Obama’s first Oval Office address to the nation opened with a militaristic tone. Faced with the biggest environmental disaster the US has ever seen, and the biggest challenge Obama has seen so far from the White House, the president opened with talk of troops mobilized to fight this man made disaster.

The speech quickly moved away from the day-to-day fight that the four Gulf Coast states face to talk about the long term. Obama made mention of the difficulty to define what the long term game plan will be as the damage continues to unfold on the Gulf’s shoreline.

The uncertainty caught up this disaster has repeatedly surfaced in the conversations I’ve had since I’ve been in Louisiana. Comparisons to Katrina frequently place this disaster further up the trauma scale as the cost remains unknown. This is intensified by the need, post-crisis, for people to be active as they seek to restore normality. Many people are feeling that the cleanup effort is in many ways futile as more oil continues to wash up on shore. By addressing this emotive aspect of the BP disaster, Obama should have scored points as an ‘understanding’ president.

The focus on the long term restoration of the Gulf’s environment, and a move to more preventative measures to limit further oil damage, suggested the development of close fraternal bond between The White House and the Gulf Coast states. This comes at a time when many Gulf residents are feeling isolated as yet another crisis blows over their shores. This was echoed on the local radio today as New Orleans’ most famous radio anchor, Garland Robinette, described Louisiana as a tiny third world country attached to the United States.

The call to the long term, may also help to alleviate some of the criticism that the White House’s response to the BP crisis has been all rhetoric while the action has been left to the local governments. But, the administration will now have to follow these strong words with action, and quickly.

This may be hard to do. The completion of the relief wells that should stop the leak is scheduled for August. In the meantime, there is little Obama can do apart from continue to cheerlead the cleanup effort and slam BP. His promise to remove the payout of claims to businesses affected by the crisis from BP’s control and into the hands of an unbiased arbitrator will help fill the gap. But only if the impact of this change is immediately felt on the ground.

The final judgment of Obama’s call to action tonight won’t happen until August when the relief wells have either worked or failed. And if the outcome in August is anything other than a clear success (and remember the many shades of grey that have already surfaced as BP has answered what appear to be straight forward yes and no questions), then the next chapters of this cathartic tale might also be the closing ones for a presidency.

This evening’s speech had the tone of a President trying to maintain control of his 4 year term in the face of the unexpected. If it weren’t for the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Obama would currently be in Indonesia making good the promise he made last year in Cairo to end “cycle of suspicion and discord” in the Muslim world. The spill has also seeped into time that the White House wanted to spend on immigration reform, and has flattened the one concession that might have lured Republicans into a deal on climate change- more offshore drilling.

The president addressed the climate change point as he shifted gear to call for an end to “our addiction to fossil fuel”. And his choice of words made clear that the idea of a concession for the Republicans was absolutely off the table.

The phrase ‘fossil fuel’, rather than oil, offered a split with his predecessor – in 2006 Bush announced, “we are addicted to oil” – and the Republicans. The choice of words is also important as the President is currently struggling in the same state that created the fodder for many of Bush’s harshest critics, and Obama needs to seize every chance he has to distance himself from that legacy if his own is to extend beyond 4 years.

Obama continued to turn the Republican ‘drill, baby, drill’ mantra on its head as he used the statistic commonly used to support the opposition’s case – that the US consumes 20 per cent of the world’s oil – to support his own- a clean energy future – with the addition of one detail: the US holds only 2 per cent of the world’s oil reserves.

Obama continued as if in answer to the predictable criticism that the other side will level at the plan- the cost. “$1 billion is sent each day to foreign countries for its oil,” the President said, as he explained that the transition to clean energy does not need to be an economic burden. That saving combined with the potential to create millions of jobs, should require critics to develop a slightly more intellectual argument against the President’s plan. Though, “he can’t”, is likely to be the starting point for many critics, nonetheless. That being said, Robert Gibbs better have some solid facts and calculations to back up the President’s $1 billion statement, and how its going to translate into savings for us all.

