Pundits, politicians and Washington insiders always talk about the first year of a presidency as the honeymoon period. Each Administration thinks it has the best opportunity to accomplish something during this time, but they miss understand what is really at stake in that first year.

During any campaign the politicians work hard to get everyone’s attention. They make a lot of promises that most people take with a grain of salt, but they do take note of. Much of the time a lot of people only hear what they want to hear from the political sales pitches, so many develop very high expectations. The politicians having gone to great lengths to get everyone’s attention shouldn’t expect people’s attention is automatically going to be turned off just because the campaign is over.

What the honeymoon period is really about for the public is “We elected you but can we trust you”. The public gives the new president a chance to earn their trust so they can go back to dealing with their daily lives.

Few people want to be focused on politics, but once their attention has been gotten on it, it’ll stay there until they are comfortable with what they see. It’s when the public is focused on politics that politicians should worry because the public will likely not like what they’ll see if they stay focused to long.

Obama never tried to build trust with the public. He thought he knew what the public needed more then the public themselves did as far as he was concerned. He just needed to please his far left supporters and feed a lot of public money to pay back those who contributed to his campaign.

The trouble was the public’s attention was still focused on him and what this congress was doing, and they didn’t like what they were seeing. The old saying is politics and sausages should never be made in public and the Obama administration has been center stage by their own design and doing what looks like questionable actions. For all practical purposes this administration had their chance and blew it. Now the continuous media propaganda, strategy sessions and speeches they can muster will not earn them another one.

For a President and an Administration to lead effectively it must have the trust of the public. The Democratic Party leadership ignored the concerns of the public and acted like they were pests not to be tolerated. The openly called their own constituents names and ridiculed them for their concerns.

The damage they have done to themselves is severe and will haunt them for years. The question is will they continue to incur further mistrust by the public to the point where the damage cannot be repaired.