In the span of a single week — from the day Arlen Specter turned Democratic to the moment Congress passed the White House’s budget blueprint and on through the opening of a spot on the Supreme Court — President Obama crossed a fateful line: From now on, it’s his country…

“It is now absolutely his economy,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor who specializes in presidential transitions. “I don’t think that the public will continue to believe that this was all George W. Bush’s doing. And every day that goes by, it becomes more Obama’s than Bush’s.”…

Inside the White House, aides seemed to sense that in the last week, a threshold was crossed.

“There are some occasions where a movie script would not do justice to the number of major events happening at one time,” said Jen Psaki, a White House spokeswoman. “This week was one of those occasions.”