Why the oil spill is getting the Oval Office treatment

When a US president talks directly to the nation it is often a sign of events spinning out of control

Barack Obama will address the nation on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Photograph: The White House/Getty Images

If it's a televised Oval Office address, it must be a crisis.

Barack Obama's talk to the nation from behind his White House desk is a rare moment for any president. Far from the rambling state of the union affairs in front of hostile members of Congress or the cosy weekly radio addresses, Oval Office speeches are a focused and powerful tool meant to suggest the smack of authority. But they are usually made when a president is far less in control of events than he would like, making them as much about reassurance as solutions.

John F Kennedy appeared on television from the Oval Office before a worried country at the height of the Cuban missile crisis when nuclear war with the Soviet Union was closer than ever.

George Bush spoke from the Oval Office hours after terrorists brought down the World Trade Centre on 9/11, and again after the US led the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Richard Nixon used the occasion to announce his resignation over the Watergate scandal.

Perhaps one of the most insightful and maligned Oval Office addresses came from Jimmy Carter in 1979 as years of oil shortages took their toll on America's economy. It looks all the more relevant today as Obama confronts his own oil crisis and a divided country and Congress.

In what became known as his "malaise speech", Carter used a question that still stalks Obama – "Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?" – to reflect on the dangers of an increasingly divided political system and nation that he warned threatened "to destroy the social and the political fabric of America".

"It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation ... Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy," he said.

"There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure."

It might be thought that Obama has had reason enough to deploy the Oval Office speech even before the BP crisis. The president has confronted the worst economic crisis in seven decades, has spent close to a trillion dollars bailing out banks and major industries, and has had to fight hard to pass even the most basic reform to get healthcare to most Americans.

But perhaps the real crisis of the BP oil spill is that mid-term elections loom and Obama's failure to look as if he has any control over the situation is another threat to his grip on Congress.