Column - Once a mile high, now falling fast

From the toast of Rome to meeting his Waterloo.

A year ago, Barack Obama was striding from behind that famous rank of faux, foam Roman columns to accept the Democratic nomination at Denver's Invesco Field. The massive crowd was a mile high. The flag-waving stagecraft was impressive.

If you were there, as I was, the excitement and confidence and sense of history in the making were palpable.

Twelve months later, it seems much longer ago.

President Obama's rise is falling. His drive for health care reform, which he clearly promised to deliver over and over in those heady days, is besieged and bedeviled. No-drama's now all cliffhanger.

He needs yet another “speech of his life” to pull out of the dive. He pulled it off in Denver. But can he do it again Wednesday night in front of a fractured, feckless Congress?

The thrill is gone. But it's hardly shocking.

Successful presidencies are forged, not in front of cheering throngs, but in those lonely moments when it seems like everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Candidates smile and wave amid falling balloons. Presidents, in the words of Harry Truman, feel “like the moon the stars and the planets fell on me.”

So we're about to find out if the skinny guy who packed 'em in and made those nice speeches is really the president we were hoping for.

Still, a president can also be too lonely. You have to wonder where all those cheering Obamaholics are now. Did they really lose faith this soon?

His crowd has left the stadium.

Meanwhile, his critics are packing town halls.

They never stood down after November, never took a break. They're still angry, agitated and organized. They're still out there insisting that Obama is the strange, dangerous, un-American other, someone not even born here. He's the socialist, or maybe even the national socialist. Even a simple speech to school kids by the president is a fevered flash point.

So where are the legions who lifted Obama, now that the fate of his presidency is hanging in the balance? Where are all those young people who rocked to Obama's lyrics? I guess politics has faded off into the distance like those rolling notes on “Rock Band.”

Maybe his once-fervent backers bought a few commemorative T-shirts, watched the inauguration and moved on. Sure, they wanted change they could believe in, but not change they had to actually work to get. That's hard. They're awfully busy.

They made history. Now they're history. That guy they cheered in Denver might be next.

 Todd Dorman's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Contact him at (319) 398-8452 or todd.dorman@gazcomm.com