“And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick,” proclaimed our president this morning in an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show.

Some people may object to this remark because it is coarse. I object because it is disingenuous and clearly the brainchild of a media relations team. “President Obama! The American People think you’re an effete intellectual. They think you lack emotion. They want to see you get mad!” And, “The American People do not want to hear about experts or scholars. They want you to get out there and KICK ASS!”

President Obama, polls or no polls, please speak with your authentic voice. Work with BP, work with everyone who can help clean up this terrible mess, build some regulations, kick some ass if necessary, but don’t talk to us as if street fightin’ is your way of life. Get real.

It’s the financial markets meltdown all over again, but this time we can smell it, slip on it and watch the Gulf of Mexico sicken. The two catastrophes have a lot in common. As a nation, we’ve been lulled too far toward  allowing the free market to police itself in high-risk industries. It’s not working very well, is it?

BP CEO Tony Hayward admitted Thursday that the company was unprepared for an accident of this magnitude. In an interview with The Financial Times, he acknowledged that BP “did not have the tools” at hand to stop or contain the spill when it occurred six weeks ago. Of course, BP still doesn’t have the tools.

I’m an entrepreneur and a fan of business, on the whole. It would be splendid if corporations could be relied upon to consistently behave in the best interests of the public. But they don’t. The argument that an unbridled free market is the best option for the economy (let alone the environment) is proving itself hollow. The recent Great Recession and continuing questionable recovery has cost individuals, families, businesses, schools, and state and local governments dearly. We can thank short-term thinking, greed, hubris, and extraordinarily weak regulation of the financial markets for a good deal of what’s ailed us since 2008. Now the largest oil spill in U.S. history highlights the same maladies.

We’re deep drilling when we don’t have either the comprehensive engineering preparedness or the truly at-the-ready remediation tools to prevent destroying our oceans, shores, fisheries, tourism, and more. We are deep drilling with weak safety regulations, some of which were disregarded in any case. Aren’t we any smarter than that?

Leaders – business, government and community – must sear into our brains the truth that next month, next year and the next decade are at least as important as our immediate profits, trades, deadlines, and triumphs.