Meeting with corporate chief executives in late January, President Barack Hussein Obama said America’s economic recovery depends largely on the private sector to “provide the jobs” because all the federal government can do is “create a favorable climate” for growth.

But, history’s most celebrated change agent has changed his tune. During his Monday evening press conference with the adoring, trembling mainstream media, Obama declared that “it is only Government that can break the vicious cycle” of a prolonged recession and its attendant job loss.

So the masses are taking him at his word.

On Tuesday during a heavily orchestrated “town hall meeting” in Ft. Myers, Fla., Obama appeared stunned by the blunt tone of the audience members. They were not interested in Obama’s command of abstract policy discussions. They need stuff. They want stuff. And they want it now.

A sobbing woman named Henrietta Hughes (no relation to Howard, apparently) asked the new President for a car, a kitchen and, while she was at it, a new house. Another guy asked BHO to help him locate a better paying job than the low paying employment he has endured these past four years at a McDonald’s. Yet another disgruntled citizen wanted to know why his unemployment check was not nearly as much as the monthly salary he drew before losing his job.

Without a teleprompter to frame his responses, Obama was left to walk the tightrope separating compassion from reality. The Great Messiah gulped and told Henrietta: “We’re going to do, ah, everything we can …”

And then he instructed Henrietta to talk to his staff after the meeting. It was the verbal equivalent of a fly meeting its demise at the end of a swatter.

How long will it be before the Obama honeymoon becomes a troubled marriage? How long before the millions of outreached hands become clenched fists?