Is it a crisis?

Jay Tea at Wizbang looks at the Obama Administration's response to the Gulf Oil Spill: The Scent Of Fear.

I've always been enamored of Professor Glenn Reynolds' oft-repeated aphorism: "I'll believe there's a crisis when the people who say there's a crisis act like there's a crisis." It's a great BS detector, but it has some corollaries that I'm finding truly terrifying.

What does it mean when those people say there's a crisis, I agree that there's a crisis, but they refuse to act like there's a crisis?

I speak, of course, about the Gulf oil spill.
....
And the conclusion I drew from that -- as well as what so many others have said -- is that the situation below the former Deepwater Horizon platform is developing into an ecological catastrophe that could scar -- and economically cripple -- the US for a very, very long time.

This is Katrina bad. This is 9/11 bad. This is JFK Assassination bad. This is Pearl Harbor bad.

And -- it should go without saying -- this is "screw politics, all hands on deck" bad.

But it isn't.

The Obama administration wastes no opportunity to remind us of how dire the situation is in the Gulf. But its actions are utterly inconsistent with their words.

The analysis leads to a 4X4 table:

1) The disaster isn't as bad as we all think it is, and the Obama administration knows that. If that was true, then their "never let a crisis go to waste" response is understandable. Heinous, but understandable. This is an opportunity for them to push their agenda, and push it hard.	2) The disaster is as bad as we think, but the Obama administration doesn't realize it. This would be entirely in character with this administration. They are the Peter Principle writ large: they have been promoted past their level of competency. They simply can't grasp that this disaster is a game-changer, so they are simply playing the game that they have played all their lives.
3) The disaster is at least as bad as we think, if not worse, and the Obama administration knows it. If that is the case, then the only explanation that makes any sense is that they believe that the whole thing is a lost cause...	4) The disaster isn't as bad as we think it is, but the Obama administration doesn't realize it. That's the fourth possibility of my little 2x2 matrix here, but I give it very little weight. It's the most Pollyannaish of the possibilities, and fits in with the first part of "hope for the best, but plan for the worst." I only include it here for the sake of completion.

Now, which of these possibilities is the right one? Which is more frightening?