Environmentalists Give Obama Free Pass on Spill

President Obama is taking more and more criticism over the Gulf oil spill, but little of it is coming from the nation's major environmental groups, writes Josh Gerstein. The "movement has essentially given him a pass—all but refusing to unleash any vocal criticism against the president even as the public has grown more frustrated by Obama’s performance," he writes at Politico.

The reason is that "these guys have bet the farm on this administration," the leader of an environmental think tank tells Gerstein. The Sierra Club and others need to work with the administration on bigger-picture issues such as climate change, and their prospects are much better now than they were under the Bush administration. "These guys are so beholden to this administration to move their agenda that I think they’re unwilling to criticize them," says the think tank exec. (More Gulf oil spill stories.)