The method is "never let a crisis go to waste"—which means that he responds to any crisis by exploiting it to promote his predetermined agenda. And what is his predetermined agenda? That brings us to the central goal of his administration: to smash capitalism.

Thus, the basic message of Obama's speech—and the thing he was most passionate about—was that the Gulf oil spill should prompt renewed congressional efforts to pass cap-and-trade controls that will constrict our use of fossil fuels. In effect, we should respond to the oil spill by shutting down the whole oil industry.

The transcript of the speech doesn't quite seem to be up yet, but here's the video of that section of the speech, with an excerpt:

The president says the oil disaster "is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean-energy future is now."

"I am happy to look at...ideas and approaches from either party, as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels," he said. "Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development, and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development."

In fact, Obama has already begun to shut down offshore oil production by declaring a six-month moratorium on new drilling licenses. Note that this is not a six-month review of licenses, but a six-month moratorium, which is already stopping the whole offshore oil industry cold. As the Washington Post reports from a shallow-water drilling platform in the Gulf :

On Friday afternoon, [oil rig manage Joe] Boop estimated that his rig, which is about half the size of a football field, had only 24 hours of work left and then would have to sit idle because of delays in permits and confusion about new safety regulations.

President Obama has declared a six-month moratorium on drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident. In shallow water—up to 500 feet deep—he said drilling by rigs such as Seahawk's could continue.

But rig owners say that confusion over safety regulations issued last week by the Interior Department and uncertainty about additional rules Interior says are on the way could extend delays in the issuance of shallow-water permits, creating a de facto moratorium. And that could force companies to idle rigs and furlough thousands of workers. Since the April 20 accident, the number of rigs actively drilling in shallow water of the gulf has dropped by half.

The Post goes on to note that "It is not the new safety regulations that are causing problems for shallow-water rig operators. 'We can live with that,' said Randall Stilley, chief executive of Seahawk. But, he said, [federal Minerals Management Service] officials are now too nervous to issue new permits without approval from senior administration officials." So the entire Gulf oil industry is now being micromanaged from within the White House. Along with the banks. And the auto industry.

For more on this debacle, see the main story linked to and excerpted below.

This will have a devastating effect on the Gulf Coast economy: "'It used to be that if fishing was down, people would go work on the rigs,' Chiasson said. 'Now you've got fishing and shrimping gone, and now the drilling side of our economy is gone. It leaves us in a bad, bad situation.'" But the offshore oil drilling rigs won't go to waste. They're being moved to Brazil, where they will help that country exploit its massive offshore deep-water oil reserves.

If you keep Obama's method and goals in mind, it explains a lot of things about his response to the spill.

It explains why he hasn't bothered to meet with BP's CEO or with any technical experts on how to "plug the damn hole." I don't think he would have anything to offer in such a meeting—he knows little or nothing about science and engineering. But if stopping the leak and cleaning up the spill were his central concerns, that is what he would be focusing on.

But Obama doesn't really care about the spill, any more than he cared about the financial crisis. He cares about how it will help him promote his pre-existing, anti-capitalist political agenda.

Thus, when Obama first took office, we saw his administration dither for months about its plans for administering the TARP bailout programs—while he pushed through a stimulus bill that was a giant wish list of long-denied leftist spending. And we've seen him passive and on the sidelines in response to the oil spill—but eager and passionate in using it to promote the environmentalist crusade against oil.

It explains why he indulges in comically macho language, talking about how he's trying to figure out "whose ass to kick," without actually doing much of anything. Note that this, along with Obama's attempts to dictate BP's dividend to its stockholders, provoked a minor diplomatic crisis, for which Obama had to apologize to the British prime minister. "The angry words from Washington have produced a backlash in Britain, where BP is a corporate pillar. Millions of British retirees depend on BP dividends since pension funds are heavily invested in the oil company, the world's third-largest."

Karl Rove describes this seemingly chaotic response as Obama "voting 'present'" on a major crisis, but he gets closer to the truth when he observes that "Mr. Obama is an odd mixture of passivity and radicalism. He's happy to be a cheerleader for policies (like nationalizing health care) that many Americans find dangerously liberal. The country has had another president both weak and radical at the same time: Jimmy Carter."

That is not an odd mixture. Leftist demagogues are always radical when it comes to smashing capitalism—and passive and disengaged, chaotic and incompetent, when it comes to actual day-to-day management of the government or the economy.

That's because their priority is not to build a smoothly functioning government or a perfect state-managed economy. Does anyone really believe such a thing is possible? Does anyone really care? No, they don't, because that is not their goal. Their goal is to smash the capitalist system, as an end in itself.