THEODORE, ALA. - Kicking off a week of high-stakes maneuvering around an oil slick threatening to bog down his first term, President Obama returned to the Gulf region Monday, touring the oil-stained waters by boat and warning of hard times to come, but touting the region's continued viability for tourists.
"There's still a lot of opportunity for visitors to come down here; a lot of beaches that are not yet affected or will not be affected," Obama told reporters after a meeting with Republican Govs. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana in Gulfport, Miss. "And we just want to make sure that people who have travel plans down to the Gulf area remain mindful of that ... one of the best ways to help is to come down here."
That balancing of boosterism and acknowledged tragedy is not the only delicate calibration facing Obama this week, as he plans a first address to the nation about the disaster from the Oval Office on Tuesday and prepares to meet face-to-face with the leaders of oil company BP on Wednesday.
Many Americans may want Obama to be harder on BP, but many others are alert to any hint of antibusiness sentiment amid lingering high unemployment. Some Americans will simply want to hear his plans for plugging the well, while others expect Obama to seize the opportunity to boldly reimagine the nation's energy future.
And then there is the question of BP, which the administration must pressure to repair lives, business and wetlands -- but not so hard as to put it out of business, leaving behind a whopping cleanup and compensation bill. "You don't want this horse to collapse in the middle of the race," said Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. "You want a healthy BP, not a crippled one."
The president's visit, the fourth since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, comes amid mounting calls, even among allies, that Obama appear more in command. It also comes amid mounting pressure on BP, from both the administration and Congress, to do more to fix the well and compensate the victims of the catastrophe.
The administration has taken a more aggressive stance toward the company of late, announcing Sunday that it hopes force BP to create an independently administered escrow account to fund compensation claims.
In remarks Monday, however, Obama refrained from chastising BP. Instead, he said he has already had "constructive" talks with the company, and hoped the two sides could arrive at some kind of structured plan at their White House meeting.
