THE jury is still out on Barack Obama a year after he took office, according to Americans living in Oxfordshire.

President Obama was sworn in as America’s 44th president – and the country’s first African-American leader – on January 20 last year.

He used his inaugural address to vow to begin the work of “remaking America” and said the nation was entering a “new era of responsibility”.

Last night county councillor and Green Party member Larry Sanders, who was born in New York, said it was too early to tell if he had been a success.

Mr Sanders’s brother Bernie was elected to the US Senate in 2006 after 16 years serving in the House of Representatives, and is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history.

Mr Sanders said of Mr Obama: “I think he’s done a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong.

“The jury is still out. I hope that he sharpens up.

“He has tried to govern from the centre but the American right is brutal and doesn’t care about compromise at all.

“But there is still hope.

“America is not in safe hands, but it’s in better hands than before. It’s up to the American political system to provide the kind of support that he needs.”

Massachusetts born Lynda Newland, 57, who runs The Newlands Tea Rooms and Gift Shop in Sheep Street, Bicester, voted Republican in the election. She said: “The jury is still out for me. I’m not impressed with the medical scheme he’s trying to set up, but he’s done a lot of good on the other hand.”

Jerry Patterson, deputy leader of the Vale of White Horse District Council, grew up in Pennsylvania and came to the UK with the US airforce. The 67-year-old Liberal Democrat praised Mr Obama for his national healthcare bill, adding: “I think there is a lot of American media running away with the fact he hasn’t fixed the world in the year he has been in office, but he did inherit an awful mess. He’s the smartest president since Franklin Roosevelt.”

President Obama suffered a blow on Tuesday night when Republican Scott Brown won the race for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts left vacant by Democrat Edward Kennedy’s death, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in a shock victory.

Mr Patterson added: “I think the Republicans picked a very good candidate and the Democrats picked a pretty bad one. The woman was frankly useless.

“I think it was a miscalculation, they needed a better candidate. I think Obama will reflect and learn from it.”