In recent history, few Presidents have had to deal with so much, so quickly after taking office. President G.W. Bush faced the horror of the September 11th attacks nearly a year after being elected, and looking slightly further back, John F. Kennedy had to deal with the Bay of Pigs incident after three months in office. Obama has had to wrestle with a devastating worldwide economic recession, as well as attempting to improve the image of America around the globe, and cope with the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as he stepped inside the front door of the White House. Has Obama lived up to expectations so far?

For the most part, it seems that Obama has kept very much on the ball. One of his first actions was to announce the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Prison, where suspected terrorists are being held, many without actually being charged for anything. Some may be disappointed that the US Naval Base at Guantanamo will remain however, despite the land officially belonging to Cuba.

Obama has also managed to steer an enormous stimulus package through Congress, amounting to approximately $787 billion. To put that in some context, the entire GDP of Belgium amounts to just $390 billion. This hasn’t been enough to save the decaying US car industry, with Chrysler filing for bankruptcy and announcing a merger with Fiat. The word of the street is that there are signs the world economy is possibly beginning to bounce back however, but with full recovery still rather a long way off.

Internationally, Obama has done much to try and reinvigorate America’s image overseas. His whistle-stop world tour showed that almost every country was vying for his attention, and during the G20 summit he even managed to start improving the decidedly icy relations between Washington and the Kremlin by sharing a joke with Russian President Medvedev.

Although trying to avoid being branded as ‘the world’s policeman’, Obama’s interest in the ongoing issue of the nuclear capabilities of Iran has been more sympathetic to the Iranians, compared to that of his predecessor. His speech calling for a "new day" was a friendly gesture that Tehran would be ill-advised to ignore.

Since it was all the rage with the US networks to ‘grade’ the President on his relative success and failure, I shall follow suit. Obama most likely deserves an ‘A’ so far, based on everything he has achieved. If he can maintain this even-handed balance and authority, Barack Obama is likely to excel as President in the coming years.