360_cover_1202The latest TIME magazine cover story from managing editor Nancy Gibbs explains why the Obamacare fiasco holds so much importance for the 44th president’s remaining years in office.

Obama’s supporters can decry a “feeding frenzy,” but this is a critical moment for a President whose agenda for a second term amounted to little more than being not as lame as the other guy. The HealthCare.gov website may or may not get fixed on deadline, the senior staff may be booted and rebooted, but it is already too late to avoid a pageant of media scrutiny, Republican merriment, a rebuke even from Bill Clinton and a host of existential questions: Can this policy be saved? What is left of Obama’s second term if it is consumed by fixing an unpopular policy from the first? How could a White House appear so confident and incompetent at the same time? …

… At another time, the national dismay might be less of a concern. But we’ve reached the point where voters boo whichever party is center stage. Faith in the federal government is at its lowest point ever. When the Republicans diverted the nation’s attention with the government shutdown, their approval numbers tanked. Now that the spotlight is on the President and the Democrats, theirs are falling fast; in a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 57% now say they oppose the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Obama’s popularity has hit an all-time low as for the first time he faces disapproval not just of his performance but also of his personal credibility. Trust was the lotion that let him pursue policies people didn’t necessarily like, because they liked him.

“Everything hangs in the balance,” says Brookings Institution senior fellow William Galston, a key policy adviser in the Clinton Administration, who argues that Obama cannot change the topic and shouldn’t even if he could. “The ACA is the signature achievement of his Administration and one of the biggest promissory notes ever handed the American people. It is not only his moral obligation to deliver on that promise but an absolute political necessity. Nothing else is going to be feasible until he rights the ship. It’s just as simple as that.”

It must be a tough time for The One.