News that former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was dumped from Bank of America yesterday capped a remarkably tone-deaf period in Thain’s otherwise successful ascent of the Wall Street ladder. After being brought in to restore confidence in Merrill in 2007, and then hailed as a shareholder savior when he arranged Merrill’s sale to BofA a few months ago, Thain is this week’s poster child for bad public relations.

Reports yesterday that Thain spent more than a million dollars redecorating his office last year – including the gem that he spent $1,400 on a trash can – reinforced the idea that bank chiefs lived like kings and spent like drunken sailors. And it brought further attention to the multi-million dollar bonus Thain sought from Merrill/BofA even as executives at other banks were forgoing bonuses entirely (not to mention the millions of Americans who last year lost jobs that paid far less than your average CEO’s salary).

The big lesson here seems to be: Don’t believe your own press. Just because you’re hailed as a hero one day doesn’t mean you’ve become immune to the normal laws of public perception.

Barack Obama also had a PR come-to-Jesus yesterday when the press, as reported in Politico, began to question the level of access they were given to the president’s first actions in office. Pooling Obama’s second swearing-in and only releasing White House photos of his first hours in the Oval Office may not seem like a big deal, but to the press, whose livelihood depends on access, it’s worrisome.

Any American who lived through last year knows that President Obama has a somewhat charmed relationship with the press. But maintaining those good relations – and the accompanying positive public perception – requires consistent effort.