The oil spill is the first major test of presidential leadership for President Barack Obama, a crisis that happened on his watch. As oil flows, can Obama reverse field?

He’s done this before.

Whether on health care reform or the Christmas Day terror attempt, President Barack Obama has a history of last-minute saves: Under fire for being too slow off the mark, he roars in with a flurry of activity to show he’s on the case.


Obama tried it again this week with the BP oil spill, and it seemed to help —– briefly quieting his critics and stabilizing a situation that was rapidly slipping out of his control. But unlike health reform or the terror watch list, Obama can’t declare victory and move on.

The final test of the actions he set in motion over the past four days is weeks or even months away, and his perils-of-Pauline moment could be short-lived if he falters on the follow-up.

“A week from now, if we’ve seen some really good improvement, and they’re moving forward on the action items that we talked about, I’ll be the first person to commend them,” Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) said in an interview after meeting with Obama and his top aides Tuesday in Pensacola. “But at the same point, if a week from now nothing is improving and we only see marginal improvement, if any, I’m going to be their largest critic and loudest critic.”

Obama is also battling the split-screen on television —– him at the presidential podium or at a concert in the East Room, juxtaposed with video of gushing oil, at Day 60 and counting.

“That could go on until September,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor at Rice University, referring to the August target for relief wells to stop the oil flow. “Until that thing is capped, the president is going to be in trauma mode, and then you’re making big leaps [of faith] that the relief wells are going to work, that there’s no further ruptures, that a hurricane is not going to blow that into the wetlands.”

The public is skeptical too. More than half of 534 adults—or 58%—surveyed by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. on June 16 said they lack confidence in the government's ability to prevent another oil spill. And a staggering 68 percent of respondents were "not confident" that the government can restore the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s difficult to tell whether Obama’s actions this week — from his two-day Gulf Coast trip to getting BP to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to pay claims — will eventually be enough to change the public’s mind about his response, eight weeks into the disaster.

The oil spill is the first major test of presidential leadership for Obama, a crisis that he did not inherit, like the recession and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that happened on his watch. And by many accounts he foundered. The White House has defended Obama’s handling of the spill, saying his efforts this week were part of a focused response that started on Day One of the leak.

“This isn’t a school play. We’re not down in the Gulf today just to get pretty pictures,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday when asked about Obama’s more public posture. “We're down there to meet with local officials to talk with small business owners and hotel owners to find out what we can do to make this response even better. That’s been the focus of the president for the entirety of this accident.”

But it’s not the first time Obama has faced questions about his leadership — or heat over his response to a problem.

With health care, Obama stayed on the sidelines for months, even as Democrats clamored for him to get more involved, and even as the bill, long a dream for his party’s liberals, had to endure a number of near-death experiences and media obituaries. A last-minute push aided by Obama got it finished.

Last December, Republicans slammed Obama for seeming unwilling to disrupt his Hawaii vacation at the time of the attempted Christmas Day attack by the “underwear bomber.” He didn’t speak before cameras about the incident for several days.

When Obama did return to Washington, he stepped up his media appearances, ordered high-level reviews of the incident and eventually acknowledged shortcomings in the response and in the terror watch list. The public now gives him higher marks for handling terrorism than some domestic issues.

When unemployment hit 10 percent in October, Obama was being faulted by some for being so focused on health care that he had taken his eye off the economy. He quickly convened a jobs summit at the White House and later kicked off a monthly White House to Main Street tour of the country.

Even amid all the criticism on BP, the president has done little to hide his belief that the Obama’s-not-doing-enough story line is a press corps creation — fostered by the 24-hour news media he disdains.

“You know, what I think I get frustrated with sometimes, as do, I suspect, other members of my team, is that the media specifically is demanding things that the public aren’t demanding,” the president told POLITICO in an interview last week. “What the public wants to see is us solving this problem. And that may not make for good TV.”

But that didn’t stop him from deciding it was time to appear more personally involved.

He has gone big picture — tapping a respected former Mississippi governor to oversee a long-term restoration plan for the Gulf Coast and naming a new Minerals Management Services director as an oil industry watchdog. He delivered his first Oval Office address and convened a face-to-face showdown with BP executives at the White House that yielded the $20 billion claims fund and $100 million more to help oil workers displaced by the government’s moratorium on deepwater drilling.

Obama didn’t spare the gritty details this week either — announcing an initiative to ensure the safety of Gulf seafood and assigning deputy incident commanders in each Gulf Coast states.

“Certainly they look like they are more on top of the crisis, but it’s going to be a while to see if the anger people feel towards Washington and leadership generally begins to ebb a bit,” said Norm Ornstein, a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

One of Obama’s loudest critics, Democratic strategist James Carville, even praised his efforts this week. “Look, we have a long way to go before this Cajun stops ragin'. But just as I hammered the White House when I thought they were too lackadaisical, honesty compels me to praise the president for his concrete, significant — and eloquent — action,” Carville wrote in an op-ed on CNN’s Web site.

Obama also may have gotten a boost Thursday when Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) called the BP escrow fund a “shakedown” of the oil giant and labeled it a “$20 billion slush fund.” Barton has since apologized for the remarks, but some Democrats believe the damage is done.

“The notion that a Republican leader would stand with BP against money going to help the poor people in the Gulf is like manna from heaven for a president,” said Ornstein.

Fred Greenstein, a political science professor at Princeton University who studies presidential leadership, credited Obama with recovering some ground in recent days — calling his week “a solid double.”

“It’s not a grand slam,” Greenstein said, unlike, say, a besieged President Bill Clinton’s turning-point moment in Oklahoma City after the devastating bombing.

Greenstein also said he believes Obama can get through it. “Overall, it’s a little bit like the situation where the health care bill was counted out, that this was going to be the doom of his presidency, and it wasn’t,” Greenstein said. “I don’t think these images are as firmly anchored as we would expect.”

Brinkley said Obama is in less political trouble, because he still has support from Democrats, than he is in a leadership crisis. “People feel he didn’t move with lightning fast decisiveness,” Brinkley said. “He seemed to always be about two weeks behind the media on the spill, instead of standing on top of the story and owning it.”

“It’s been a lot of catch up lately,” Brinkley added, “and I think this week is seen as a way to kind of even the playing field, to stop getting behind.”

Obama’s challenge in coming weeks and months is to keep up the progress — in part by pushing for a comprehensive energy bill. Another visit to the Gulf Coast is a near certainty, and LeMieux said he wants Obama to return to Florida to update officials on specific concerns raised in their discussion, such as the need for more skimmers in the Gulf.

“He needs to show that he is not just flying above at 30,000 feet,” LeMieux said, “but that he is in at the details and that he is pressing people for results.”