Republicans have been quick to point to the BP oil spill, already the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, as Obama’s Katrina. They’d like nothing more than to get revenge for the drubbing President Bush took for his lack of action and empathy with the victims of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf region and crippled the rest of his presidency. The White House is worried about that happening and doing everything it can to learn the lessons of Katrina and prevent a rerun.

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But to me, watching the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico and Obama’s helpless response brings back more memories of Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage crisis. As one who had a close-up view of that long-running event (I was a junior reporter covering the State Department when an Iranian mob took 52 U.S. hostages on Nov. 4, 1979, and held most of them for 444 days), I vividly remember the television logos adding up the days (then a relatively new innovation) thereby capturing the public’s concern and growing dissatisfaction.

Although it was a different kind of crisis, the similarities are stark and instructive. At first, it was judged an event that no one in government could have prevented. That gradually changed as questions emerged about why Washington didn’t have a better handle on the risks. No one had a ready solution for fixing the problem, but with each passing day, people wondered why the president and his aides couldn’t come up with an answer. Instead of accepting that the government was powerless, people got angry. They hated feeling the U.S. was too weak; they wanted and expected the government to make it go away. Finger-pointing followed, and eventually Carter launched a rescue mission against the odds. It failed, with U.S. helicopters crashing into each other, adding significantly to the notion that the Carter government was simply incompetent.