Heck of a Job, Obama -- Why Natural Disasters Make the President Seem So Small

President Obama's poor choice of words last night when he commended Larry Summers, the outgoing economic czar, as having done, "a heck of a job," immediately brought up images of George Bush's bungled handling of the disastrous FEMA handling of Hurricane Katrina when Bush commended the hapless Michael Brown as doing a "heck of a job."

The irony wasn't lost on many. Jon Stewart leapt on the phrase immediately and a regular stream of tweets, blog posts and commentary has laughed up the collective sleeve of the nation. Obama's slip also raises another, more interesting point, brought up by the Washington Post's Steve Pearlstein during an election roundtable on Charlie Rose. Pearlstein reminded Rose that Obama's approval ratings were severely damaged by the BP oil spill. You'll see in the chart above that the cross between Approve and Disapprove takes place during the June aftermath of the spill. Obama has had his ups and downs since then but he has never been able to reverse the momentum established in June where negative feeling outweighed the positive.

Moreover, President Bush had suffered the same sort of steep drop off in approval ratings after Hurricane Katrina. To be fair, it Bush's stature in the public eye was falling all during 2005. Over the summer, Bush regained some ground until Katrina struck. The August natural disaster pushed his standing fully and finally into the negative.

What to make of this curious symmetry between two presidents with little in common? The welter of issues that faced both men is too complex to give either's falling stature a single cause.

Where Obama has the economy, Bush had the war. Both had high hopes of transforming politics when they came into office and each one had a catastrophic event cast upon them. Neither became unpopular because of the natural disaster that coincided with their loss of public esteem. Yet that was a trigger for the sea change in both presidents' relationship with the public.

Without producing anything that could be considered evidence, I'd like to speculate on one reason. The enormity of both natural disasters -- the oil spill and the hurricane that destroyed a city -- breaks the spell of authority. Once a president is revealed to be impotent, it is nearly impossible for him to re-establish his authority with the public.

Why doesn't this happen with man made disasters like wars and financial crises? That's the interesting question. Bush was made by 9/11 and Obama by the Lehman Brothers and AIG bailouts. During these large, complex and frightening events, we turn to those who seem to have confidence and ability. Even now, years after his disgrace, Donald Rumsfeld is not remembered for the blunders of the Iraq war but for the thrilling performances he gave at press conferences throughout the aftermath of 9/11.

When we've got nothing to fear but fear itself, a commanding presence is a reassuring thing. But in the face of angry environment, the president begins to look very small indeed. It almost seems as if, in these situations, the public blames the president for having his lack of power exposed.

So much of politics today is unreal with each side having its echo chamber of media and it alternate reality explanations for success and failure. To one side, the president can do no right; to the other, the president can do no wrong. That is, until the real world reasserts itself and we have to confront the fact that the presidency is a bit like the Wizard of Oz, powerless against a tornado.

Unfortunately, discovering that the most powerful man in the world isn't all powerful only seems to make us angry at the person instead of understanding the nature of the office. In our emotionally charged politics, it would appear, the president is only as powerful as our belief in him.