Not so long ago, Janet Napolitano was a media darling, a savvy, tough-on-crime female prosecutor from the West who held seemingly unlimited potential in the Democratic Party. Her keen sense of humor and outside-the-Beltway frankness helped her court key Washington figures who almost uniformly saw her as a rising star on the national political scene.

Fast forward to the present: After a year at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security, Napolitano finds herself arguably President Barack Obama’s most embattled Cabinet secretary. Her televised comments – that “the system worked” in the Christmas Day bombing attempt — drew derision around the country.

As she prepares to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Commerce committees Wednesday, some conservatives are calling for her resignation, portraying Napolitano as a gaffe-prone, politically correct bureaucrat out of touch with the dangers facing the nation.

What happened?

Back in Napolitano’s home state of Arizona, folks are marveling at her recent trips through the media wringer.

“She has a great relationship with the press by the nature of her personality,” said Barry Dill, a strategist for several of Napolitano’s elections in Arizona. “She’s has a great sense of humor. She’s usually very frank and direct….That’s why she had success in her relationship with both the Arizona press and the D.C. and New York press.”

Some of Napolitano’s earlier investments in the East Coast press corps seem to have paid off during her most recent troubles.

“Napolitano handled the incident and its aftermath with aplomb,” Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spent New Year’s Eve in Napolitano’s office, dutifully explaining her whereabouts over the Christmas holiday and arguing that Napolitano’s “the system worked” comment was no different from what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the same day.

Conservatives saw it differently. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said Napolitano was “clearly over her head.” Weekly Standard writer Steve Hayes said a comment the secretary made about her surprise at “the tactic of using an individual to foment an attack” was bizarrely out of touch.

Leaders of 18 conservative organizations joined Burgess in a letter this month urging Napolitano to quit. So far two members of Congress have publicly called for Napolitano’s resignation: Reps. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.)

“When this happened Christmas Day, it was like everything was in slow motion as far as our security apparatus….The assertion that the system worked as intended: oh, my God,” Burgess said. “We need to get past this. One way to do that is the secretary resigning.”

Burgess said his main complaint about Napolitano is that the former federal prosecutor and governor has little experience in counterterrorism or air security.

Several of the conservatives who signed the letter calling on Napolitano to resign said they are troubled by the Obama administration’s reluctance to use the term “Islamic terrorism” or to acknowledge the religious aspect of the threat America faces.

Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential hopeful who now heads up a conservative group called American Values, accused Napolitano of using euphemisms that show her to be part of “some on the left that really have a hard time coming to grips with a religiously motivated enemy that it willing to routinely violate the rules of human decency to kill us.”

Some conservatives also say their concerns about her date back to last April when Homeland Security released a report warning of the potential for violence from right-wing activists and returning veterans. After several weeks, Napolitano announced the report had been withdrawn because it was improperly vetted.

“I thought it showed an enormous lack of judgment,” Burgess said.

Napolitano’s allies said her critics were dredging up ancient history with the extremism report, which came out less than three months after she was sworn in. “I think she pretty well fell on her sword about that,” one Napolitano backer said.

The widely read Drudge Report raised a different issue regarding Napolitano. “Big Sis wants to see under your clothes,” said Drudge’s banner, accompanied by photos in which Napolitano appeared to be looking at a nude female image from the kind of body-scanning machine expected to be more widely used at airports.

A blogger for the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, called the posting a transparent effort to suggest that Napolitano is a lesbian, even though Napolitano has denied the suggestion when it was raised during past campaigns.

Some prominent Republicans have rallied to Napolitano’s side. The two previous secretaries of homeland security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, were quick to endorse the job she’s done. And some conservative experts who’ve studied the challenges facing DHS have dismissed the attacks on Napolitano.

“A lot of the criticism was completely unfair,” said the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano. “The many obstacles Congress and both the Bush and Obama administrations have thrown in front of the department kept it from playing a more proactive role in safeguarding the homeland,” Carafano wrote in a Washington Times op-ed this month.

Aides and allies have sought to explain away Napolitano’s initial post-Christmas day performance on a variety of grounds. She has contended her claim that “the system worked” was taken wildly out of context. In fact, in one of her Sunday show appearances, the context for her remarks was far from clear. She claimed passengers’ jumping on the suspect as he ignited himself were part of the successful “system,” when most Americans would clearly view that as a sign of failure.

Napolitano has since hinted she may have leaned too far in the direction of reassuring Americans rather than discussing the scary possibilities the incident highlighted. Her key goal that morning was “to immediately tell the American people we were not just cowering somewhere but we were taking this on very, very forcefully,” Napolitano told Dowd.

Napolitano’s friends say she was keenly aware of the daunting challenge she faced in taking over a newly-created government bureaucracy that includes 22 agencies ranging from the Coast Guard to the Secret Service.

Napolitano backers and former aides noted that others with allegiances to the CIA or the Director of National Intelligence seem willing to overlook or minimize the significant intelligence failures at those agencies while slamming Napolitano over a single statement in a TV interview.

“There is still a lot of turf protection going on. Now DHS is the new child being born and the ways of Washington continue,” Dill said.

Napolitano’s allies say her ultimate protection against the attacks comes from the loyal support of Obama himself. The White House gave Napolitano a boost when Gibbs said Obama felt the greater failure on Christmas Day was in the realm of intelligence and not screening, Napolitano’s bailiwick.

Carafano said he’d like to see the DHS secretary above politics, much as FBI or CIA directors are often seen as beyond the partisan fray. But that will be all but impossible if the administration makes a concerted push for immigration reform with Napolitano at the helm.

“For her to be effective, she cannot be seen as a political, polarizing figure,” he said. “If they do this immigration bill, it’s going to make it very, very hard for her. How does she make friends with people who are apoplectic over immigration?”

As Napolitano’s aides and allies wait to see what tack Republicans take with her at the oversight hearings Wednesday, some are marveling at the idea that the onetime tough-as-nails governor and pro-death-penalty ex-prosecutor is now being painted as a patsy.

“They may think she’s an easy target,” Dill said, “but I can reassure you she loves these kinds of challenges.”