Washington - Fix oil mess now Mr. Obama, or you're a 1-term President!

Washington - The oil spill hijacking Barack Obama's presidency isn't his Hurricane Katrina. It could be worse - more like the Iranian hostage crisis, which destroyed Jimmy Carter.

Almost no one doubts that after a leisurely start, Obama is pushing every lever imaginable to fix the manmade disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, tonight's prime-time speech to the nation - coupled with another trip to the Gulf Coast, summoning BP executives to a White House scolding tomorrow and round-the-clock briefings - is stark evidence Obama has been seriously damaged.

"He still has a window to get this right," a close friend of the President told the Daily News. "If this thing is under control in a few months, people will be satisfied he's done his best. If it's still a problem by the end of the year, I think he's toast."

He's not there yet, by any means. His closest aides are convinced that his all-hands-on-deck policy will eventually turn public opinion his way on the BP disaster, and that economic recovery will ultimately save him in 2012.

Yet each day the cable networks showcase images of more oil belching from the ocean floor resurrects symbolic parallels to the 1979-1981 Iranian debacle, which ended with Tehran releasing U.S. diplomats, 444 days after their capture, on the day Ronald Reagan took office.

Try as he might, Carter couldn't get the hostages set free. To convince the country he was doing all he could, he suspended political travel for months.

The ploy backfired, reinforcing the image of presidential paralysis. It got so bad aides had to plant a question at a White House Q&A so Carter could declare the crisis "manageable enough" and lift his own travel embargo.

When intensive secret diplomacy failed, Carter ordered a daring military rescue operation. The raid was aborted because of mechanical problems - and eight servicemen died when two aircraft collided lifting off from the Iranian desert. The Iranians showed off charred American remains as trophies.

The failure of Operation Eagle Claw quickly became an unwelcome metaphor for American decline, feeding a sense that a nation that won World War II, conquered polio and sent men to the moon couldn't work its will any longer.

Obama risks being similarly victimized by the same perception that nothing works anymore. Such feelings of hopelessness and national self-doubt damage incumbents most, especially so in today's raging anti-Washington environment.

Obama can fume, with some justification, that his critics are hypocritical to bash him for a big-government agenda, then complain the government isn't doing enough to fix the oil mess.

But as Jimmy Carter and John F. Kennedy observed, life is unfair. Obama didn't cause the spill, but the country expects him to fix it and its disastrous aftermath.

"He's doing everything he possibly can now, but he was slow out of the box and is still playing political catchup," a veteran of the Carter White House said. "He's like a ship captain - responsible for anything that goes wrong on his watch. This isn't his fault, but it's now his problem."

Daily News