Nero fiddled while Rome burned

The media has been full of stories lately about BP chairman Tony Hayward's trip to a yacht race and Obama playing golf instead of being on the job. It seems that the media and everyone who leaves comments on these stories think that they should be "monitoring the situation" 24 hours a day. I guess they can't take a day off! Not to defend BP completely, but trying to cap the largest oil spill in history is a huge challenge. No response plans in place ever considered this big of a spill. The fact that the well is 1 mile underwater doesn't help. What are Hayward and Obama supposed to do? They are CEOs. Their responsibility is to oversee others who hire the required people to get the job done. They are not rig workers or engineers. They don't have a clue about the technical aspects of solving the problem. That's why they are bosses, not workers. There is a saying that if you don't know how to do it, hire someone who does. My personal opinion is that, in order to properly run a company (or country), you must work up through the ranks. You should pretty much know what every job position involves and how it is done. Only then do you have a legitimate opinion. I don't know if the people sitting around in Louisiana because they can't fish or drill or go to strip clubs have the same opinion as the media, who is apparently getting their material from gossips in DC. Their plight isn't much different than the millions who have lost their jobs in this Great Recession, except that they have a potential share of $20 billion dollars.
The decision made by Obama to stop all drilling and permitting of offshore wells because of the oil spill is also a stupid, knee-jerk reaction to the situation. Not only does that decision put even more people out of work, it makes the oil market speculators nervous, which in turn makes gas prices move all over the place. Obviously, this and other actions by government officials, is a reaction to public outcry, not factual evidence. To use this disaster to push alternative energy is not the best use of our government. Half of our government (not verified) has a stake in good performance of oil companies so it isn't in their best interests to kick oil to the curb. Any energy alternative is more expensive, which is not a good thing in our current economic state.