Almost immediately after President Obama assumed office, his detractors were eager to declare his “honeymoon” with the American public to be over. But now, as his first year in office draws to a close, commentators across the ideological spectrum have noticed increasing disillusionment even from once-staunch Obama supporters. Some cite his sluggish attention to the war in Afghanistan, while others claim his repeated deference to foreign leaders has undermined his legitimacy.

“Outsized expectations,” nearly impenetrable dilemmas, and a persistent conservative party may be contributing factors to President Barack Obama’s slipping approval ratings, writes George Packer for The New Yorker. Packer adds that Obama has not been successful at communicating and explaining his policies and intentions to the public-- a peculiar pattern for a White House now famous for strict message control and inspiring speeches.

“President Obama seems, very strangely, to have forgotten that his most important constituency is not his small circle of advisers but his three hundred million countrymen,” he writes.

“No one loves Barack Obama,” claims Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal. “There were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now,” she continues.

Other analysts stress that Obama is faced with almost insurmountable issues, which preceded his administration. The war in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, and the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are all inherited from his predecessor, comments Amir Taheri at Asharq-Alawsat.

“Buyer’s remorse with regards to Obama… is not related to what he has really done but to what people expected of him and he failed to do,” says Taheri.

“The problem, however, is that neither those who voted for him ... nor those who admired him on other shores, have been prepared to lift a finger on the few occasions that he has tried to do anything,” Taheri continues. So-called supporters at home and abroad are quick to throw lavish ceremonies, grant awards, and extol Obama’s virtues, but when it comes to concrete actions, no one has delivered yet.

“The same is true of Israel and its Arab adversaries,” Taheri claims. “My guess is that [both sides] will just try to sit Obama out, hoping he would be a one-term president.”

Opposing Views says that depending on how Obama’s accomplishments (or lack thereof) are analyzed, both detractors and supporters can find plenty of justification for their opinions.

“The question, a year since we elected him, isn’t how much Obama has accomplished,” the website quotes Esquire. “The question is why we’ve turned so small and mean that we only see half of it-- the half we happen to agree with.”