What to call the contagion: buyer's remorse? or Messiah fatigue?

President Obama is angry at God for making it rain in Chicago, and irked at the oil spill, making him pack up between his vacations and make trips down again to the Gulf. Ideologues argue about over whether corporations or government tend to be the least competent, ignoring the proof that the answer is both of them. And Democrats are having their own kind of crisis, a sort of buyer's remorse at a very high level, which sounds like Messiah Fatigue.

Messiah Fatigue is what happens when your Messiah turns into a millstone, and the force that was supposed to boost you into divine and deep power seems more of an anchor instead. Democrats are bewildered.

"They are doing a lot of things, but a lot of people do not like what they are doing. Others do not know what they are doing. And hardly anyone likes the way they are doing it," as the Los Angeles Times now says of the party.

"A lot of our people have no idea what we're doing," it quotes a House member. And David Obey complains that "Obama's ability to use his bully pulpit to build support for health care and other crises had been eclipsed by the oil spill crisis," causing James Taranto to note unkindly that, as the health care vote came a month before the crisis erupted, "the explosion created a disruption in the space-time continuum that is causing millions of gallons of oil to leak into the past."

Apparently they washed back as far as November, when they eclipsed his ability to elect Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine as governors, not to mention eclipsing his power (in January) to stymie the fast-moving surge of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. He has been magic, but for the Republican Party, which now has a slew of attractive officeholders in purple and blue states, and looks to pick up a lot more this November.

"Obama's mixed [she means losing] electoral record has perplexed operatives who thought his charisma and tactical skill would yield a stronger-than-ever Democratic majority," reported Anne Kornblut. Instead, it produced a revival among the Republicans, who just a few months ago appeared moribund.

How did this happen, if he was the Anointed? Inquiring minds want to know. Inquiring minds have a few other questions, in light of the gap between promise and fact.

How did he turn health care into a wedge issue against his own party? Why are we awash in a sea of dead pelicans? Why has he so much time on his hands for fundraisers and galas? Why are our relations so much worse with all of our allies, while our -- and their -- enemies go on building bombs?

Based on these facts, Obama seems nobody's highway to heaven. He's the sleek, splashy sports car that sits in the driveway, that looked so cool in the showroom, and handled so well on the test drive, but has a bad habit of stalling in traffic, and just doesn't take to the road.

Buyer's remorse is rampant among U.S. voters, but they won't have a return desk for three years

Americans were giddy about getting rid of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but they are clearly suffering from buyer's remorse a year later.

The seeds of Obama's current political dilemma were sown the day of his inauguration. The expectations heaped on his shoulders were clearly impossible to sustain, and there was little effort by his administration to dampen the "hope" that had propelled him from first-term senator to first African-American president. And when those expectations weren't met, someone had to be held accountable.

Polling done over the past 30 days paints a very clear picture of a president who has fallen short of expectations:

• Only 39 percent of the country would vote to re-elect Obama, according to a National Journal poll, while 50 percent would "definitely" or "probably" vote for someone else. This is significant. George W. Bush is the only candidate in modern times to win re-election with less than half of the country expressing a desire to re-elect him.

• According to Gallup, Obama has suffered the greatest fall in approval of any elected president since the company started ongoing tracking during the Eisenhower administration. Obama came into office with the approval of two out of every three voters (67 percent) but ended his first year with just half the electorate (50 percent) offering a positive evaluation of his performance. Only the unelected Gerald Ford fared worse in the court of public opinion.

• It's not just the Obama agenda that is under attack. It is his philosophy that has America balking. For example, Americans are increasingly returning to the conservative ideology they held before the perceived failures of the Bush administration crushed conservative self-identification levels. According to Gallup, fully 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservative, compared with just 21 percent who call themselves liberal.

• And finally, while the Republican brand has barely moved since its electoral disasters of 2006 and 2008 and remains unpopular, Democratic popularity has collapsed as well. Most surveys now have the GOP even or even slightly ahead in the generic congressional ballot, and Americans now see the Republicans to be as good if not better in handling the economy.

But the single most damning polling result doesn't mention Obama or his administration or even government in general. Rather, it's the collapse of intergenerational optimism that had characterized American attitudes and driven the American spirit of achievement for more than half a century.