It's hard to believe, but the broken well deep in the Gulf of Mexico has been capped; the spill seems to be over. At least for now. Watching it for 87 days on television was like watching a dangerously ill patient whose life could be saved only by a complicated and never-before-tried operation.

Would the Gulf survive, or would it succumb, taking with it its glorious bounty of fish, wildlife and pristine beaches? Given the history of the spill, much could happen between now and when the two relief wells finish the job sometime in August, unleashing yet another torrent of black gold. In the meantime, however, you could almost hear the entire nation heave a huge, collective sigh of relief. The crisis was not yet over, but the end is finally in sight.

There must also have been a sigh of relief in the White House, where President Barack Obama has been dealing with seemingly endless toxic problems. While no serious person blamed the oil spill on the president, one Republican senator did not disavow speculation that Obama and BP had colluded to arrange the spill so that the president would have more ammunition for an off-shore drilling moratorium, thus limiting BP's competition.

There are people who actually believe these malicious stories, just as they insist Obama was actually born in Kenya and therefore cannot legally be president of the U.S. There is no end to their nonsense, some of it dark, some of it amusing, all of it absurd.

But there is little doubt that the White house felt the dark cloud of the oil spill was beginning to symbolize the difficulties of an administration faced with daunting and seemingly unsolvable problems, e.g., Afghanistan, high unemployment, a fragile economic recovery, falling poll numbers. No matter how talented, was he unlucky like Jimmy Carter, winding up a one-term president?

That does not seem likely, if only because Obama already has a legacy of major health care and financial reform. The good news for the president is that the public is as fed up with the Republicans as it is with the Democrats. This helps to explain the rise of the conservative and populist tea party. The bad news is that the 2010 congressional elections are off-year elections in which the party that controls the White House generally loses seats. The really bad news for Obama is that the Democrats could lose control of both the House and the Senate. That may not happen, but it is a distinct possibility.

Then there are our increasing losses in Afghanistan, as the Taliban takes the fighting to allied forces, a strategy that is as much political as it is military. Radical Islamic leaders know that higher casualties only serve to make an unpopular war even more unpopular in the U.S. and among its allies. Their belief they can outlast us is more than strategy; it's fundamental tenet among guerrilla bands struggling against larger and more sophisticated fighting forces. We need only remember Vietnam.

An even more fundamental problem for Obama is the persistently high unemployment rate of some 9.5 percent. In other words, jobs. Nothing means more to the American people than their livelihoods, especially when they appear to be threatened. There is nothing he can do to bring that rate down significantly before November, and that means trouble, big electoral trouble. Last week, his job approval ratings fell to 40 percent. Thus there is insider criticism that Obama should first have concentrated on the economy and not on health care.

But, the counter argument goes, he did concentrate on the economy. Look at the stimulus bill. The problem for Obama is that his economic strategy has focused on long-term structural problems, especially health care. These reforms are essential to our long-term economic well being, but the results don't show up for years, too late for the 2010 elections.

In my view, Obama will go down in history as one of our great reforming presidents. But it is his fate to have inherited an enormous economic and financial crisis, the solutions to which will take a long time to take effect, and in the meantime will leave a lot of people unhappy. He also inherited two wars, one of which he has deliberately made his own. The president presides over a center, center-right country that is uneasy over reforms that seemingly take us leftward, though for much of the world they only take us to where we ought to be. Presidents show us their mettle by remaining true to their principles while engaging in common sense compromise. We may all grumble, but so far I think Obama has got it right.

William M. Stewart, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and Time magazine correspondent, lives in Santa Fe.