I was sitting on the dock at Thanksgiving with a friend, an investment banker. He was perplexed. "I get creepy e-mails on Obama," he said. "A real barrage. Stressing his middle name. His provenance. Equating him to Hitler. My question is, When did it start? Or were people always this crazy?"

I don't think it was always thus. I think Barack Obama makes people uniquely crazy, on all sides. Take his Nobel Peace Prize.

It drove right-wingers batty, predictably. But leftist Michael Moore, whose new film is an attack on capitalism, wrote snarkily, "Congratulations. ... Now earn it." Then a day later -- and this is what proves that he induces insanity -- Mr. Moore took it back and said he'd been too hard on the President.

All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

The beaming face of Barack Obama -- whether surveying adoring fans on Parliament Hill or bestowing on Ottawa shopgirls an experience they can dine out on for the rest of their lives -- was oddly reminiscent of Hugh Hefner's line about feeling like a kid in the world's biggest candy store.

Ottawa may seem more like Canadian Tire than a candy store, but one could well imagine Obama thinking: And they pay me for doing this?

Stephen Harper, along with the security legions, got a discomfited look on his face when Barack Obama asked if they could step outside to wave to the crowd yesterday after arriving on Parliament Hill. Oh no, he seemed to fret. I don't want it to end this way: taking a bullet for the big-spending liberal. On the other hand, it's his normal expression.

But Barack Obama makes many people edgy, including some on the left, where he's supposed to be. Tom Walkom in the Toronto Star: "He is not God. The best thing ... is that he's not George W. Bush." Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch: "There's always something cloudy about Obama, just when I've almost persuaded myself to like the guy." That includes me.

It is depressing. The budget passed yesterday and what felt like a small opening in the door for a new kind of politics, has now slammed shut. The old fractious bombast has re-emerged in full force along with the feeling that government power is now shared between Conservatives wearing liberal clothing and Liberals who are really just tarted-up conservatives. The whole scene feels so strangely out of time.

For a brief period, the shocking answer to a political crisis was cooperation. And it was powerful. The threat of losing the Government transformed the Harper government into a puppet of its own political ambition. The result is that we are stuck with Flaherty's foolhardy attention deficit disorder budget. But Harper has a serious decline in popular support to show for it.