A year ago, political, cultural, economic and media pundits were united in singing President-elect Obama’s praises. They assured us that by working with enlightened congressional leaders like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Obama would give us a post-racial, post-partisan, post-Bush Valhalla. There, no citizen would ever again be left wanting for decent health care, a rewarding job, a home warmed in winter and cooled in summer with green energy, a comfortable pension, or a college education. It would be an America in which our liberal leaders would finally deliver “change we can believe in” instead of merely promising it. Best of all, they would do it by “cutting taxes for 95 percent of working Americans” and instituting a “net spending cut” on the federal budget. Verily, it seemed, there truly was a free lunch after all.

What a difference one year makes. Liberals may be forgiven for looking at the latest public opinion surveys and wondering if they somehow stumbled into the Valley of Death instead of Obama’s promised paradise. The president remains somewhat popular personally, but, as Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard wrote recently, “Obama’s domestic program is exceedingly unpopular. The public disapproves of the president’s bailouts, stimulus, health care reform, and cap and trade policies, not to mention his decision to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay.” That Continetti was perhaps too kind is seen in this stunning fact: When George W. Bush returned, bloodied and bruised, to his Texas home after eight years in the White House, 43 percent of Americans surveyed by Scott Rasmussen “strongly disapproved” of the job he had done. Today, after less than a year in office, 46 percent express the same intense level of opposition to Obama.