BP spill a turning point in Obama's presidency?

When President George W. Bush clambered up on a pile of rubble after the 2001 Twin Towers attack, seized a bullhorn, put his arm around a firefighter and rallied the nation, it was a crowning moment of his presidency.

When he ill-advisedly overflew the Katrina disaster of 2005 and appeared disconnected with the agony of New Orleans, it was, in the view of many historians, the beginning of his presidency's decline.

For President Barack Obama, his handling of the Gulf oil disaster could be a similar turning point in his presidency.

Despite his uneasy press conferences and statements proclaiming he is in charge, despite visits to the scene to talk with officials rather than distraught commercial fishermen, his demeanor has come across as clinical rather than inspirational.

Even such usually kindly well-wishers as Louisiana Democratic guru James Carville and adviser to presidents David Gergen have wrung their hands on national television over his seeming disconnectedness. Carville wanted the president to fire a bunch of officials and indict BP for criminal practice. Gergen complained that if the United States had handled World War II like the Gulf oil spill, "We'd all be speaking German." An inexplicable moment in a presidential press conference came when the president seemed unaware of whether Elizabeth Birnbaum, the top official in his oil-industry-monitoring agency, had resigned or been fired.

The president's standing is not helped by the fact that the Gulf oil disaster coincides with a kind of perfect political storm of problems for him at home and abroad.

At home there is the tawdry revelation that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a take-no-prisoners political operative, had co-opted former President Bill Clinton to offer favors to Congressman Joe Sestak in a bid to secure his withdrawal from Pennsylvania's Senate race. The aim was to clear the way for White House candidate Arlen Specter.

Old Guard Democrats, and even some jaded journalistic pundits, proclaim that this attempted bribery is normal business practice in Washington. But that is exactly the president's problem. He was the knight on a white horse who won election to the presidency on a pledge to change Washington's sleazier ways. If he sanctioned the Emanuel initiative, it was a betrayal of that promise. If Emanuel was acting without the president's knowledge, then Emanuel should have lost the president's trust, and possibly his job.

Meanwhile the Obama presidency is still beset by:

 10 percent unemployment.