In a front-page Washington Post story today — headlined “Angry Congress lashes out at Obama” — we read this:

Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration. Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home.

What is happening is that the myriad troubling signs for Obama over the past several months — crumbling support for his health-care efforts, a huge loss of support among independents, a dispirited base, an energized opposition, growing approval of the GOP’s agenda — are now manifesting themselves in election results (see the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races) and unhappiness among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

President Obama finds himself in a difficult situation. That isn’t in itself unusual; presidents always encounter political troubles along the way. What is unusual is how quickly Obama has found himself in this precarious position. The promise of the early days of his administration seem a lifetime ago. An expression like “hope and change,” which played quite well during the campaign, now seems like a stale, empty phrase, the product of a skilled public-relations operation. Now that the reality and hardships of governing have emerged, Obama has shown himself to be, so far at least, overmatched.

It has been a difficult first year. Obama’s signature domestic initiative, health care, is deeply unpopular. Unemployment is above 10 percent and won’t be dropping significantly any time soon. The issues the country is focused on are ones that play to the advantage of the GOP. The nation is becoming more conservative in the Age of Obama. His party is increasingly nervous and restive as its members see what awaits them in 2010.

During the campaign, Barack Obama made it all sound so easy. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard for liberalism’s “sort of God,” was it?

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