Obama Oval Office Address: Time, Schedule, Preview

Use of the Oval Office for television broadcasts is rare and reserved for occasions with a sense of gravity, as when a young President Kennedy presented news of the Cuban missile crisis, or President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster or President George W. Bush addressing the nation the evening of September 11, 2001.

"What we're seeing in the Gulf is a catastrophe the likes of which our country has never seen before, so the response has been enormous, the assets and the full power of the federal government has been brought to bear here, and so talking directly with the American people about what we're doing to address this crisis, and what we're going to be doing moving forward is very important to the president right now."

...he must call on Congress to put a price on carbon by the end of the year. The pivot from gushing oil to climate change is at once harder than it seems and blindingly obvious. Oil is polluting the Gulf; it's not raising temperatures. The transition to a more ecologically friendly economy will require carbon creation. It will also require economic sacrifice.

Mr. Obama is expected to outline in his speech a plan to legally compel BP to create an escrow account to compensate businesses and individuals for their losses from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, administration officials said on Sunday.

"It's a good time for an Oval Office speech," says political scientist Mary Stuckey of Georgia State University. "The oil hasn't fully hit yet, and the criticism of him — while growing — is not really loud yet."

But don't expect Obama to cloak himself in feel-your-pain emotions.

"We probably overestimate the extent to which a president's rhetoric and manner of presentation makes a difference," says Fred Greenstein, Princeton University professor emeritus of politics and author of The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama.