Now that Barack Obama has lost considerable political altitude, many conservatives are saying that he over read his mandate. This fits the caricature of Obama as an empty suit many on the right subscribe to.

In this view, Obama ran on a vaporous platform of ill-defined "change." He made a nice appearance and sounded good when reading from a teleprompter. And he wasn't Bush, so he got elected. But there wasn't any substance to him or message from the American people in his election.

The extent to which this caricature of Obama by the right resembles the caricature of Ronald Reagan by the left is remarkable. In neither case does the caricature have much grounding in reality.

Obama certainly chanted "change" monotonously. But there was a lot of substance to his change platform. He wasn't hiding or being vague about the direction in which he wanted to lead the country. He offered quite specific policies to stimulate the economy, redistribute the tax burden, combat global warming and achieve universal health care.

In electing a president, the American people choose a leader. But they also frequently choose a policy direction for the country as well. While voters might not have been conversant with all the details of Obama's policy prescriptions, they understood the general direction in which he wanted to take the country.

Understanding that, the American people elected Obama by a comfortable margin and gave him a more supportive Congress. If Obama assumed that he had a "mandate" to do the things he talked about during the campaign, there were certainly no counter-indications.

Nor has Obama overreached his "mandate." He has not proposed anything that goes dramatically beyond what he talked about, with reasonable detail, during the campaign. Instead, he is pretty much doing precisely what he told the American people he would do.

So, why has he lost so much political altitude then?

The main reason is quite clearly that the American people have gotten sticker shock.

The bailouts (which it must be remembered started under Bush), the stimulus spending (also started under Bush), cap-and-trade, housing and health care subsidies for everyone - it all adds up. The American people now have a deep concern that the federal government is severely overextended. And that concern has become an anchor in our politics.

Obama is pushing for the federal government to take on even more commitments when the American people fear that it cannot manage and afford the commitments it already has. And that's why his poll numbers are dropping and his policies are stalling out.

The sticker shock has also caused the American people to rethink what they want government to do. When the economy appeared to be in free fall, the voting public was anxious for government to do something about it. When Obama first proposed his economic stimulus, the public thought it was a good idea by a 43% - 27% margin, according to the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. Today, people think it was a bad idea by a 34% to 43% margin.

The public opposed the bailouts from the beginning. But now, that natural instinctive objection is growing into a concern that government is interfering in business too much. The June WSJ/NBC poll found that nearly half the electorate was worried "a great deal" about the expanding involvement of the federal government in the economy, such as "taking an ownership stake in General Motors, limiting levels of compensation that corporate executives can receive and the role the government would play in a new health care system." When the economy appeared to be melting down, the public wanted elected officials to grab business executives by the collar and kick them in the butt.

It's easy to read too much into all this, and many on the right are doing that as well. Public sentiment is skeptical about Obama, but not yet hostile to him or his policies. The July WSJ/NBC poll asked, "When it comes to the policies and programs of Barack Obama would you say that they are taking the country in the right direction, taking the country in the wrong direction, or do you feel they are mixed?" The response was fairly evenly spread: 35% felt Obama's policies were taking the country in the right direction, 30% thought the wrong direction, and 34% had a mixed view of them.

Republicans have regained their advantage over Democrats on the core issues of handling the deficit and taxes. But overall the public still has a sharply negative view of the Republican Party and still prefer Congress in the hands of Democrats.

Nevertheless, sticker shock has at least created a pause in the Obama counterrevolution to the Reagan revolution. After the election, there was much discussion about whether the country was still a center-right nation. Changing public sentiment when confronted with the realities of the mandate the election appeared to confer on Obama and the Democrats gives hope that the nation might either still be center-right, or at least might become one again.

For conservatives, that ought to be more reassuring than the notion that Obama is an empty suit.