President Obama was such a sure-footed speaker on the White House trail when running for president.

I suspect an evil doppleganger has taken over since he has occupied the Oval Office.

Saturday was another day of a White House trying to recover from foot in mouth disease. Obama's enthusiastic backing on Friday for a mosque near Ground Zero went over like a lead balloon.

The White House press operation was desperately trying to row back afterwards, saying Obama was speaking as a general principle, not in a specific way.

But it wasn't working. The damage was done.

It was surely an issue Obama did not need to stray into for his party's sake.

Now every Democrat from Vermont to the Virgin Islands is going to be asked the dreaded question — do you stand with the president on the right to have a mosque built next to Ground Zero?

The question was largely a local New York one up to now, best handled by New York politicians, but Obama has now made it a national debate.

It is one that on a visceral level Democrats knows they can't win, and they must be wondering why Obama even addressed it.

I cannot say that I endorse the mosque so close to the sacred ground that is Ground Zero. I am no fan of the Muslim religion and how it treats women to begin with.

Reading about the Taliban stoning a couple to death last week for adultery further reinforces that the extremist edges of the religion are truly horrific.

They could argue the same about any religion of course, but we do need to move beyond the time when women are cloaked, abused and beaten as if by right.

I respect the Muslim right to worship —just not at Ground Zero.

Equally, I would not allow a Japanese Shinto site near Pearl Harbor either. I'm sure the Saudi Arabians will not allow a church near Mecca.

Obama's people tried to draw a comparison with opposition to Irish emigrants building churches when they came to America, but Irish emigrants never set out to destroy New York or plotted in their churches to do so.

Equally, I don't think there should be a Catholic Church built next to Ground Zero, though I wager more Catholics, especially in fire and police departments, were killed that day than any other religion.

To do so would be to proclaim the importance of one religion over another, and that is wrong.

That is because Ground Zero belongs to everyone, because mankind must learn the lesson, not any single group. A mosque detracts from that reality.

Obama is displaying his inexperience and professorial haughtiness by lecturing Americans on the Ground Zero mosque. He needs to feel their sense of rawness about that episode a little more.

A little Clinton empathy would have avoided this latest firestorm he has created.

Alas, Obama is looking more and more like a president who has lost his way when it comes to understanding what is in Americans hearts and minds.

This Ground Zero mosque comment is the latest example.