Tony Hayward and Joe Barton: losers of the week

The week doesn't end until close of business tomorrow, but I would like to anoint BP CEO Tony Hayward and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) as the losers of the week. I give BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg a pass for his lost-in-translation "small people" comment. As Mike Barnicle said on "Morning Joe" today, Svanberg did something that has not been done by the chairmen of the bailed-out banks that almost pulled down the global economy: He apologized to the American people --- twice. To President Obama at their closed-door meeting yesterday and then again when he spoke to the press afterward.

Hayward is up there on Capitol Hill being grilled like gulf shrimp today. And it's not going well. This unsympathetic character already ticked people off late last month by whining about wanting his life back. Now Hayward is before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where his slow, lumbering non-answers make him sound like a hungover college student in the back of the lecture hall who's trying mightily to get an insistent professor off his back. He's failing miserably.

Meanwhile, Barton apologized -- apologized! -- to BP for the $20 billion escrow account to compensate gulf residents for their losses. He called it a "shakedown" and a "slush fund." Cue the condemnation. "What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by Barton defending BP. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, between 1989 and 2010, he received $27,350 from BP. Full disclosure: Obama received $77,051 in BP donations over that same period.

Update, 4:40 p.m.: Barton apologized for his apology to BP. “I apologize for using the term ‘shakedown’ with regard to yesterday’s actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident.” Too late, man. Too late.