But while he got some bad PR for his move, Churchill was a fountain of ideas on the scene and may have saved lives.

Roosevelt, of course, has a similarly long CV detailing his qualities as a man of action. As the de facto leader of the Navy Department, for example, he prepared the country for the Spanish-American War and then resigned his post to go fight it.

The point is that great men such as these are congenitally incapable of not taking a hands-on leadership role during a crisis.

Obama instead went to a sanitized beach.

As of last week, he hadn’t even spoken to BP CEO Tony Hayward. He’s due to make his third trip to the region Friday, more than six weeks after the crisis began.