Kurtz calls BP oil spill Obama's “Waterloo”

This morning Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz posted the following to Twitter linking to his latest piece:

That's right -- the BP oil spill isn't Obama's "Katrina," it is his “Waterloo” says Kurtz.

How does the nation's best-known media critic come to such a conclusion? By saying there isn't much Obama could have done better other than showing a bit more passion.

Seriously:

Now, with BP, he has really fallen short.

I don't buy the notion that there was far more he could have done substantively. The federal government doesn't have the expertise or equipment to do what a deep-sea oil drilling company does (though it could hardly have done worse than the utterly clueless British Petroleum).

But in terms of the optics, the politics, the sense of outrage, well, no wonder James Carville was angry. The White House just bungled that part.

Last week's presser was an attempt to catch up, to seize control, at least in terms of public perception. Watching Obama, I thought, here's a guy who really understands this stuff. But he was flat and technocratic, at least until he invoked his daughter, which for me missed the mark.

Get that? Obama is doing all he can on the substance of the issue, it's his presentation that's lacking. Talk about crass.

Kurtz was hardly finished. He then goes on to claim the President is in deep trouble when “top columnists at the New York Times and Washington Post turn on” him. Two of the examples he cites are Maureen Dowd and Dana Milbank, each of who have gone after Obama many times in the past so their current criticism is hardly noteworthy.

Kurtz even manages to get a jab in at former President Jimmy Carter writing, “When commentators start invoking Carter, that is very bad news indeed.”

I suppose one could say that it's “very bad news indeed” when Howard Kurtz tries to analyze the politics let alone the media.