It's no wonder that in 2008, the American public handed Barack Obama a 53%-46% win over John McCain.

After all, in addition to their anger and worry over the nation's biggest economic free fall since the Great Depression, millions of Independents, Reagan Democrats, and even some Republicans felt they couldn't risk the consequences of continuing the "conservative" policies that under George Bush and Alan Greenspan not only helped create the financial debacle but also sent the national debt rocketing, in an eight year period, $4.9 trillion or 85%.

So it was that Obama won not because of but despite conducting a vacuous campaign whose only substance consisted of the teleprompters that flashed the words of his airy speeches and the posters that bore a picture of the far-off-gazing candidate as a messianic avatar of "hope."

Now, the American people are always right to hope for presidential policies that lead to a better life, including, in these hard times, economic policies that vigorously produce good jobs; honestly attack the suffocating incubi that are the nation's deficits and debt; and courageously structure trade agreements favoring American workers, not managers of multi-national corporations or power loving ideologues devoted to foolishly dangerous dreams of a New World Order.

But not long after the inauguration ceremony of 2009, the public's hope for effective economic leadership by the most liberal president in American history began to evaporate as citizens increasingly became aware of realities that speak not of an innovative, transcendent leader but a merely expedient politician wedded to the decrepit ideology and methods associated with the bosses of the Chicago Machine:

▪ the destined to fail, nearly trillion dollar pork-stuffed-for-political-friends-only stimulus bill

▪ the more than one trillion dollars of fiscal lies contained in the 2,000 pages of Obamacare

▪ the devastating economic consequences certain to result from fiscally profligate, politically corrupt, ideologically foolish energy directives

▪ the dreadful price that ultimately will be paid because of a failed promise to cut the federal deficit in half by 2012

▪ the social and economic catastrophe looming all the more fearfully because a cowardly and irresponsible president chose to bow to the extremists of his party and summarily dismiss the recommendations of his own debt commission

▪ and the pain of reduced economic opportunity and diminished standard of living that is unavoidable when aristocratic arrogance further bloats an already bloated federal government.

Further adding to the heat that is evaporating the Obama hope-effect is the context within which this feckless economic leadership has occurred, realities the public expects its president not simply to be aware of but to do something about.

Here are some salient details of that context as provided by investigative reporter David Cay Johnston ("America's Long Slope Down," reuters.com).

▪ IRS data showing that average adjusted gross income decreased $2,699 between 2000-2010, for a cumulative loss of $26,000 per taxpayer over the decade.

▪ Social Security tax data revealing that the median wage in 2010 fell to its level in 1999, with half of workers grossing less than $507 a week and the 50 million workers in the bottom third of earners averaging $116 a week.

▪ Social Security and Census Bureau data exposing that while the total number of people with any kind of job increased 1.5% between 2000-2010, the U.S. population grew 6.4 times faster.

▪ Bureau of Labor Statistics figures disclosing that in May of 2012, 14.8 percent of workers were jobless or underemployed, a number economist John Williams argues rises to 19% when people who have given up hope of a finding a job are included.

▪ Finally (but far from the last of the statistics Johnston presents) shocking Federal Reserve data shedding light on the fact that in the period 2000-2010, household debt per capita rose 42% and adjusted gross income per capita only 9%

The frightening truth is that although Barack Obama must be aware of those realities, he has chosen to pursue policies dictated by the demands of radical liberal ideology and rank political expediency, notwithstanding that at the end of his four years in office, the national debt will have increased by an astonishing $5.9 trillion or 56%.

But the good news is the public is painfully aware of the nation's real economic situation and the fact that the president has shown the nation no specific, sensible, effective way forward.

That's why, during this middle month of summer, it can be said that the Obama hope-effect is vanishing as fast as a chunk of ice fully exposed to the unremitting radiation of the afternoon sun.


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