On Spill, We Need 'Barack and Tony Show'

Great, President Obama finally met face to face today with BP's Tony Hayward. Only about 6 weeks too late, complains Steven Pearlstein. These guys should have realized from day one that "they were in this mess together," he writes in the Washington Post. Obama has been publicly hostile toward Hayward, but his attitude should have been, "Your guys screwed up, my guys screwed up, so we better both roll up our sleeves and fix this thing before we're both out of a job."

There's plenty of time after the hole is finally plugged for the blame game. "This needs to be the Barack and Tony Show, not the Barack and Tony Showdown," writes Pearlstein. "Barack and Tony on the phone with each other debating options, hashing through conflicting priorities and filling in each other's to-do lists." Why? "Because it is important to demonstrate that the adults are in charge and that they're not wasting time, attention, or energy pointing fingers or covering their political or corporate backsides." (More Gulf oil spill stories.)