More important to President Barack Obama than containing the oil leaking from a damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico is containing the faith of the American people in his authority, which has developed its own leak.

This is what led Obama to proclaim on Thursday: “I take responsibility.” And take it he did.

“From the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort,” he said of the April 20 accident which destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and resulted in thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico daily.

BP, who had leased the rig, has made numerous attempts to stop the flow from the damaged well, including a so-called “top kill” last week which was abandoned Saturday afternoon. BP says it will try another method of capping the well next week, pending government approval.

That’s right, from day one, the federal government has been getting in the way of BP’s efforts to stop the flow of oil, requiring the company to submit — as it were — and gain approval of numerous high-level bureaucrats for any major decision it wants to make.

The feds have even gotten in the way of state government efforts to preserve beaches and wetlands. For instance, the government delayed approval for Louisiana to construct a system of sandbars to divert oil away from the state’s wetlands, until the bureaucrats could study the plan. Eventually the feds would approve part of the plan, but by that time, the wetlands to be protected had already been contaminated.

The ultimate responsibility for stopping the oil leak rests with BP, as it always has, whether the federal government does anything or nothing. But it seems quite likely that the feds just plain aren’t helping, and are — as they did in Katrina — just making matters worse.

We’ve come to expect a certain basic level of government incompetence, though. The real problem here is in the American people’s almost disillusioned reaction to the disaster. Consider these bizarre statements from Tracy Kuhns, of Lafitte, La., the wife of a local fisherman:

“BP is a corporation, it’s going to protect its bottom line,” Ms. Kuhns said. “But where are the government agencies who are supposed to protect the health and safety of our citizens?” — New York Times

She’s not alone. Obama also said on Thursday: “When I woke this morning and I’m shaving and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head and she says, ‘Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?’”

You could be forgiven for thinking that any of these statements was reasonable; many people don’t see what’s wrong with them. The assumption that BP would intentionally risk losing the billions of dollars it has already lost on this disaster is plainly ridiculous after a moment’s thought. The assumption that government agencies are supposed to protect people — or the President himself — is also ridiculous, but a lot more than a moment’s thought is required to realize that.

Consider the oil spill. Obama says he takes responsibility and that the buck stops with him. What’s more, he said that: “BP is operating at our direction. Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance.” The federal government has completely taken over every aspect of the response to the accident, including anything that BP wants to do to stop the leaking oil. A government bureaucrat decided to stop BP’s top kill attempt, for instance. But, critically, the federal government doesn’t actually have the capability to stop the leaking oil!

“What is true is that when it comes to stopping the leak down below, the federal government does not possess superior technology to BP,” Obama said. “We do not have superior technology when it comes to dealing with this particular crisis.” The federal government also doesn’t have the expertise, he said.

What they do have — the only thing they have — is force. Interior secretary Ken Salazar on Monday said that the government will “keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done.” So here we have the federal government, which has no idea how to stop an oil leak a mile underwater. Obama said he wouldn’t have used that particular language. Perhaps he could have said cracking the whip, or keeping the gun to their head. Either is just as accurate. Instead he said the federal government is “fully engaged,” which means exactly the same thing.

By making such a forceful response, Obama is merely responding to criticism that he didn’t do enough in response to the crisis, and didn’t do enough to plan for it. But why? Why does everyone from the fisherman’s wife to Obama’s own daughter expect him to plug the leak?

“There is little the White House can actually do to stop a massive underwater oil spill, and expectations that he do more are largely unreasonable,” writes columnist Glenn Greenwald.

The answer, of course, is that people have been trained to treat the president as some sort of god, and government as his angels.

In The Cult of the Presidency, Cato Institute vice president Gene Healy explains that presidents throughout history have worked hard to expand the power of the office, not to mention government generally, to the point where today most people view the United States president as a nearly omnipotent father figure — almost a god, if you will. This is why presidents get into wars and why public schools exist, and the phenomenon is hardly unique to America.

It’s also why presidents say they are doing something about situations in which they are directly powerless. The something that gets done is to point the gun at — or keep the boot on the neck of — whoever can do something.

“If only we could ‘Top Kill’ the Cult,” Healy writes. Seeing the president for what he is — a man who has nothing but the biggest and most guns in the world, and the will to use them — is the best way to break yourself free from the cult.

[Photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard/PO3 Patrick Kelley]