Barack Obama is an important and consequential president whose legacy of achievements will not be appreciated fully until long after he leaves the White House. But he was not able to bridge the gap between hope and history that his unique personal story and soaring rhetoric promised.
Despite being assailed by the Right as a do-nothing president and many on the Left for failing to live up to his potential, most Americans take a different view. Obama departs with a 57 per cent approval rating, placing him near Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Obama is far more popular than his predecessor, George W. Bush, and his successor, Donald Trump.
Few presidents have faced such calamitous circumstances when they were sworn in. When Obama took the oath of office, the economy was in deep recession, the US was fighting two wars abroad and Americans were deeply divided. From day one, the Republican leadership vowed to oppose Obama no matter what.
The economic recovery is Obama’s most significant accomplishment. In 2009, the US was gripped by a financial crisis and spiralling into depression. Through bank restructuring, stimulus spending, tax cuts and infrastructure investment, plus a car sector bailout, the worst was avoided. The Dodd-Frank legislation increased regulation on Wall Street.
Today, unemployment has been halved, real wages are growing and consumer confidence is at its highest point since 2001.
The next most important achievement was authorising the operation to capture and kill Osama bin Laden in 2011. Although ultimate credit of course must go to the US Navy SEALs who raided the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Obama had to make the judgment call. This was a leadership decision that only he could make.
Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta recalled that “probably a majority of people” at the National Security Council meetings “thought it was too risky”. They could not be certain that bin Laden was at the compound. Vice-President Joe Biden opposed the mission and warned Obama he would be a one-term president if it failed.
Despite extending healthcare coverage to 20 million Americans — many of whom were Trump voters — the Affordable Care Act is at the mercy of congress.
Yet Obama secured a significant healthcare initiative where many presidents had failed. The legislation was flawed — partly a result of congressional negotiations — but now the debate is not only about repealing it but how to make it work better and, possibly, extend coverage.
There were other important initiatives: the Paris climate change agreement was negotiated and US energy policy was reshaped, helping to reduce greenhouse emissions by more than 10 per cent; the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed; two women, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were elevated to the Supreme Court; “don’t ask, don’t tell” ended; and same-sex marriage became law.
However, Obama could have achieved more if he had the political skills of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson to flatter, persuade, even intimidate, congress. He was seen as aloof and detached. Although he faced entrenched Republican obstructionism, it often seemed as if he didn’t try hard enough.
Critics point to foreign policy as his biggest failure. But he did kill bin Laden, continue the fight in Afghanistan, fulfil his promise to withdraw most US troops from Iraq (sticking to Bush’s policy), secure a deal with Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program (which has held), energise relations with the Asia-Pacific and normalise relations with Cuba.
Critics suggest the US is weaker given Russia and China have expanded their influence and given the rise of Islamic State. Obama was largely missing in action on Libya. His “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria was crossed without consequence. Middle East peace remains elusive. North Korea is a continuing threat.
But what was the alternative? There is little appetite among Americans for yet another costly and bloody foreign war.
Obama’s improbable rise to win the Democratic Party nomination in 2008, and the presidency twice, rewrote the rule book. His data-driven campaign coupled with an innovative digital presence and traditional on-the-ground organising has had a substantial influence around the world.
Yet the Democrats lost power across the nation and Hillary Clinton lost to Trump.
While Obama made history as the first African-American president and was elected and re-elected by comfortable popular vote and electoral college margins — unlike Bush or Trump — he was not able to bridge the racial divide. Moreover, polls show that Obama did not heal the broader divisions across the US. It is one of the puzzles of Obama’s presidency.
His rousing speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, with its core message of optimism and reconciliation, catapulted him on to the national stage. As president, he had a unique capacity to use the bully pulpit to inspire Americans and animate his agenda. He became “mourner-in-chief” as he matched the mood of the country in response to repeated mass shootings, such as at Charleston in 2015.
But Obama was not able to turn the power of speech into presidential action or soothe discord. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 now serves to underline this disappointment. This is writ large by Obama’s failure — not for want of trying — to secure any new gun control legislation, only executive action measures that are likely to be withdrawn by Trump.
He has been a role model father and husband, and a president of unimpeachable integrity. He leaves office without any hint of impropriety, scandal or major policy failure. The same cannot be said for his two predecessors: Bill Clinton tarnished the presidency with sexual peccadillos while Bush presided over the monumental blunder of invading of Iraq.
Obama gave voice to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels” in Americans. While he will not be remembered as a transformational president, he did leave a significant legacy in domestic and foreign policy. As the vulgar and egotistical Trump takes the presidential oath this week, Obama’s dignity and grace could not be a greater contrast.
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