[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/US/06/02/oil.spill.bp.apology/story.tony.hayward.afp.gi.jpg
caption="BP CEO Tony Hayward was spotted out sharing dinner with Admiral Thad Allen." width=300 height=169]Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Reporter's Note: President Obama continues to deal with oil, and a daily letter from me.

Dear Mr. President,

One of the weirder moments to occur this week, as we all dredged through Oil Watch: America Held Slippery was the story related by CNN contributor and Democratic strategist, James Carville. Seems the every-biting-bald-one strolled into a restaurant in New Orleans and spotted your chief officer on the scene, Admiral Thad Allen, sharing dinner with the head of BP, Tony Hayward. The fact that James did not chase the pair through the kitchen wielding a sharpened breadstick is a measure of impressive restraint, considering his outrage over this mess.

But that aside, the mere presence of these two key players sharing tea and pork chops as if they were noshing at Wimbledon is, as they say in the movies, “bad form, Pan!”

I know both of these men need to eat. I suppose we should applaud their willingness to continue their discussions even in lieu of a full-on lunch break. But it just looks bad. It looks like precisely what so many voters fear; political players, Democratic and Republican, are so deeply in bed with the large money folks, like BP, that they simply find it impossible to really play tough.

In the real world, people caught up in a brutal, life and death struggle with so much at stake, and supposedly potential criminal charges in the works, would find it unseemly at best, unethical at worst, to sit down at a restaurant and break bread like pals.

It’s not that the relationship has to be antagonistic, but it certainly can’t look so chummy. FULL POST