PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA will be significantly less popular - certainly outside the United States - in a year to 18 months' time than today. No crystal ball is needed. It's simple reality. There are various key reasons. Most obvious is the extraordinarily high rating that Obama currently enjoys throughout much of the world. The chances of an increase in that stellar standing during 2009/2010 are necessarily virtually nil.
But the likelihood of a clear decline in Obama's popularity is arithmetically an overwhelming odds-on proposition. There's no prospect Obama - any more than anyone else - can remotely meet the grossly excessive expectations that are so widely put upon him. That hard fact - largely pushed aside in the immediate euphoria - will inevitably come increasingly to the fore.
All the central focus on 20 January, as Obama formally assumed Presidential office, was naturally on his speech. However, the brutal reality was that share markets in the US (and bourses internationally) showed their bleakest Inauguration Day performance in the 112 years since the start of the Dow Jones index.
It was most appropriate, therefore, that Obama - the "Great Orator" - delivered an essentially low-key, quickly forgettable address. That was in stark contrast to the high-flying rhetoric in January 1961 of the former president with whom Obama has most often been compared - John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
On the surface that seems most surprising.
The US and broadly defined "Western democracies" then faced a much greater military threat from the Communist Soviet bloc than radical Islam currently poses. More, average real living standards in the US in 1961 were less than half those of 2009.
However, understandably, that latter point means nothing to current generations - as the plight of those sent crashing in the Great Depression of 1929 to 1931 wasn't in the least relieved because they were still generally much better off than their grandfathers.
Kennedy came to power in an era of cautious hope, definitely in the US, in almost all of Western Europe and in many other nations. There was no economic panic then. People were broadly optimistic about the future. The current mood is much more fearful, no matter the immense economic gains globally over the past 50 years.
That isn't a new trend. Even when the world was booming - as it did spectacularly between 2001 and 2006 - opinion surveys revealed high levels of economic anxiety in the US, Britain and many other nations. Now the crash has come - and nobody can say how long it will last or how deep it will finally go.
So there's a massive worry factor.
In similar circumstances, historically, vast numbers of people in what was the "Christian world" sought security in religion. But that world has become dominantly secular. So the immense faith now placed by so many in Obama has a critical, sub-conscious element of religious substitution. As such, it's highly vulnerable.
But secular faith can still work wonders for hope even when actual delivery falls enormously short. The unshakable belief of tens of millions of people in communism long after it was patently a bitterly cruel failure is the core example.
The US economy in the Thirties under Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" recovered far more slowly than unsung Britain. But Roosevelt was an inspirational leader in a way that British prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain never were.
So it may be with Obama. His achievements in office are bound to lag expectations hugely, even if relatively he does very well. His popularity will fall sharply outside the US, crucially among the terminally naïve who think he'll relegate US interests to, among many examples, those of Africa and the developing world.
Obama will do no such thing. He's an American and he'll inspire Americans that he's battling fiercely for what he sees as their interests. In some areas, but far from all, those interests will differ profoundly from many of those perceived by George W Bush:
* We'll see change maybe in Iraq, but definitely no pullout in Afghanistan.
* Perhaps an agreement to greater international financial regulation, but few, if any, US moves towards greater free trade.
* Categorical commitment to action on "climate change" - but only if China, India, South Africa and others come a long way to the party.
* And don't ask about the long-term energy/power supply prospects of US industry.
Those few pointers make it abundantly clear why Obama won't be the same international messianic poster president in 2010.
There's another crucial issue, though. As this column has repeatedly noted, it's Congress - not Obama - that will have the last word on much of US economic policy. Worshippers at the White House had better remember that such dangerous Democrats as Senator Nancy Pelosi and Representative Barney Frank have a lot of clout with regard to financial policy.
