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The degree to which the government was engaged in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion that triggered America's biggest oil spill is a debate that will continue to fall along political lines in this election year.

Regarding the government, however, the true issue is the degree to which it was engaged before the disaster.

Multiple investigations, civil and possibly criminal, eventually will determine levels of responsibility.

The catastrophe already stands as proof, however, that much more aggressive regulation is necessary to ensure the safety of offshore drilling, especially in deep water.

Just a month before the disaster, President Barack Obama announced that the administration would lift a moratorium on drilling along some parts of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. He said then that technology and experience had made oil rig spills very rare occurrences.

Last week at the White House the president acknowledged that he was wrong about that conclusion, and that it had been derived largely from the industry's own assertions rather than from any independent analysis.

It is true that no one knows more about deep-sea drilling than the industry experts who actually do it. That's why responsibility for plugging the leak has to rest with BP. But it also is true that no one has more interest in cutting regulatory corners to shave costs than the companies doing the drilling. Before and since Obama took office, several inquiries found in appropriate cozy relationships between some personnel in the Minerals Management Service - the Interior Department agency responsible for drilling regulation - the industry that they were supposed to regulate.

The question of just how the federal government should react to oil spills is a legitimate one. But the greater one is whether the government finally will enact an aggressive regulatory regime that would help to render the first question moot.