Gulf oil test, bill passage give Obama a day to savor

Fri, Jul 16th 2010, 12:00 AM

Thursday was, arguably, the best day of Barack Obama's presidency in many, many months.

For the first time in more than 12 weeks, oil stopped gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. And in a less-than-dramatic ending, the U.S. Senate gave final passage to Wall Street reform that had been proclaimed dead more times than health-care legislation.

Taken together, the twin victories provide a much-needed boost to a president who is increasingly viewed with skepticism by a public that once thought he could do no wrong.

But is the feeling fleeting?

It remained unclear Friday morning whether the jury-rigged cap at the bottom of the sea would hold long enough to allow the well to be permanently plugged. And testing had yet to conclusively determine whether pressure within the well would cause other leaks to spring.

"This isn't over," the president's man in the Gulf, former Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, declared Thursday night.

If the effort fails, and oil begins flowing again, so will the gusher of political criticism aimed at the administration. And even with the oil stopped temporarily, the long-term cleanup and economic devastation threatens to dog the president's agenda for years to come.

And as for the sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations, it remains unclear whether his administration will have more luck selling its virtues than it has had with the massive health-care legislation it passed earlier in the year.

As with that overhaul, the new Wall Street regulations are a hugely complicated set of laws and rules that confound ordinary people. That leaves voters vulnerable to the political spin machines on both sides, which kicked into gear even before the final votes were cast.

Republicans sought to define the president's legislation as ineffective and a threat to lending and entrepreneurship. Moments after the bill's passage Thursday, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called for its repeal. Click here to read more at The Washington Post

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