Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose tireless leadership in the days and weeks after 9/11 made him a national hero, has accused President Obama of doing everything wrong in his handling of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"It couldn't be worse," Giuliani said, June 2, when asked by Fox News' Sean Hannity to rate Obama's performance.

"I mean, this would be an example, if you're taught ‘Leadership 101,' of exactly what not to do: minimize it at first; two days after or three days after it happened, go on vacation," said Giuliani, who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

"He's been on vacation more often than he has, by far, been to Louisiana or Mississippi, or any of the places affected?" Giuliani added.

And in a particularly stinging comment, the Empire State's best-known Republican alluded to the criticism President Obama has been getting from one of the Democratic Party's best-known strategists.

"He gives the sense that he's very nonchalant and very lackadaisical about it - which I think are the words of Jim Carville, ‘lackadaisical,'" Giuliani said. Louisiana native Carville, famed as the "Ragin' Cajun," was the architect of Bill Clinton's successful 1992 quest for the presidency.

Carville went into a near frenzy last week during an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America," angry about Obama not spending more time in the Gulf Coast areas affected by the spill, which the White House concedes is the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

"I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands-offy here," Carville said. "The President of the United States could've come down here," he charged. "He could've been involved with the families of these 11 people" killed in the rig explosion on April 20 that triggered the massive oil gusher.

"He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now," Carville said. "He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard...doing something about these regulations."

An exasperated Carville, whose wife is Republican strategist Mary Matalin, said of Louisianans, "These people are crying. They're begging for something down here, and he just looks like he's not involved in this."

Apparently addressing Obama directly, Carville exclaimed, "Man, you gotta 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!"

According to Giuliani, the President's nonchalance delivers a "signal right into the entire bureaucracy, that they're also very lackadaisical about it. But one of the things you understand as a leader is: your actions are going to energize your bureaucracy to do the best it can."

The ex-NYC Mayor charged that Obama exhibited a similar lack of leadership in the case of the Christmas Day botched airliner bombing last year, with a negative ripple effect as the result.

"He did the same thing on the Christmas Day bombing," Giuliani told Hannity. "He stays on vacation for 11 days. So the other guys go on vacation." That's a clear reference to National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter not cutting short a ski trip after the December 25 near-destruction of a Detroit-bound passenger jet.

"The reality is that the administration has made every mistake it could possibly make, right down to this criminal investigation of BP," Giuliani complained.

"Why are you criminally investigating them until this is over?" he asked "Are you gonna distract them from the job of what they're supposed to be doing? And if they're being criminally investigated, then why are we allowing them to do it? If we've got a bunch of criminals doing it, then why are we allowing them to do it?" Giuliani wondered.

So far, as much as 45 million gallons of oil may now be in Gulf waters, already contaminating 125 miles of Louisiana's coast, as well as coastline in Alabama and Mississippi, and currently within seven miles of the beaches of Pensacola, Florida.

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Who's Ass to Kick, Who Else?

Is President Obama bowing to criticism that he hasn't shown enough emotion and outrage about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? In an interview with the Today Show's Matt Lauer this morning, the president offered his most candid response yet about the disaster, bluntly telling Lauer he's been talking to experts about "whose ass to kick" when it comes to responsibility for the mess.
"I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be," Obama said, defending his administration's handling of the spill. "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."

That's a pretty sharp response for a president known for his cool-headed approach to situations. In recent weeks, as Obama was assailed by critics for not being expressive enough in his response to the spill, White House officials defended his reaction by suggesting voters would prefer to see concrete actions over empty "method acting."

Yet administration officials are not ignorant of polls showing the nation less than thrilled with Obama's handling of the Gulf.

According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, more than two-thirds of those polled, 69 percent, disapprove of the federal government's handling of the spill. That's higher than the outrage over the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

-Holly Bailey is a senior political writer for Yahoo! News