Obama Weighing 'Whose Ass to Kick'

President Obama offered an impassioned defense of his administration’s handling of the oil spill today, promising to make sure BP paid for the disaster “if it’s the last thing I do.” In an interview on the Today Show, Obama said he would have already fired Tony Hayward if he ran BP, though he admitted he’d never spoken to the CEO. “He’s gonna say all the right things to me,” he explained. “I’m not interested in words, I’m interested in action.”

Speaking of action, Lauer asked Obama if he had spent too much time speaking with experts and not enough kicking butt. “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” replied an annoyed Obama. The experts “potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick. This isn’t theater. … I don’t always have time to perform for the benefit of the cable shows.” (More Barack Obama stories.)