This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 3rd, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

The oil keeps spilling in the Gulf and frustrations are running high, but should Americans really

expect a miracle out of the president to fix that

particular problem? Gene Healy, vice president of the Cato Institute, has lots of

beefs with this president but his inability to manage an unprecedented dangerous and extremely technical feat of engineering isn't one of them.

Well, the president's been having a rough time of it lately because of the Gulf oil spill. And it's understandable that people are frustrated, but the

reaction across the political spectrum really isn't a lot different than the reaction of 11 year old Malia Obama who said

daddy did you plug the hole yet last Thursday and she's 11 so she has an

excuse but we've seen this bipartisan conception where everyone left and

right greets this disaster with a cry more or less save us super president.

You've got Carl Rove calling at Obama's Katrina,

you've got Sarah Palin, the lady who led the drill baby drill chant at the

Republican National Convention, calling for his head. And then on the left you've

got James Carville who's screaming his head off on various TV shows about

how the president should get down there and take control. It's not really clear

what any of these folks want him to do. They just seem to have the

background assumption that the president is a National Guardian Angel

slash superhero who should fly in part part the waters, and clean up the spill.

And I think the whole thing is an object lesson in the dangers of that kind of viewpoint.

A lot of people have been making hay of the fact that the president has only visited the site once.

Yeah, there's this weird perception, almost superstition, that if the president would just manifest

himself at the afflicted area and use the magic powers of presidential concern,

...