THE YEAR AHEAD – AT 7:31 A.M. ET:  This is the first business day of the new year.  By definition, the year will be momentous.

The midterm elections alone will make it so.  These will be the most significant midterms of our time, determining whether the buyer's remorse that voters seem to be expressing in polls will last until November, giving Republicans a clear shot at cutting into Democratic majorities, or even taking control of the House. 

There are no guarantees.  Already we see that the Dems, who now draw a good chunk of their financing from the wealthiest classes of Americans, are well ahead in fundraising.  If that is not reversed, the Republican effort may simply run out of resources.  And while there's been some thoughtful criticism of Obama and the Democratic Congress in the mainstream media, by November the press will probably be back in full 2008 mode, making it doubly hard for the GOP to get out its message.

The midterms are only part of the story.  Iran will move closer to a bomb.  Pakistan may become destabilized, putting its nuclear arsenal at risk of being dispersed to some of the lovelies around the world.  China, whose brazen behavior at the Copenhagen let's-cool-the-world conference shocked many diplomats, can easily become increasingly hostile.  And terror groups, who increased their attacks dramatically in 2009, are certainly not going on vacation, even if the president of the United States goes on many.

At the center of the news is that very president, a man who seems overwhelmed by his job, and at times not that interested in it.  Has he handled anything particularly well?  Has this most inspirational of candidates inspired anyone as president? 

I was thinking last night of the difference between a giant in the White House, and Barack Obama.  You may recall that the space shuttle Challenger went down the day, in 1986, that Ronald Reagan was scheduled to deliver his State of the Union message.  The question was whether he would give the speech, put it off, or do something else.  I remember someone quite close to me, a lifelong New Deal Democrat, saying, "He knows what to do."

Those five words encapsulate something that is beyond precious to a president:  the people's trust.  People trusted Reagan, when the national interest was involved, to do the right thing.  They would have trusted John McCain.  But have you ever heard those words spoken, even by a liberal Democrat, about Barack Obama?  Obama has simply failed to win the public's trust.  If he cannot reverse that catastrophe, he will be known as the nation's first African-American president, and little more.

Jack Kennedy's first year in office was also a major disappointment - the Bay of Pigs, a humiliating summit with Nikita Khrushchev, the defiant building of the Berlin Wall, a Congress indifferent to Kennedy's legislative program.  But Kennedy understood what had gone wrong, and worked to correct it in his second year, culminating in his successful handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Does Mr. Obama know there's a problem?  If so, can he solve it?

He'd better solve it.  The airline bomber told the FBI after his arrest that there were many like him in Yemen.  They're heading our way.  And the man at the top is responsible for stopping them.

January 4,  2009