I remember when Bin Laden was killed, the right wingers I knew were upset because they were afraid it would make Obama look good. I asked them outright if they hated Obama more than Bin Laden and they didn’t answer.
Obama has greatly improved the manner in which the Americans are interacting with the world, and the regain in the standing has clearly been greatly improved even if it is possible for any particular viewpoint to have a small complaint about some regional issue - for me the arab spring, but I do not think in reality except for being stronger for the Libyan case in support après and more shy after the Libyan case, there was many things that could have been done very differently.
Of course the Israelis are unhappy since their specific hawkishness is not taking the front seat de facto, but this is not a bad thing as it is too short sighted for a great power. It is stupid - not different except in privilege from the muslims who expected Obama to flip the american policy to be 100% what was wanted. The reality has been very reasonable.
How the Americans can view Obama as having not succeeded in the foreign policy is just very puzzling after the gross disasters and failure of the years of Bush, and the accusation of ‘governing while being black’ I think is true.
On the contrary, Obama doing any of the above would confirm their conviction that he’s the Antichrist even further (if that be possible).
Maybe I shouldn’t post here, American born and raised, but living in Canada for the last 47+ years.
I basically agree with most of the above. Under great handicaps he has mostly done as well as could be expected. But giving a pass to the torturers was a serious mistake. Yes, most Republicans seem to love torture, but they already hate Obama. But now future torturers expect that they can do so with impunity.
But employment is up, even if good jobs are not. The kludge that is Obamacare is better than nothing, but the US still has the most expensive (and among advanced countries the least effective) medical care. Science policy is a disaster (as it was here under Harper, where the minister of science was a creationist chiropracter). I really hope and expect that Hillary will work better with congress.