 2009 speech in Cairo aimed at reaching out to the Muslim world.Et tu, AP

Every day I wake up and hope that today is the day that our president presents his thoughts is a way that can be understood by all the people. Then after citizens sees the light, he can get to healing this nation from the horrible damage done by the Constitution, capitalism, people making their own decisions, and of course that horrible horrible George W. Bush.

Why doesn't he??? Does he need better writers? Does he need more practice making speeches? It is a mystery.

I didn't even hear his speech but I understood it really well.

This is always - always! - presented as the reason whenever Democrats' speeches and programs and policies fall flat. It is invariably because they overestimated the intelligence of the electorate and failed to dumb down the message enough to be grasped in flyover country.

Well, that and Republican fear mongering.

It never occurs to them that people reject them because they understand them.

Steve Skubinna ... What's destroying the Democratic brand right now is the grown-ups out here understand them too dam well. They wear their "I'm smarter and more special than you are" glasses every time they look at the rest of us, and it fatally hinders their understanding of us, and of the problems they've made for us. I swear if I see one more photo of Obama squatting on the sand in Louisiana picking up tarballs I shall indeed barf. Even Hugo Chavez, who is hardly the brightest dictator out there, is too smart to appear in public squatting anywhere. Doing anything. It's just not Presidential.

Stand up, for God's sakes, Barry. And leave the solution of this crisis to the Petroleum engineers, not to theoretical physicists like Mr. Chu. He's no help at all.

Marianne Matthews

That pissed me off. Written to a 9.8 level !! And they're still worried that it was too stratospheric for most viewer/listeners (rats, I used a 13 letter word; sorry morons). I was enjoying my evening. Now I'm not. It must be Bush's fault.

I wonder if Red Adair had a PhD or a Nobel prize? Whatever he had he sure as hell could tame the wildest oil well. We need some hairy balled oil men to turn this thing around. I heard today from the ex-president of Shell oil and he said that explosives would be the last option.