Barack Obama got a global standing ovation long before he was elected president. But in a fickle and fast-moving world, the overseas reviews are already turning mixed.

A deepening global recession, new hostilities in the Middle East, complications in closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan – an impatient world has a stake in all of them and is asking how much change Obama can deliver.

“The idealism has diminished,” said Samuel Solvit, who heads an Obama support network in France. “Everyone was dreaming a little. Now people are more realistic.”

Said Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, “People everywhere simply expect too much, practically ensuring Obama will disappoint.”

“The United States can’t solve all the world’s problems,” he said in an interview. “It doesn’t have enough money or military power. And the president is constrained by Congress and the constitution. The founding fathers wanted to stop someone from being like a monarch.”

Looks like the row to hoe is even more difficult than anticipated. And a monarch? Even with the Constitution under siege, let’s hope not.