A year later, hope dissolves into disappointment

A year ago, on an Inauguration Day like no other, Barack Obama placed his hand upon the Lincoln Bible and then assured a weary nation that, with hope and virtue, we could “brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.”

Across the country, in Seattle, Glen Boyd had only just entered his own economic storm. A couple of weeks out of work as a DIRECTV salesman, the Obama supporter nevertheless watched the inauguration on TV with a kind of goose-pimply, things-are-bound-to-get-better anticipation. He really felt it, that thing which the poet Alexander Pope said springs eternal.

“I felt a tremendous sense of pride. I felt like he was the right guy. I felt a sense of optimism,” recalls Boyd.

Now, a year later, Boyd writes this in his blog: “We believed what the man said in all those ‘yes, we can’ speeches. My one question is, where are all those reassuring speeches now?”

“To say I’m disappointed by the Obama presidency thus far would be an understatement.”

Forget “can,” “change” and, above all, “hope.” The new word echoing in the blogosphere and beyond as Obama enters Year Two: disappointment.

The polls have shown a wide decline in Americans’ approval of Obama since he first took office last Jan. 20. In fact, according to the latest Gallup Poll, he entered his second year with one of the lowest approval ratings of any president in the last half-century (50 percent of Americans approved of his job performance at the first of January, and 44 percent disapproved.)

John Connelly, a registered Republican who describes himself as an archconservative, feels no disappointment because he never placed any hope in Obama’s presidency in the first place. “I knew what was coming even before he was elected,” says the 68-year-old retired attorney who lives in Carolina Shores, N.C.

Rather, some of the truest Obama believers are among the most letdown.

Consider the anti-war activist upset that Obama has yet to end the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or the socially liberal surgeon disillusioned with what he sees as a weak stab at health care reform. Or Boyd, “50-ish” and out of work a year now, bitter that the man he backed hasn’t delivered more jobs.

They speak of disappointment in the state of our union. Disappointment in themselves for expecting so much so fast. Disappointment, especially, in the man who, as Boyd says, “raised the bar so high.”

Still others are more disappointed in their fellow Americans’ impatience.

“You pick your issue of the day, and no one’s happy because he hasn’t tackled that one individual issue with fervor,” says fish biologist Tracii Hickman of Walla Walla, Wash., an Obama voter.

She was so inspired by his election that she wrote in a newspaper commentary on inauguration eve last year, “I am optimistic that the massive problems facing our nation will be addressed and that we will come out on the other side of this huge mess a better people and country.”

Her optimism holds. “I do not feel letdown at all,” she says.

But others do, and they feel so strongly that they are moved to write about their disenchantment — on the Web and in letters to the editor, some in anger, others in sorrow, in language intemperate or aggrieved.

“Yes, we can?” writes Boyd. “How about no, we can’t?"

>> PHOTOS: Click here to see notable moments from President Obama's first year

>> PHOTOS: Click here to see the latest photos of President Obama

>> PHOTOS: Click here to relive President Obama's inauguration