Donna Brazile calls Obama’s oil spill response ‘not tough enough’

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile attacked the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Sunday, becoming the second Democratic heavyweight in recent days to call for a firmer White House hand with oil giant BP.

“One of the problems I have with the administration is that they're not tough enough. They are waiting for BP to say, ‘oh, we've got a new plan to stop the oil leak.’ They need to stop it, contain it, clean it up, and try to help us conserve our coastal wetlands,” said Brazile, who is from New Orleans, on ABC’s “This Week.”

Brazile managed Al Gore’s 2000 White House bid and is the Democratic National Committee’s vice chair of voter registration and participation. Her comments follow similar criticism from another prominent Democratic strategist from Louisiana, James Carville.

Carville, speaking on CNN late last week, accused the administration of ceding too much control over the spill response to BP. “They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have. They seem, like, lackadaisical on this,” Carville said.

“I think that the government thinks that they are partnering with BP. I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here. That’s one of the, sort of, whole flaws is they're naïve,” he said.

Obama administration officials have pushed back against allegations that they’re not tough enough with BP.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Sunday highlighted recent federal demands that the oil giant disclose more data, and more broadly defended the administration’s response to the ongoing spill from BP’s damaged undersea well.

“We were activated the moment that this oil rig exploded. This has been on the president's agenda ever since that happened. And we have mobilized every aspect that we possibly can in our government,” Gibbs said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”