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A lyrical plea to overcome old divisions, a few questions, a standing ovation and then a plunge into an adoring audience.

It was how Barack Obama spent much of the past two years as a candidate campaigning across the United States. Yesterday, he brought the formula to the heart of Europe.

To anyone who watched him in icy Iowa last year, the uplifting rhetoric would have been familiar, the style virtually identical, the youthful and exuberant crowd similar in every respect except nationality. The scale of his ambition, however, is expanding with each passing day. Mr Obama is not content with seeking to heal America; now he wants to save us all.

Yesterday he showed how to dazzle Europe as no President has done since John F. Kennedy. A young student insisted on kissing him as he moved through the streets of Strasbourg. He later led his audience through a faltering rendition of the revolutionary “Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!” and, whether apologising for his “terrible” French or praising Europe’s high-speed trains, demonstrated all the graceful charm of a pitch-perfect politician.

“Should we let her open the question?” he asked teasingly when a woman in the crowd turned out to be American. She wanted to know if he was still getting a dog for his children. “This is a very important question in the United States,” he replied with the weary air of a man with a groaning in-tray. “It should be there soon.”

It was the halfway point yesterday of a five-nation tour in which Mr Obama appears determined to tackle almost every global problem. After helping to broker a deal at the G20 summit in London, which he has hailed as a “turning point” in the economic crisis, today he throws himself into a Nato meeting where he will try to breathe fresh life into a creaking 60-year-old alliance so that it can win the war in Afghanistan and defeat terrorism.

Tomorrow, in Prague, he will deliver a speech on his vision for “a world without nuclear weapons”. Then he will have talks with EU leaders focusing on the urgent need to combat climate change before flying to Turkey, where he promises to reach out to Muslims.

As the crowd waited for his arrival yesterday at the Rhenus Sports Arena, they were warmed up by a musician singing He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands. It is, however, quite a burden for a mortal leader, even one with his considerable strengths. When one member of the audience asked if he had any regrets about becoming President, Mr Obama replied that there were certain times “when you feel a lot of weight on your shoulders”.

His message yesterday was that he cannot carry it all alone. “America is changing, but it cannot be America alone that changes,” he said. “The one way forward is through a common and persistent effort to combat fear and want wherever they exist. That is the challenge of our time, and we cannot fail to meet it together.”

If there is some hubris in his vast global agenda, he is also seeking to show humility as he seeks help this week. In London he acknowledged that the US bore a share of responsibility for creating the economic crisis and yesterday he recognised that America had too often failed to appreciate “Europe’s leading role in the world”, adding: “There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

He balanced this by pointing out that too often Europe had demonstrated an antiAmerican tendency that “is at once casual but also insidious”, as it blames the US for much of the world’s wrongs.

The choice of location for such remarks was quite deliberate. Speaking in Strasbourg, a city on the Franco-German border that he described as the “crossroads of Europe”, Mr Obama was addressing the leaders from these two countries that have done so much to obstruct his agenda for coordinated global action.

President Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had not only undermined efforts to secure a bigger economic stimulus from the G20, they have both also shown marked reluctance to commit further troops or money for the war in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, in appearances with Mr Sarkozy in Strasbourg and Ms Merkel across the border in Baden-Baden, Mr Obama sought to assuage wounded pride by emphasising areas of agreement and gratitude for what they had done in Afghanistan. He said: “We want strong allies. We are not looking to be patrons of Europe. We are looking to be partners of Europe.”

Mr Obama has been at pains to acknowledge that “each country has its own quirks and own particular issues”, but in many of his comments this week there has often been an implicit rebuke to the leaders of what was once called “Old Europe” for turning inwards rather than facing up to shared challenges and responsibilities.

On Thursday evening in London Mr Obama’s press conference, where he fielded a global free-for-all of questions, was in striking contrast to those of Mr Sarkozy and Ms Merkel, who spoke to their own national media.

The White House was busy briefing on how he took the French President – who had earlier threatened to walk out of the G20 summit if he did not get his way – to one side to secure a deal on tax haven regulation.

Today, at the Nato summit, he will underline that he expects France and Germany in particular to do more on Afghanistan. As he said yesterday, if there is another al-Qaeda attack, “it is just as likely, if not more, that it will be here in Europe, in a European city”.

The strategy to defeat terrorists in Afghanistan needs development funds, help with training the country’s own security forces and a diplomatic surge in Pakistan. “But there will be a military component to it,” added Mr Obama. “And Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone. This is a joint problem, and it requires joint effort.”

The French President praised Mr Obama for promising to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, saying: “My deeply held belief is that you don’t combat terrorism with terrorist methods.” Mr Obama later suggested that the Europeans should “feel good about our joint efforts – and also not to have excuses” about participating in them.

Mr Obama has had a rocky few weeks in the US, being variously accused of showing too much anger over executive bonuses or too much humour over the economy. There have been signs this week that he is relishing being back in the groove that took him to the White House.

Some will fear that he is taking on too much. Asked yesterday what his legacy would be, Mr Obama at first said that he had only been in office for two months. But then he launched into a seemingly never-ending list of wrongs that he wished to right.

“Look, you aim high, knowing that you’ll make mistakes and sometimes you’ll fall short,” he said.

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