He says that 33 similar deep water oil wells that were operating, he's going to suspend those operations, at least for now, pending a review of what happened in this current disaster. The president insisting this is his top priority right now. To stop this oil spill, to learn why it happened and to make sure it never happens again.
Let's discuss what we have just heard for more than an hour. We have got "The Best Political Team" on television. Anderson Cooper is standing by, as well. Let's go to Anderson first though right now. Anderson, you're on the scene in the Gulf of Mexico for us. Do you think what the president said today is go to reassure the folks there that he's on top of this issue?
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Any word from the president certainly are going to be welcomed here. what's really going to be welcomed is his visit tomorrow so he can really get a hands-on sense of what is going on. I think there's a lot of -- you know, a lot of people believe there's a disconnect.
Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish yesterday said but he doesn't believe that the president's getting all the information he needs about what's going on on the ground. And they see a disconnect between BP and the Coast Guard, between what is happening and what is actually happening. You can still go out to areas of marsh land where nothing is getting cleaned up and where there are no people in hazmat outfits cleaning up oil that's soaked into the marshes.
So, the president session they're doing everything they can. A lot of people want him to see it for himself and see if there's anything that can be done organizationally to make things flow better here.
BLITZER: David Gergen, the president had a mission here to reassure the public that he knew what he was doing, and that this was not another Katrina as Katrina was for President Bush. Was it mission accomplished as far as this news conference was concerned?
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the president deserves great credit for stepping up to the issue and taking -- mainly taking responsibility for it, saying, we're in charge here, I recognize that. We're going to go forward that way.
I must tell you at the same time, if the government's been in charge, that's a surprise to an awful lot of people. It has not appeared to people that anybody's been in charge, and if anything, that BP has had much more responsibility for getting this done.
So, that -- but I think the second thing that -- a lot of people were asking me, if the government's in charge, why isn't there more of a sense of an emergency? Why isn't there more mobilization? Is he really satisfied with the status quo? He said we made mistakes along the way, but there was no sense of mobilizing the full forces that one hoped for.
And I think that goes for the quality of news conference. He -- we all know he's a superb orator, and he can be terrific in these kinds of things. I didn't think he was at his best today. There was something - the energy level didn't seem high. He seemed uncomfortable with this. He knows that he's got a mess on his hands. And he just clearly seemed uncomfortable dealing with it. And I think that, as a result - he didn't come across as a take-charge leader.
BLIZTER: What did you think, John King? As you saw the president deal with these very, very sensitive issues, knowing he's heading to the region tomorrow, did he convey the authority that he often does?
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, to David's point, he is by nature more distant and a detached -- President Obama is. And it often serves him well in times of crisis. I think at something like this, people want to see a visceral president. They want to see George W. Bush with a bullhorn after 9/11. They want to see Bill Clinton saying, "I feel your pain." It's not Barack Obama's style; it's not his personality. And again, sometimes it helps him. In a case like this, I think people do want a more visceral president.
What will be hard for people to get, is number one, he did take responsibility. He owns this. He said from day one, we've been in charge and says his team is doing everything possible. The question is, is the federal government team up to this? Well, I did some homework before we came up here. Eighty-eight positions requiring Senate confirmations still unfilled in this administration in the Interior Department, which is the agency here that matters. Food safety, ocean protection, a lot of these oversight jobs in the government.
And the question being asked in this town is why do people have to die in mines in West Virginia and on this rig off the Gulf, an ecosystem to be destroyed, before you have the presidents and key committees in Congress saying we need to do a better job at fixing these oversight agencies that we know are corrupt, that we know are too cozy and that we know are too lazy? If they know they're corrupt and cozy and lazy, why didn't they fix it them the first place?
BLITZER: Because -- he's been in office now for a year and a half, Candy.
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: He has. And the -- certainly we have heard from him, at least by implication and from some other administration officials, this is George Bush's fault. It was his MMS, the people that were supposed to be overseeing this.
But you know what? A year-and-a-half in, that wears thin.
I think what's going to be complicated for the president is he said what he wanted to say almost from the get-go, which is from the moment this began, the federal government has been in charge. The people don't think it's been going very well. So he does own it, and yet, I'm not sure he wants to.
BLITZER: I was sort of surprised, Gloria, when he said the woman who is in charge of this Minerals Management Services, which oversees, regulates the entire offshore oil industry, he didn't know if Elizabeth Birnbaum was fired or resigned.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, he said that the secretary of the interior was testifying on the Hill, and they hadn't been able to talk about it and that may well be the case.
I think the president's problem here is that it's a little bit of a tautology. He says "I'm in charge. BP however, the oil companies have the technology that we do not have at the federal government. Maybe we ought to look at that. But I was wrong in my belief that they actually had their act together when it comes to these kind of worse-case scenarios. I'm in charge, dependent on them, but maybe we shouldn't have."
CROWLEY: Which makes you kind of not in charge.
BLITZER: All right. Our correspondent, Suzanne Malveaux is over in the East Room.
Suzanne, you were there. We're showing our viewers the live pictures of the feed coming in, stuff is still coming out of that well. We don't know if it's mud, we don't know if it's oil, we don't know what it is. Could be cement, we should know soon enough whether it is working or not.
But go ahead. Give us a thought -- because you have been covering this president from day one.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there are two things that stood out. I have to agree with you, I thought it was rather incredulous that you had the president saying that he did not know the circumstances around the director of MMS's resignation there. That that was a rather convenient answer, that he gave that he hadn't been briefed by his own secretary of the interior this morning.
I mean, this is an agency that he said himself was scandalously close to oil companies. So that's one thing that a lot of people are scratching their heads, thinking, well, that doesn't really pass the smell test.
The other thing that happened, which is the very first question that the president got, was his own personal responsibility, how did he see his role in that. And it took the whole press conference at the very end for him to address that when he said, "Before any of you leave this room, let me make clear that I take responsibility for this crisis and for cleaning up this crisis."
And so he wanted to at least acknowledge that there was some sort of personal responsibility, accountability that he was taking, but that was not something that he addressed early on. Eventually, he got to that point.
BLITZER: The buck stops with him, as Harry Truman used to say.
All right. All of us stand by. Ali Velshi is going to pick up our coverage right now.
We're not going away from this story.
Over the next few hours, we should know, Ali, whether this is a success or a failure. Pick up our coverage.
Transcript from CNN Newsroom aired on May 27, 2010