Obama visits threatened Louisiana beach

Intent on showing firm command of the deepening Gulf Coast crisis, President Barack Obama flew to Louisiana today and personally inspected a beach jeopardized by America’s largest-ever oil spill.

Criticism of Obama is rising as crude continues to gush out of the leak weeks after the oil rig exploded and sank. Amid fears that the tragedy crippling the Gulf region’s wildlife and economy could soon also engulf his presidency, Obama has launched a campaign to step up public engagement and directly confront the public’s anger.

A day earlier, he held a rare White House news conference to address the matter, saying “I take responsibility” for handling what is now considered the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Todat, he interrupted a Memorial Day weekend stay with his family at their Chicago home for the Gulf visit, with his first stop a beach where absorbent booms and sandbags have been laid to try to keep more oil from washing ashore.

No oil could be seen in the water during Obama’s helicopter ride from New Orleans, over Louisiana bayous, to Port Fourchon. That changed when he arrived at Fourchon Beach, however.

A shirt-sleeved Obama walked to the water’s edge, stooping as Adm. Thad Allen of the Coast Guard explained what he was seeing.

The beach, sealed off with crime-scene-style yellow tape, is one of the few sandy stretches on Louisiana’s coast, where most is marshland. Obama called reporters traveling with him to the water’s edge to point out some pebble-sized tar balls.

Obama was being joined there by the governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama.

(Via MSNBC)