(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM. THAD ALLEN, NATIONAL INCIDENT COMMANDER: I have never said this is going well, but we are throwing everything we've got. This is the largest oil spill response in the history of the country.

I said time and time again, nothing good happens when oil is on the water, and we're making no illusions that this is anything other than a catastrophe and we're addressing it as such and we'll continue to do that.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, "SPECIAL REPORT" HOST: President Obama emoting in an interview on NBC. We just learned from the White House he is heading back down to the Gulf region on Monday and Tuesday for another trip there. This is as on day 50 of the spill, BP salvaged more oil than it spilled. That was a first, some good news.

What about the politics of all of this, as you look at the well, still spewing out oil. Let's bring in our expanded panel. Rich Lowry from the National Review, A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, Bill Kristol, editor if The Weekly Standard, Juan Williams, news analyst for National Public Radio.

Rich, what about all of this and the president's statement that he's looking to kick somebody's you-know-what?

RICH LOWRY, NATIONAL REVIEW: I'm so disappointed. The one thing I liked about Obama all along is that he didn't feel my pain. He sort of had an old school, traditional affect where he wasn't overly emotional.

The fundamental problem he has here is he has to take responsibility given the dynamics of the modern presidency over a situation he doesn't have full control over. He can't stop that well from leaking the oil and as long as he does, people won't approve of the handling of the situation and he has to resort to basically theater, Thad Allen doing separate briefings and saying he will kick ass. It doesn't make much of  a difference.

BAIER: A.B.?

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: President Obama is distant and he's cool, he's rarely defensive, except in his interview with you in March. We don't see him with his back up like this.

And it's almost like it's purposeful at this point. The tough talk is uncharacteristic. It just seems like a political PR mop-up at this point, and it doesn't really seem as if it will be an effective way of changing the public perception that he was in outrage as everybody else from the beginning.

Be on the ground and keep going to the Gulf and do what Governor Bobby Jindal has done, which is not go back to his desk for 49, 50 days, and be out in the field and talk to people affected by this. But all of the interviews where he's not acting like himself is just not going to help.

BAIER: Bill, is Spike Lee and James Carville and Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd rising to advisor status now?

BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: I guess he is listening to them. If he is going down to the Gulf Monday and Tuesday, he has to have a bunch of meetings in the White House to find out whose ass to kick.

The best thing about his statement is not really that I'm -- excuse the vulgarity, "I want to kick some ass, I'm angry." If the president said that, you'd say, fine, he's angry. But I love his formulation that the reason I listen to these experts is that they have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick.

(LAUGHTER)

He's so professorial that he thinks you have to call a meeting of experts to decide whose ass to kick. Don't most politicians, most executives just decide that at some point, I'm going to go get mad and they don't have the meetings experts in the Roosevelt Room to decide who to get mad at.

BAIER: Juan, this is a change of tone definitely. Previously he said he would to love spend time venting and yelling at people. That is not the job I was hired to do. He said when asked about the federal government's boot on the neck of BP, he said, "I would say we don't need language like that," but we do need this other language?