Liz Sidoti of The Associated Press:

You can trust me, Obama said back in 2008. And — for a while, at least — a good piece of the country did. 

But with big promises often come big failures — and the potential for big hits to the one thing that can make or break a presidency: credibility. 

A series of mounting controversies is exposing both the risks of political promise-making and the limits of national-level governing while undercutting the core assurance Obama made from the outset: that he and his administration would behave differently.

Op-Ed: Mounting controversies are all about trust