Well, let us count the ways. We know, because his hands are tied (and his fingers are pointing?) and he would do better if he could but he can’t so he won’t.

President Obama just can’t turn out to be an ineffective loser. No he can’t. We are the world and we won’t accept it. We elected him, after all. Along with America too, of course.

Here are a few of this article’s lowlights:

In Europe, where more than 200,000 people thronged a Berlin rally in 2008 to hear Barack Obama speak, there’s disappointment that he hasn’t kept his promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and perceptions that he’s shunting blame for the financial crisis across the Atlantic.

In a world weary of war and economic crises, and concerned about global climate change, the consensus is that Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations that surrounded his 2008 election and Nobel Peace Prize a year later.

But many Germans give Obama too much of the blame because they don’t understand the limits of his powers. “There’s a lack of understanding both of how the system of checks and balances works — or doesn’t work any longer — and a lack of understanding of how big the socio-economic problems in the United States are, which cause the gridlock.”

“I think people see through his game to put the blame (for the financial crisis) on Europeans — I think Germans and Europeans still know where the economic crisis had its beginning,” Braml said. “That’s just finger-pointing, not doing a fair analysis of the dire situation in the U.S., but I can understand Obama is doing that because he wants to get re-elected so they need to shift blame around on the Republicans or the Europeans.”

And elsewhere:

“When Democrats, including Obama, are in power, we lose the sympathy and support from America,” said Carawan Ahmed, a high school teacher in Iraq’s northern Kurdish capital of Irbil. “To be frank, the Republicans protected the Kurdish people, while Obama’s administration is not.”

Obama has been the U.S. president “least involved in the Palestinian issue,” said Mohammed Ishtayeh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Since Obama made his Cairo speech, Ishtayeh added, “he found his hands tied and couldn’t make much progress.”

Obama also has a strained relationship with Israel. Obama’s Mideast envoy, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, made no progress during two years of frequent meetings with both sides before quitting last year.

Many in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America were also taken aback by his support for gay marriage, a taboo subject among religious conservatives.

And on and on it goes. But the main thing is that the world still loves him because, well, he means well. And he has so much promise, or something.