My instinct is that the Judd Gregg withdrawal is fairly significant for Team Obama. The number of personnel mistakes have been lining up like cars that have hit a large patch of black ice and collided. We have seen the mishaps with Bill Richardson, Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, the “performance czar” Nancy Killefer, and the offer to be ambassador to Iraq extended to and then subsequently withdrawn from General Anthony Zinni. And this doesn’t even include the various, and I think significant, missteps in policy. It’s hard to believe that Barack Obama, who ran a masterful and almost error-free campaign, has been president for all of three weeks and two days and has looked so ragged and undisciplined in his execution. We’re now looking for Obama’s third secretary of Commerce.

It is really quite astonishing. “I screwed up” may become a bi-weekly confession.

At some point, things like this can begin to cement a (negative) image in the public imagination. Discrete issues converge and form a single, harmful impression. Obama & Company were looking increasingly amateurish before today; this is now bordering on incompetence. It’s always hard to tell when things metastasize–but if we’re not there yet with Team Obama, we’re probably getting close. And based on Judd Gregg’s statement withdrawing his name from nomination, I suspect the Census issue is going to attract a good deal more attention than it has.

Less than a month ago, Barack Obama was seemingly sitting atop the world. We all knew reality would set in soon enough; what we didn’t know was how quickly the magic would fade, and give way to what we are now witnessing. It’s still early, of course, and presidents can recover from their initial missteps. But Obama and his team have dug themselves a fairly deep early hole.

The narrative ain’t what it once was.