Twelve months ago this week more than a million people, myself included, assembled on the National Mall in Washington to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

These days Obama finds himself in an altogether less pleasant place. Rather than cheers and chants he faces a wall of negative noise.

The left paints him as a Democrat in name only, who has sold out to Wall Street and the Pentagon. The right criticises him for being weak and un-American, a serial apologiser who golfs on when terrorists attack.

If we turn down the volume of the criticism, however, how should we grade Obama's foreign policy in his first year in office? It depends on the measure you choose to apply. If you assess his record against the expectations generated by his campaign, which is how his partisan critics proceed, then things have not gone according to plan. The planet has not cooled. Ocean levels have not fallen. Cuba has not applied to join NATO. The international system has not proved particularly susceptible to change, regardless of the eloquence of its advocate.

However, you get a different answer if you use a historian's measure, and bear in mind the structural limitations on Obama's power and the disastrous situation he inherited - two bloody wars, a global financial crisis, active nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and persistent terrorist threats.

If this is your analytical frame, and you ask how any other individual might have done in his position, then Obama's foreign policy looks pretty good. First, some negatives. Obama was overly ambitious in his first year, launching a number of initiatives that have come to nought. He has very little to show, for example, for his efforts at Middle East peacemaking. Henry Kissinger said the President "reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games. But he hasn't completed a single game and I'd like to see him finish one."

Obama's signature note - engagement with America's competitors and adversaries - has been held a little too long. Reaching out to China and Russia has produced mixed results; reaching out to trumped-up tinpot dictators has produced nothing. Indeed, Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela, who only months ago told Obama ''I want to be your friend'', now refers to the satanic smell of sulphur when Obama is in the room.

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