Can you blame her? Run through Tapper’s litany of The One’s campaign pledges. Not only is there nothing he can’t do, there’s nothing he hasn’t promised to do, healing the planet included. Barry O’s spent 18 months building himself a halo, shrewdly enough to put him on the brink of the presidency but with one little catch: With expectations among his cultists this high, there’s only one direction for his approval ratings to go.

Which means it’s time for that halo to come off.

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair”.

The media will make sure his grace period runs longer than usual, but we’ll know things have started to turn when Andrew Sullivan starts accusing him of having betrayed his, er, “true conservative” principles. Figure late summer/early fall 2009.