In case you missed it, here's a commentary I wrote yesterday for NPR's All Things Considered:

Tuesday would have been a bad day for any administration, let alone a new one trying to get its sea legs while grappling with a host of formidable challenges. But for the Obama administration, which recently proclaimed a "new era of responsibility" and promised to be the most ethical administration in history, it was a public relations disaster.

Within the span of just a few hours Tuesday morning, President Obama saw two of his high-profile picks — HHS nominee Tom Daschle and performance czar Nancy Killefer — withdraw for issues related to tax delinquency. The stunning fall of Daschle comes after Timothy Geithner, the man Obama singled out to run the Treasury Department, was confirmed by the Senate after equally embarrassing revelations that he failed to pay some $35,000 in taxes.

"The president has confidence in the process," press secretary Robert Gibbs said at Tuesday's briefing after being peppered with questions about how the administration missed such glaring problems and whether we'd see more mistakes or surprises. It's a good thing someone still has confidence in the process, because the rest of us are starting to wonder.

Obama spent most of Tuesday afternoon doing a series of previously scheduled network TV interviews that turned into a parade of presidential mea culpas. The president took responsibility for the Daschle debacle, calling it a "mistake" and an "embarrassment."

"I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards," President Obama told CNN's Anderson Cooper, "one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes."

Fair enough. But why, then, did Obama wholeheartedly support Daschle for days after the tax issue became public instead of asking him to withdraw immediately? And hasn't Obama already sent a message to the public that there are "two sets of standards" by supporting a new Treasury secretary who is no less guilty than Daschle for failing to live up to his tax obligations?

These questions aren't easily answered — which is why they are a headache for the president and why they appear to have already taken a toll on his honeymoon.

Two weeks ago Obama was basking in the glow of his inauguration as the country's first African-American president. Two weeks later, the president who promised to bring change and a new kind of politics to the nation's capital finds himself supporting and defending Washington insiders who have made "mistakes" on their taxes and creating loopholes in his own shiny new ethics rules so certain lobbyists can work in his administration.

It's no wonder we're now starting to see even some Obama supporters questioning whether this is the kind of "change we can believe in." The president remains enormously popular. But his popularity depends on his ability to live up to the sky-high expectations that he set for himself with his rhetoric and his promises during the campaign.

It will be an ongoing fight for President Obama to meet those expectations. On Tuesday, at least, it was a fight the president lost.