IF It is true that no previous US president has had his early days in office subjected to so many landmark assessments – "the first hundred days"; "the first 200 days" and so on – it is equally true that no occupant of White House has had as much nonsense written about him in the early part of his presidency as Barack Obama.

Despite a hyperactive seven months in office, which have been marked by a series of solid achievements, Obama is treated by some as though he was a failure-in-waiting, a plausible spoofer who is out of his depth and leading the US to eternal damnation, both moral and economic.

Would that Ireland had such a leader. Since his inauguration, Obama has presided over a stimulus package that has settled an economy in freefall and provided the first signs of the elusive green shoots of recovery. Moody's ratings agency, for example, has estimated that the stimulus saved 500,000 jobs, and recent figures show that job losses are slowing down on a month-by-month comparison. In July, the unemployment rate in the US actually fell.

Gross domestic product fell just 1% during the second quarter of the year, compared to 6.4% in the previous three months. House prices are starting to pick up again, spectacularly so in some cases: new single-family homes jumped in price in June by 11%, for example. Projections for the third quarter, which is when the real effects of the stimulus package are expected to kick in, suggest that the positive news will keep on coming.

All that is without even considering the giant steps the president has made in foreign policy, not least of which is the restoration of America's popularity in the rest of the world and, with that, its ability to be an honest broker in some of the globe's trickiest disputes.

There are many minefields ahead, of course. Obama's healthcare package, by which he sets such store, is subject to well-organised opposition, and the economy's recovery will be too slow for many. But after almost seven months, Obama has done as much as could have been expected of him, if not more.