News

It seems incredible: Barack Obama has ended 2009 with a popularity rating among US citizens of below 50%. No other president of recent years, not even Bush, has been so poorly received within just one year of making it to the White House.

The explanation is quite simple: those who didn''t vote for Obama continue to dislike him; those who did vote for him continue to want him as their president but have lost the enormous hope Obama awoke in them about this time last year.

Obama has been hit suddenly with the reality that you can''t please all the people all the time. Take the issue of health reform, for example: For those opposed to reform, Obama has gone too far; for those in favor, his changes are not far-reaching enough.

Or the issue of Guantanamo, where Obama continues to take steps towards closure of the illegal detention center though it will take a few months longer than promised. Or the economy, in which some of the measures adopted by the President are bearing fruit but where reprisals for those bankers and investors responsible for the current economic crisis are nowhere to be seen.

Or the issue of Iraq, where the withdrawal of American troops has begun, though the deadlines for doing so are more or less the same as those signed by George W. Bush. Or Afghanistan, to where, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, the President embroiled himself further in the war by sending a further 30,000 soldiers.

Or not least the issue of climate change, where the whole world expected more involvement from Obama.

In other words, the Americans have discovered along with the rest of the world that Obama is, at the end of the day, just another US president, obliged to defend his country''s interests and therefore to adopt measures which will not always be to the liking of those who stored such hope by him. But all of this does not stop Obama from - possibly - being a good president for the United States and, as a knock-on effect, for the rest of the world.

We need to give it time. Never has so much been expected of a US President who, let us not forget, before 20th January 2010 will not have completed even a year in the White House.