One year after President Obama took office, it’s clear that the honeymoon is over.

The champagne has gone flat, room service has disinfected the hotel suite, and, much to Obama’s chagrin, voters are becoming increasingly fearful that the whirlwind courtship may have masked deeper problems for married life to come.

The problem lies in how Obama represented himself as a candidate. In pre-election rhetoric, he claimed to be above the fray. He was a post-partisan, post-racial, post-disagreement, Post Cereal candidate for the modern era.

“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord,” Obama said in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2009.

Unity in politics? Yeah, right.

From the Federalist Papers on down, vigorous debate has been the norm in our democracy. Hell, today’s bickering looks tame by historical standards. In 1856, one legislator attacked another in the Senate chambers, beating him into unconsciousness with a wooden cane.

Sure, times have changed, and the editorial board wouldn’t expect to see Senate majority and minority leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell descend into fisticuffs. But neither should we have expected them to put aside their deep-seated ideological differences, abandon their convictions and sing “Kumbaya” around the campfire.

Many voters, though, bought the hype, like hapless stormtroopers under the spell of a Jedi mind trick. With a wave of his hand, Jedi Master Obama-Wan Kenobi dismissed the most long-standing debates in politics.

It worked. He was elected.

A year later, though, the result is a nasty case of buyer’s remorse, in which many moderate voters are left to reflect on the widening chasm between the candidate’s words and the president’s deeds.

In action, Obama has been anything but bipartisan, and his first-year agenda has proved more divisive than that of President Bush, though many are loathe to admit it.

Consider: The signature issue on Bush’s docket during his first year in office, aside from responding to the September 11 attacks, was No Child Left Behind, which passed 87 – 10 in the Senate. Even the USA PATRIOT Act, for which the Bush administration was later disparaged, passed the Senate with a tally of 98 – 1.

President Obama’s agenda, on the other hand, has been hammered through Congress mostly unilaterally. The $800 billion stimulus package barely scraped by Senate filibuster, passing 60 – 38 with only three Republicans voting “yea.”

Health care — arguably Obama’s signature issue — only escaped a filibuster because Senate Democrats were willing to play the role of Howie Mandel in a taxpayer-funded, billion-dollar game of “Deal or No Deal.” No Republicans voted for the bill.

Whether the House and Senate can agree on a final reform proposal remains to be seen. What’s clear, though, is that the post-partisan promise was nothing but a mirage.

In his inaugural address, Obama stated, “the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”

They were eloquent words. But after a year of highly ideological governance, there’s no doubt which side of the aisle Obama calls home.

There’s a business phrase, caveat emptor, which means “buyer beware.” It applies to politics, too. Next time, be more critical of the rhetoric candidates use to win your vote.