Great Expectations for Obama ... and the GOP

CNN reports new polling data finding two-thirds of Americans indicating that President-Elect Barack Obama "will make major accomplishments as president of the United States":

The public thinks it's likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the U.S. safer from terrorism, reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.

Whoa! No wonder some Obama staffers have been lowering expections for the Obamessiah!

Here's Gaius with more on that:

Soaring campaign rhetoric gets sucked into the intake of the jet engine of harsh political reality. This is one of the reasons I have been telling folks not to panic, not to start up a circular firing squad. Obama’s aides are clearly facing the harsh reality that Obama simply can not possibly deliver all that he promised. If the Republican party spends the next two years diligently building a strong, modern message based solidly in the bedrock principles of conservativism and runs very, very hard at the state levels, a huge turnaround can be made.

It is utterly certain that the Pelosi-Reid-Obama triumvirate will overreach - badly - and provoke a backlash. It is also utterly certain that Obama’s policies in the next two years will badly disillusion his true believers.

The next two years, concentrate at the state levels (this includes House and Senate), the two after that, aim higher. But first, get that message put together. And pull together as a group. I’m betting we’ll have plenty of disillusioned former Obama supporters hoping for a change real soon.

Sounds good, but that "pulling together as a group" part's going to be tricky.