Vucci/AP
President Barack Obama surveys the damage from
a massive oill spill off the Louisiana coast.
"I know there have been times where you've wondered if you were being asked to face them alone," Obama said after spending more than three hours inspecting the damage around Grand Isle, La.
"I am here to tell you that you're not alone. You will not be abandoned. You will not be left behind," Obama promised on his second visit to the oil-soaked region.
Obama stopped at a closed beach on a day that it should have been packed with swimmers and sunbathers. He knelt near the surf with his sleeves rolled up and grabbed a handful of tar balls off the sand, some the size of a quarter.
The President explained that teams of workers were being dispatched to pick up the tar balls that get past the booms and make it to shore.
"It's an assault on our shores, on our people, on the regional economy and on communities like this one," Obama later said.
But for some locals, words - even from the President - were meaningless.
"He's wasting his time," said Larry Freman, who has a vacation home in Grand Isle.
"It's a dog-and-pony show. What can he really do?" added Billy Ward, who's at his beach house every weekend. "If he wants to do something, let him get out there and pump some mud and cement into that hole. Just fix it. Help us."
Ward, a developer, was in the midst of building a gated fishing community when the oil rig exploded. "We can't build this development not knowing if there's going to be any fishing here ever again," he said.
During his visit, Obama had a chance to get a taste of the backlash caused by the oil's destructive path.
His limo passed a young man who held up a sign that looked like it was oozing oil and said, "Clean up the Gulf," and drove by a marina with a homemade sign that read, "I'd rather be fishing."
"I like the man, but I personally feel he's only here to please everybody," said Virginia Smith.
One charter fisherman, Joe Williams, of Venice, La., said he liked it when Obama said "the buck stops" with him.
"If he takes control of it now, that is great because everyone has been passing the buck," Williams complained.