Giuliani: Obama Handled Oil Spill ‘Like A Political Problem, Not A Crisis’

Former New York mayor (and failed 2008 Presidential candidate) Rudy Giuliani appeared on on Hannity last night to discuss the political topics of the day with Sean Hannity, and delivered a strong and scathing critique of President Obama‘s management of the BP oil spill, saying it’s been handled more like a political problem and not an environmental crisis.

After first discussing the potential scandal surrounding Joe Sestak, the conversation turned to the Gulf Oil Spill. And sometimes a strong opinion gets in the way of a stronger argument, as is sort of the case in the following clip. Hannity opens the segment by clearly setting his own agenda with the following intro:

“Now clearly the President’s status as a community organizer – and his brief stint as Senator – haven’t actually made him a skilled manager. But somebody who knows real crisis management is the man who took the lead during 9/11, that’s former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.”

While that introduction serves as delicious red meat to his loyal audience, it also undercuts the very sharp point-by-point criticism of how the White House mistook the scale of the environmental (and political) disaster of the BP oil spill. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but Giuliani’s comment that this administration has treated this whole mess as a political problem — and not the crisis into which it has evolved — is the sort of pithy commentary that we will likely hear a lot more of in the coming weeks. It should also be noted that Giuliani received a lot of criticism for politicizing the crisis of 9/11, but that’s a post for another day.

Rough transcript of the oil spill part of the discussion follows the video.

Hannity: You are known for your leadership in 9/11. You walked out there. You were with the people of New York on a daily basis. How would you rate the President’s handling of the gulf crisis?

Giuliani: Couldn’t be worse. This would be an example, if you are taught Leadership 101 of what NOT to do. Minimize it first. Two, three days after, go on vacation. He’s been on case more off than he has been to Louisiana, Mississippi or any of the places affected.

Hannity: Or playing golf or shooting hoops.

Giuliani: He gives the sense that he’s nonchalant or lackadaisical about it. Which I think that’s the word of Jim Carville, lackadaisical. Which that does is, that sends it to the bureaucracy they are also lackadaisical. As a leader, your actions are going to energy your bureaucracy to do the best it can or make it — the same thing Christmas day bombing. Stays on vacation for 11 days. So the other guys go on vacation. The reality is, that the administration has made every mistake you could make down to this criminal investigation of BP. Why you are you criminally investigating them? Are you going to distract them from the job of what they are supposed to be doing? If they are being criminally investigated, why are we allowing them to do it? We have a bunch of criminals doing it…

Hannity: We knew at a minimum 5,000 gallons a day we knew it was going to be huge. 5,000 feet in the ground this was going to be difficult to plug. Here’s the question, what should we have done?

Giuliani: The President should have immediately taken control. He should have gone there, should have been there more than twice. He should have been leading the charge from the front, not this..oh, you know, “I’m not going to touch it.” BP for the longest time Gibbs was saying BP was in charge. The President announced a week ago he was in charge. if he was in charge, he was in charge while on vacation. He should have brought in the best experts. He should have set up a team of independent advisers to be advising him directly. so he wouldn’t be just in the hands of BP. And he wouldn’t put the entire responsibility just on them. And now these telling us through his Attorney General they have real suspicions that BP committed crimes why the heck are they allowing BP they believe might have committed crimes to be doing this?

Hannity: Great point. I was asking about the environmental, we can’t build barriers they didn’t deliver the booms they were supposed to deliver 44 days in we couldn’t have a berm that’s environmentally, not safe. It seems they left little options. The Gulf Coast of Florida, the panhandle is going to get hit with this oil.

Giuliani: May 23rd, they asked for permission to do their own work and they can’t make a decision about it. The reality is, this has been handled — this has been handled as a political problem. which is — it is not handled like a real crisis.

Hannity: Will he pay a political price?

Giuliani: Oh my gosh yes. Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, like him or not, you can’t argue this has been handled close to competently. To start criminal investigations right now on a company that you want to be focused just on doing that, they are going to divert an enormous amount of attention to dealing with these criminal investigations which i think is about escape getting.