But even a gathering of experts won’t accomplish much unless a skilled leader uses their perspective to guide the recovery. So far, it has been the CEO of BP who has been managing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The president surely can’t rely on BP — its track record is suspect at best: Its management of this crisis has been characterized by obfuscation and lack of preparation. And BP’s responsibilities to its shareholders conflict with the greater responsibility to the nation and to the planet.

The president must personally lead the effort to solve the crisis. He cannot delegate this quintessential responsibility of his presidency in the way he delegated the stimulus bill, the cap-and-trade bill and the health care bill. It may be an instance of learning on the job, but it is a job only he can do. ~Mitt Romney

Perhaps nothing has more completely captured everything I dislike about Mitt Romney than this op-ed. It is shallow, opportunistic, demagogic, and yet at the same time overflowing with technocratic arrogance. Romney seems to think that Presidents are capable of working miracles, and the failure to do so is the result of a lack of will. If only Obama were willing to lead, all would be well! One of the great mistakes that some Presidents have made is a failure to delegate and an insistence on personally inserting themselves into everything. There are some responsibilities that cannot be shouldered by anyone but the President. This isn’t one of them, and if Romney thinks that it is he has no business seeking or holding the office of President.

Behind all of Romney’s criticisms is a creepy desire to have a Leader who shows us the way in every single thing, and who is responsible for responding to every accident and mishap that occurs. It is all the more absurd coming from the person who cannot stop boasting of the wonders of market economies and the virtues of freedom. Romney apparently wants the President deeply involved in cleaning up after a private corporation when there is practically little or nothing he can do. On one day he claims to hate government interference, which is supposedly why he now supports the repeal of health care legislation, and on the next he is demanding the firm smack of executive overreach.

Since when is it the “quintessential responsibility” of Obama’s Presidency to fix an oil spill caused by corporate negligence? If this sort of micromanagement and megalomania is what we can expect from a future President Romney, we should be glad that he is not in office and that the current President at least has some minimal sense of the limitations of government power.