PPP is out with a new poll that finds among other things that Louisianans give higher marks to Bush for his handling of Katrina than than to Obama for his handling of the BP spill disaster.
Once you look at the cross-tabs, you realize this isn't particularly surprising, and given the irrelevance of Louisiana to President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, he shouldn't worry about these numbers at all.
The first thing you see in the cross-tabs is that attitudes towards the response are sharply split along racial lines. While 75% of whites disapprove of Obama's response, 82% of African-Americans approve.
This is largely reflective of Obama's overall job approval ratings (71% disapproval among whites, 90% approval among blacks). As with the country at large, Obama's approval on the spill is a bit worse than his approval overall, but the gap is fairly narrow.
The racial divide is not unique to Obama or the BP spill. On the response to Katrina, Bush's approve/disapprove rating was 41%/50% among whites and a staggering 6%/90% among blacks.
Even on support for drilling, there is a large racial gap. 82% of whites support offshore drilling while 8% oppose it. Opinion among blacks is more mixed: 58% support it while 26% oppose it.
The bottom-line here is that short of joining the "Drill, baby, drill" crowd and becoming a Republican, there's really nothing President Obama can do to have a major impact on his numbers in Louisiana. In way, that should give him freedom to do the right thing instead of worrying about politics -- and that, in the long run, will pay dividends at the national level.