Unhinged Carville goes off on Obama on oil spill: 'Man, you've got to put somebody in charge... We're about to die down here'

James Carville, one of tv's most popular Democratic talking heads and a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, turned visibly angry in a interview Wednesday about the BP oil spill, accusing President Barack Obama of losing control.

Carville at one point declared, "We're about to die down here!" He was born in Georgia.

"The political stupidity of this is just unbelievable," the Democratic pundit remarked in an interview with Good Morning America Wednesday. "Here you have a situation where you have eleven hard-working people blown off [an oil rig in the gulf] as a result of corporate malfeasance and maybe criminal negligence as a result of inept bureaucrats who were part of the -- you can actually blame the previous Administration for this -- and the president doesn't get down here in the middle of this.

"I have no idea of why they didn't seize this thing," Carville continued. "I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands-offy here. It's just unbelievable."

"Very seldom do you get something that's very good politics and really the right thing to do, and that is to get involved here," he added.

Later, Carville rattled off a number of things Obama could have done.

"He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up," the onetime Clinton adviser said. "These people are crying, they're begging for something down here and he just looks like he's not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this, put somebody in charge of this thing and get this thing moving. We're about to die down here."

Matthew Dowd, a former political strategist for President George W. Bush, said BP's failure showed the American public that major corporations had failed them.

"The environmental disaster that happened is another example for the American public they can't trust corporations and big government to protect them," Dowd remarked. "I think ultimately, it will be a real political problem. It hasn't affected [Obama's] numbers. But in a disaster like this, his numbers should be going up."

This video is from ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast May 26, 2010.

Watch this video on iPhone/iPad