| BLITZER: Joining us now in our strategy session, our CNN political contributors Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, our senior political analyst Gloria Borger and David Gergen. Thanks very much for coming in. There's a brand new ABC News/"Washington Post" poll that asks the American public their views of the federal government's response to the oil gulf disaster. 69 percent have a negative response. 28 percent have a positive response. If you compare that to two weeks after Katrina at the time 62 percent had a negative response at the federal government's reaction, to 38 percent had a positive response, Donna, this is not encouraging news for this Obama administration which is the federal government. DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No, it's not, but let me just say it's not hurricane Katrina. I remember that nightmare, and everyone who remembered that nightmare understands exactly why these two, these are two separate events. BLITZER: Why do 69 percent of the American people have a negative response? BRAZILE: They're frustrated. They see this, this bill. They know that it's having an impact on the public. It's having an impact on the people of the gulf, wildlife and sea life and they're visibly upset the federal government cannot go and contain it. This poll was also taken before the new containment measure was put in place. Perhaps it's given some relief that BP is doing a better job in containing it, but until this spill is contained people are going to be visibly upset. GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I also think, oddly for Barack Obama, he's had a very difficult time explaining this problem to the American public, maybe because he got into it late and maybe because he ceded a lot of the authority to BP at the beginning. So at the beginning he said, well, BP is taking care of it. What the American public wanted to see was actually, that the president was in charge. Now he's changed his message tremendously, and has set BP to the side and said today, look, I don't want to see them nickel and dimming folks who earn their living off the water. The president has separated himself, now taking charge. We'll see if the polls a month from now so something different. BLITZER: Is it, David, a matter of communications or another issue here? DAVID GERGEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it's partly communications, Wolf. I think it's a deeper issue and that is a sense of being ineffectual and the early stages they -neither the government nor BP seemed to have a very strong or a good response to this and both of them are being condemned for it. What does surprise me is that the response is more negative today than with Katrina. That's counter intuitive. With Katrina we had the face of human suffering and ineptitude that was quite staggering at the time. To have this worse, you know, is surprising. The only -- one caution I would put, Wolf, is, it's not so clear that this negative response about the government, the government's handling of it is leading to a direct rub-off on President Obama in terms of his poll numbers. There's been no nose dive on the part of the president. What I do think is he's getting hurt in terms of the narrative, in terms of the overall sense of his presidency. This combined with the stubbornness of the unemployment problems and other things I think is starting to create a narrative in the press, perhaps in country, of intellectuality. BLITZER: He was at a cabinet meeting today Donna. He brought together all of his key advisers on this issue. You saw them sitting around the table. He has got to do something every single day to remind the American people, this is priority number one right now. BRAZILE: Yeah, I think visibility is viability. The fact is that the navy was there, the coast guard was there when this accident occurred. No one at the time, because I remember I was out there, I knew what was going on, I had been to the gulf three times. The national media wasn't even paying attention, Wolf, and all of a sudden the American people woke up, it was day 30, and they said, oh, is this thing still going on? So there has been a visible response to this, and the white house hasn't always kept up with the events, but they're on the case right now. BORGER: But you know to David's point is you get to a point where the American public begins to believe things are out of control, and they want to see that the president and the white house are in control. And if you look at the leak, it's still not plugged. If you look at jobs and the economy, the unemployment rate is still a huge problem. Has the president sold health care reform to the country? What about his energy policy? And they sort of take a look at the whole, and they say, is this administration in charge? And that's the question that you see reflected in this poll, but not yet, as David points out, on Barack Obama personally. BLITZER: Bottom line, this administration has a lot of work to do between now and November to avoid a major political -- BRAZILE: But I want to say, BP must be held responsible. They're the ones. They're responsible. BLITZER: Everybody agrees with you Donna. The battle to bring the gushing oil in the gulf under control is waged not only at sea. CNN's Brian Todd will take us inside for an exclusive look at BP's command center for this massive operation. Stand by, you'll see something you'll see only here on CNN. |