Senator Orrin Hatch Knows When to Change His Tune. And When to Write One.

Even though he picked five of his own songs as his favorite tunes, Senator Orrin Hatch is welcome on this show anytime. (As long as the copy of his new album recently sent to Imus includes an envelope stuffed with cash, like back in the old days).

President Obama has been roundly criticized lately by both sides for not paying due attention to the oil spill and subsequent leak in the Gulf of Mexico, now in its sixth week.

“It’s tough being President,” conceded Hatch, a Republican from Utah. “No matter what you do, you’ve got thousands of issues swirling around you all the time. I’m not going to find a lot of fault with the President.”

That is, until Imus pressed him to do so. “I think he ought to be down there regularly, his team ought to be down there,” said Hatch, who believes every alternative should be looked at to solve this problem, including one proposed by an engineer friend of his who was given 12 minutes by BP to present his solution.

“He’s got a skimmer ship that could skim the oil off the ocean surface, and you’d never have to worry about this again,” said Hatch. In his opinion, BP hasn’t considered enough options like that one, or the scores of others pouring in from around the globe. 

Asked about last night’s House vote to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy toward gays in the military, Hatch criticized Democrats for rushing a vote before knowing the results of a vital report about how ending this measure could affect the armed services.

Their rationale in the House, he said, was, “We’re going to do it now because we may not have the votes next November.” Not only was this ridiculous, in Hatch’s view, but it was also irresponsible.

“They’re rushing and hurrying this thing, when there are real questions about morale, about consistency, about troops staying together and working together, issues these top generals are really concerned about,” said Hatch. “We ought to get the facts.”

He was reluctant to say which way he’d vote, despite incessant pressure from the I-Man. “My mind isn’t made up yet,” he admitted. “I want to see what’s going on. I have real reservations that this will work, and I don’t think the present situation is perfect either.”

Another imperfect scenario is currently underway on the Korean Peninsula, where tensions between North and South are at their highest level in decades after the North sunk a South Korean ship in March and killed 46 people.

“This rogue country is out of control,” he said of the extremely secretive North. “They think they can just bully everybody and get away with it, because nobody wants to have a war on the Korean Peninsula, or to have them utilizing any kind of nuclear weapon.”

Maybe one solution to calm everybody down would be listening to Hatch’s new album, which includes titles like, “There’s Hell in Hello, and Good, Good, Good in Goodbye.” It’s about as likely to work as anything else.

-Julie Kanfer