The President also called to a partnership between “workers and entrepreneurs” in his clean energy utopia. This last point was a quiet knock down of the criticism Obama has received for sitting down with ‘experts and academics’ over the BP crisis rather than seeking to gain an understanding of the situation from the workers.

Even with all the talk of partnerships – Obama and the Gulf, workers and entrepreneurs – the partnership offer does not appear to extend over party lines. Obama made only one direct reference to the Republican Party as he offered them a fleeting invitation to join his clean energy campaign on the proviso that “they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuel”.

Despite this single direct reference to partisan divides, the entire speech centered on them. The mid terms are looming towards the President and they are bigger and darker than oil that continues to spew into the Gulf. If the current administration is going to be anything other than ceremonial figurehead in the second half of its first term, then it needs to be clear about what it is, what it stands for and what it’s going to do about it all. And it needs to make that clear now.

As opinion polls have continued to show, Obama needs to follow his seventeen minutes of precisely pitched rhetoric with action.

Antanas Mockus, the former “Supercitizen” mayor of Bogota who swept to power in 1993 after he dropped his trousers and mooned an auditorium of unruly students, is now the front runner in Colombia’s presidential election according to the latest polls.

Polls put Mockus twelve points ahead of the other leading candidate Juan Manuel Santos, a former defense minister who holds Uribe’s endorsement to be next president. While Uribe enjoyed popular support throughout his two terms as president for his aggressive champaign against the FARC, his administration has not been without accusations of authoritarian tactics and corruption, two labels that appear to have branded Santos’ presidential bid.

Santos, the architect of some of Mr. Uribe’s crushing blows against leftist guerrillas, had his reputation tarnished by allegations that hundreds of civilians killed by the army were counted as guerrilla combatants to increase the apparent success of the campaigns and to hide the heavy civilian toll.

Other scandals involving Uribe’s supporters’ ties to right-wing paramilitary groups have further darkened Mr Uribe’s legacy and the presidential hopes of his endorsed candidate.

And this begs the question: does Mockus’ popularity have more to do with the electorate’s eagerness to see in a change in the political landscape that has long been governed by a heavy handed right wing government than his own merits has Colombia’s next leader?

Is Mockus really a serious contender in Colombia’s presidential race, or a protest vote? Columbia’s Nick Clegg?

Last week’s general election in Britain saw the Liberal Democrats move out of the shadows as the UK’s third party. But despite opinion polls that placed Lib Dem popularity ahead of the ruling Labour party, and Nick Clegg well ahead of ‘dour Scot’ PM Gordon Brown, the final election results saw the Lib Dems with only 57 seats, well behind Labour’s 258.

Nick Clegg has now gone on to become Deputy Leader in David Cameron’s newly formed government, but that is the result of political negotiation rather than the electorate’s will (not that much of the British electorate is morning the loss of Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street).

What these changes at 10 Downing Street mean for the British political establishment is yet to be mapped out. But there are questions that need to be asked: Is the Lib Dems’ first foray into the Cabinet changing the long established two party dominance in British politics? Is Nick Clegg pushing his party into position whereby they can make a serious leadership bid at the next general election rather than being seen as a protest vote? Or is the UK’s political landscape going to continue to be dominated by blue and red?

Similar questions need to be asked as Colombia goes to the polls in two weeks time.

Unlike the UK’s ‘first-past-the-post’ voting system, Colombia’s next president has to secure a majority in the first round of voting, or the two front runners go head to head in a run off. This first round is schedules for 30 May and it is expected to see Mockus and Santos then battle it out in a second round play off on 20 June.

Although opinion polls are currently billing Mockus as the clear front runner, a victory is far from guaranteed. As The New York Times recently pointed out that the polls that give Mockus such a clear lead do not tell the full story: The polls are heavily focused on cities largely ignoring the opinions of the non-urban electorate where he remains a relatively obscure candidate.

However, many strategists are predicting a Mockus victory, with some even suggesting that his current popularity despite being urban-centric could carry him to the presidential palace in the first round of voting.

But can Colombia’s politics really change its colours in one election, or will it just end up like the UK’s bruised mess of blue, red and yellow?