Obamacare widened the scope of public health care, but did nothing about the large bill we’ve been paying for health care in this country. Whether it’s true or not, Obama will be blamed for it when our health care costs become prohibitive and a national crisis. And I think it would at least be fair to say that he didn’t do anything to reduce the cost of health care, as part of his plan, despite health care reform being one of the centerpoints of his presidency.
His government’s solution to the GM bankruptcy was to sell the company to the union which had ran the thing into bankruptcy to begin with. GM did some restructuring and hard work to make it seem like they were finally ready to give a damn about the cars they were making, for a few years, and made some automobiles that scored well on a technical and quality level. But that’s been dropping off, from what I’ve heard, and I suspect that we’re going to see them crazy and burn again in the next ten years.
His government invested deeply in green technology, as a way to spur the economy and do so in a way that isn’t just propping up struggling or established industries. The results of that initiative seem to have been successful on the whole, but it was a risky maneuver that would have backfired if the technology hadn’t come into place as hoped. Imagine if he had backed cold fusion 40 years ago, when everyone thought it would just take a little bit of capital to get past those last few technical hurdles… Yeah, not good. So, he may have lucked out on this one. While I sort of approve of investments in new business as a solution for economic stagnation, it’s a dangerous precedent in general and particularly if you’re going to choose your investment targets based on politically correct measure like backing “green energy”.
Fracking was allowed to develop and expand under Obama, and this has probably done more to stop Putin from taking over the Ukraine than anything else Obama did, intentionally, for that purpose. I somewhat doubt that fracking was something that Obama really sought to have proliferate, so putting it down as thanks to him would probably be incorrect.
While he was able to catch Osama bin Laden, he failed to act strongly enough against ISIS before it could form into a genuine threat. China was allowed to take over the South China Seas with impunity. Putin was able to destabilise the Ukraine without ever really being made to feel any pain for having done so, via anything Obama did.
He largely reneged on his mandate to shut down Guantanamo. (Which should annoy his supporters, even if I personally don’t care terribly.)
Excluding the investments in green energy, his measures to restore the American economy were fairly by-the-text-book and allowed it to heal as well as those methods are concerned. Personally, I put that down more in the category of the nation healing itself, in the absence of stupid, but it is necessary for the government to perform various acts of economic stimulus for placebo purposes. On the whole, I’d give him a good grade for doing fairly reasonable things, and not doing anything stupid in this regard. It was a very measured approach.
He has reestablished diplomacy between the US and Cuba, and the US and Iran. He got the Trans-Pacific Partnership approved. These are good things.
In general, I would say that his approach was very cautious and as such that worked decently for places were caution is fine. But that cautious nature also let Russia, China, and ISIS misbehave without fear.
Where he wasn’t cautious, his handling was very left-politic and in those things I sense future problems coming from them. Even the investment into green energy I expect to have pop up again in a few years as having actually been a bad idea. Though, I don’t know what form that will take.
The only really impressive things that he has done, as president, have been in the last year. I am glad to see his success with Cuba and Iran. But I wouldn’t say that those successes turn him into a good president, just one smart enough to have figured out how to remain meaningful in the last years of his last term.