He's clearly side-stepped the Goblin issue by saying there were multiple Goblins, apologizing for his actions, appearing to save the world, preventing the Green Goblin from killing the President, headed the Thunderbolts, AND made sure he's totally sympathetic in regards to his mental illness in the past.
How does this account for the fact that he's portrayed as UNIVERSALLY BELOVED, though, to the point that the general public regards him as A GREATER HERO THAN CAPTAIN AMERICA??? He was still ONE of the Goblins, which means that he still KILLED people, and by his own admission, HE'S STILL MENTALLY ILL. Even if he somehow managed to grease enough of the right palms to get into his current position of power - and when special interest groups are willing to take pot-shots at Sotomayor just for using the phrase "wise Latina," good luck with THAT - there should be ROUND-THE-CLOCK PROTESTS against him, because if people are contrary enough to STILL insist that our current president is an OMG SEEKRIT MUSLIN TERRIRIST who was born in KENYA, despite PROOF to the contrary, then one side or the other of the political aisle WOULD turn Norman Osborn into a political football. Either Obama would fire his ass to show a "clean break" with Bush-era policies, or if Obama kept Osborn, conservatives would bring up Osborn's misdeeds to try and embarrass Obama. Either way, Stewart and Colbert would still be turning Osborn's name to MUD every night, and he'd be rendered RADIOACTIVE.
I'm sorry but, there's no way Osbourne being leader of H.A.M.M.E.R is even close to as insane as fucking LEX LUTHOR being PRESIDENT.
1. Post-Crisis, Luthor had a cleaner criminal record than a lot of superheroes.
2. Post-Crisis, Luthor was never BROADCAST LIVE ON NATIONAL TELEVISION murdering uniformed police officers and defenseless women.
3. Norman plagiarized every good idea he's ever taken credit for, including the Goblin serum, in canon. By contrast, Luthor is an independently brilliant scientist who, unlike Norman, is NOT INSANE, which is also why he's a better businessman than Norman ever was, because while Lex may have an ego and a half, rather than trying to bully EVERYONE into submission, more than half the time, he'll get them on his side by GIVING THEM WHAT THEY WANT.
Norman is, and always has been, a punk and an idiot who wasted 90 percent of his supervillain career on trying to ruin the life of an impoverished inner-city boy who had no friends or resources, and he couldn't even do THAT right. Luthor is such a brilliant manager of people that he can repeatedly get uncontrollably psychotic and homicidal supervillains to sit down to BOARD MEETINGS together, in order to try and defeat a superhero who's the closest thing that the DC Universe has to Jesus Christ himself.
Trying to say that Norman Osborn is like Lex Luthor is like trying to say that Sarah Palin is like Ronald Reagan - in both cases, the former only WISHES they could be as effective at manipulation as the latter.