Promise and potential unfilled. That would, probably more than anything, describe the first year of the Obama administration.

We’ve all seen the poll numbers, and know that Obama’s star has faded in recent months. Obama is suffering the combined effects of the extraordinarily difficult economic times, a truly strange political environment, and the inevitable disappointment brought on by the gap between the hopes of so many Obama supporters and the reality of our new president’s governing style.

As a campaigner, Obama was brilliant, and he managed to tap into that deep vein of antipathy towards Washington that is shared across the political spectrum. He rightfully railed against the influence of big money in politics, and how it cheapened Washington, limited our potential, and undermined the interests of average Americans.

It was a message that resonated with so many voters upset at the Bush administration’s bailout of Wall Street and the big banks, particularly as the impact of Wall Street’s reckless risk-taking began to take hold in the economy.

Obama promised he’d rein in Wall Street, and hold them accountable. Instead, he appointed Wall Street friendly Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, who continued the Bush policies, while those who had helped craft candidate Obama’s more reform-minded promises, were sidelined. It was a bad omen from the start.

Obama has clearly made mistakes, as all presidents do. His biggest was to hand an impressive mandate, built on hopes for remaking Washington, over to the one institution guaranteed to tarnish Obama’s image and dash our hopes for change. Congress, particularly the U.S. Senate, is the poster child for the rule of money in Washington. And while the Obama administration made good faith efforts to restrict the influence of lobbyists on the White House staff, such efforts were overshadowed by the gross conflicts of interest displayed during negotiations over health care reform.

President Obama made health care reform his primary campaign issue, and with good reason. The skyrocketing cost of health care in this country, if left unchecked, will bankrupt American families, businesses, and the government. The system we have in place today is far and away the most expensive in the industrialized world. It provides below average care to most Americans, and leaves nearly 50 million without access to anything other than an emergency room.

Americans understood the need for reform. But when the Obama mandate to do just that was handed to the likes of Max Baucus, a senator who has taken in over $3 million in campaign cash since 2005 from the insurance and health care industries, the only audacity apparent was the extent to which the public interest was quickly sacrificed to powerful interests.

The White House only added to the perception that money talks when it struck a deal with the pharmaceutical industry that bought their acquiescence to reform in exchange for a go-soft approach on their gross overcharging of Americans. Obama’s lofty campaign promises, including the promise for transparency, never stood a chance.

While missteps have dogged Obama, he has been equally hampered by the meteoric rise of a brand of paranoid, anti-government populism, the likes of which we haven’t seen to this extent since the 1950s. Left-leaning populism fueled the Obama campaign to some extent, but it is an angry, rightwing version that is fueling the Tea Party movement and the politicians, like Sarah Palin, who hope to ride that wave into elective office.

We are in tough times economically, and such times always provide the opportunity for demagogues to stoke the latent fears we all share at times about those who wield power in Washington. Under economic stress, we are all susceptible to the fear-mongering being peddled so vociferously these days in a wide range of venues. The Internet, in particular, has helped spawn a laundry list of bizarre myths about Obama, many of which have their fundamental basis in racial fear.

Cries of “socialism” are heard every day in such circles, even in the face of a presidency that has been most notable, and most disappointing, for being merely conventional. Barack Obama promised us a presidency that would shake up Washington. What he has delivered is more of the same—essentially a re-run of the Clinton administration, without the drama. It’s hardly revolutionary. It’s almost boring.

Obama’s quest for bipartisanship hasn’t helped his cause. Barack Obama received more votes than any president in history and came to office with big Democratic margins in the House and Senate. After eight years, during which a Republican president and Congress spent like drunken sailors on the nation’s credit card, and turned a $200 billion budget surplus in 2001 into a $1.3 billion deficit by the time Bush left office, the GOP brand was almost destroyed, and rightfully so.

Obama didn’t need to compromise. He only needed to fulfill his promises. Yet almost from Day One, he began the process of sacrificing huge chunks of his agenda, and the wishes of his supporters, in the vain hope of pleasing a token Republican. For a time it seemed that Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was the most powerful person in Washington. It was just weird.

Say what you will about the Bush administration, but those guys passed their agenda, and did it with one and two-vote margins in the Senate. You didn’t need sixty votes for much during the last administration. These days, you need sixty votes to approve the lunch menu in the Senate dining room.

Even when Obama agrees to a Republican proposal, he can’t win. It was the Republicans, after all, who wanted the bipartisan commission to make recommendations for deficit reduction. But once Obama agreed to it, the Republicans immediately threatened a filibuster. It’s pure obstructionism, but it seems to be an effective foil against Obama’s naive belief that rational debate can bring the two sides together.

Obama needs to learn that in today’s toxic political environment, reason carries little weight, especially to a public increasingly stewed in a mix of media-fed hyperbole, Internet rumor, and resentment.

Much, in fact most, of this situation isn’t really his fault. No president since FDR has stepped into a worse economic situation, and probably none since Jefferson has faced a political opposition more focused on his destruction at all costs.

Obama still hasn’t figured out how to operate effectively in such an environment. But he has shown before an ability to adapt quickly and turn seemingly dire circumstances to his advantage. Whether he can do so again, and begin to fulfill the promise and potential he seemed to hold one year ago, remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, given the challenges facing the nation, we all should have an interest in his success.