I'm not happy that the explosion and leak happened, but things like that are bound to happen once in a while. All things considered, I think that BP did a pretty good job of dealing with the technical fixes needed to stop the leak.
The things that really went horribly wrong were the containment and the leadership aspects of it. Big oil leaks are nothing new and containment methods are pretty good, all things considered. I simply cannot understand why this was not made a top priority immediately. There is a widespread opinion that the oil was allowed to leak deliberately and I tend to believe this is true because no organization could be so incompetent as to allow a slick like that to spread for months while plenty of containment options were available.
There has recently been a flurry of articles in all news media focusing on the incompetence of Obama on many matters. I believe this oil event was "the last straw" that shows that incompetence can only be hidden for so long.
It appears we are at the point where:
1) Obama's honeymoon with the public is over
2) He can no longer use the "I inherited this mess" argument for any purpose
3) His popularity, and the popularity of his party is about to take a historic plunge
Meanwhile we need to remember that the republicans offer no sensible alternatives to the problems we face. And we must remember that they too were rejected by the public dramatically for good reasons just a couple of years ago.