Make no mistake the death of Osama Bin Laden will become the defining moment in President Obama's presidency.

Today there is a lot of talk about how this news will affect Obama's presidency, and the devastating impact it will have on the Republicans who were hoping to recapture the White House in 2012.

Here is just a sampliing.

From the Time's Mark Halperin:

The President's speech to the nation, announcing that Osama bin Laden has been killed by an American team in Pakistan, was strong, proud and passionate, and proved once again that Obama is capable of reaching the highest levels of gravitas and consequence his job demands.

From one end of the American political spectrum to the other, there will be absolute consensus that the Obama administration's elimination of bin Laden is a huge victory for the president. It will reinforce the notion that Barack Obama will be very tough to beat for re-election.

Fox News reports how the news has, at least for now, created a non-partisan atmosphere of joy and unity in Washington:

Nothing has united Washington like the killing of Usama bin Laden since the very attacks he orchestrated nearly a decade ago.

Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives are all toasting the strike by a 40-man Navy SEAL team that swooped in on the terror master’s compound, killing bid Laden and one of his adult sons. Relief and exultation at the end of the manhunt that began on Sep. 11, 2001 runs the political gamut from Pelosi to Paul.

So universal was the desire for bin Laden’s death and so effective was the mission to kill him – from authorization to head shot to burial at sea in about 8 hours -- that Congress can skip the usual gamesmanship and chin pulling that follows a major military or intelligence operation.

Even Dick Cheney had to grudgingly give the President credit:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney -- a vocal critic of President Obama's anti-terror policy since the end of the Bush administration -- extended his congratulations to the White House after the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. forces. Cheney called the killing of bin Laden "a tremendous achievement for the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission."

"I also want to congratulate President Obama and the members of his national security team," Cheney said.

All across the country jubilant Americans gathered to celebrate the death of America's own personal bogeyman, and to give well deserved credit to our President.



But for me I felt it was Keith Olbermann over at Fok News who summed it up best. (For obvious reasons.)

You can say all you want about unity and non-politicization of this event, but that ship sailed – and in the other direction – in 2002 and 2004. The GOP claimed all the credit in the world for anything that happened and anything that didn’t. President Obama was attacked before during and after his election for supposedly “weak” national security credentials. In point of fact, as of tonight his national security/counter-terrorism credentials probably jumped to Number 4 on the all-time Presidential list, just behind Lincoln, FDR, and Madison.

To that end, please join us in saying goodbye to Sarah Palin, whose career ended tonight. She sealed it by tweeting congratulations only to the military. Not a word about Intelligence personnel, and certainly not a word about Obama. Speaking of intelligence, rationalizing the death of Bin Laden under a Democratic president is going to test the limit of hers. Which ain’t gonna take long.

Could not have said it better myself.