Though coverage of the BP oil spill quickly replaced stories of White House involvement in two primary races, it's still a source of embarrassment for an administration that promised to end politics as usual and set a high bar for transparency.

The mini-scandal drew national attention, but Pennsylvanians had heard early reports about U.S. Rep Joe Sestak claiming that the Obama White House had offered him a job to abandon his Senate campaign, to give incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, a former Republican running for re-election as a Democrat, an easier path to retaining his seat.

Sestak ended up defeating Specter in the May primary, partly by exploiting video and audio recordings of Specter saying he switched parties to get re-elected.

Sestak's election also was news because it fit the national story line of incumbents being vulnerable. But Sestak's allegations of White House interference in the election cast a cloud over the Obama administration. Not a cloud of unethical or illegal behavior, but a cloud of hypocrisy.

Obama had promised change, but seeing the White House try to manage the primary election landscape to maximize its party's advantage in Congress looked like politics as usual.

And Gov. Ed Rendell, a consummate political power broker, acknowledged that he had talked with the White House, specifically chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, about finding a way to keep Sestak from challenging Specter. Former President Bill Clinton was the messenger who approached Sestak with the White House proposal.

Sestak's story got plenty of play in Pennsylvania, with the former Navy admiral having talked repeatedly about the White House efforts to get him out of the race.

Another, similar story emerged from Colorado, where the Obama White House admitted that deputy chief of staff Jim Messina had contacted former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, suggesting he consider taking one of several federal job opportunities that were dangled in front of him, rather than challenge incumbent Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet in the primary.

Again, while such White House meddling might be troubling to many Americans, it's not particularly unusual in Washington politics. But in this case, what's troubling is the hypocrisy of it coming from an administration that promised transparency and a candidate who vowed to end politics as usual.

If the George W. Bush White House and political adviser Karl Rove had been revealed to have been involved in similar efforts, it would have generated predictable outrage from Democrats. In this case, with Sestak and Romanoff, there was barely a raised eyebrow.

The White House was briefly on the defensive about these efforts to maximize Democratic power in Congress and protect incumbents from primary challengers. But even without the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Sestak and Romanoff stories probably would have just faded away. They were just about politics as usual — but that's the point.

And for Republicans, it was politics as usual, expressing outrage and trying to make a federal case out of something the GOP, most recently with Bush and Rove, did also.

Most observers agree, the White House efforts to clear the field for Democatic incumbents is much ado about nothing, Still, if the Obama administration wants people to believe its promises of change and transparency, it should be careful to avoid playing politics as usual — or risk charges of hypocrisy and causing many of its most ardent supporters to become cynical about government and politicians' promises.