What will President Barack Obama’s legacy be when he leaves office in Jan. 2017? What will his legacy be regarding the economy, foreign policy, race relations, crime, etc.?
his economic legacy will be excellent given the CHANGE in jobs and economy since his start and end dates. His legacy on race relations will be a mixed bag; he helped the blacks improve their image and get many CJ issues into the public; his downside on that will be that he didn’t engage whites enough on the issue and bring them to the table. His foreign policy legacy will be mixed: he did help us shake the stigma of the Bush year, but he hurt the view that America could be reliably a partner by dishonouring the Jewish State of Israel and Netanyahu, as well as being oblivious to radical Islam.
I think his foreign policy legacy will be among his strongest (unless we get into another ground war – crossing my fingers that he avoids this) – he got bin Laden, after promising to emphasize this while campaigning; he started to end, long overdue, the ridiculous and counterproductive Cuban embargo; he made a major international nuclear deal with Iran (which doesn’t dishonor Israel, and if it dishonors Netanyahu it’s his own damn fault for being a stubborn and unrealistic idiot); got us out of Iraq (and hopefully keeps us out); and most importantly, avoided (so far, anyway) getting involved in any more stupid ground wars of choice that get thousands of American soldiers killed and cost trillions of dollars. It’s not all great – too many drone bombings, too much military involvement in places like Syria and Libya, is keeping us in Afghanistan for far too long, and probably more that I can’t think of. But overall, I think this is the best American foreign policy in decades.
Obviously his major legacy will being the first Black to be elected President.
His foreign policy record will be mixed. He showed the potential to have the soundest foreign policy since Eisenhower, but in the end he’ll be more analogous to Nixon. He’s kind of straddled a policy of relative restraint on one hand and a more establishment-friendly interventionist approach on the other; in short, a policy likely to satisfy no one. (Maybe that makes him a centrist.) Still ieasily n the top half of post-war presidents on foreign policy IMO. I think the current establishment consensus that his foreign policy has somehow weakened America or emboldened revisionist/antagonist powers around the world will prove very short-lived in the eyes of history.
He deserves credit for winding down our commitment to Iraq; his Iran diplomacy; the opening to Cuba; mostly keeping us out of Syria; and overall improvement of our image overseas (which admittedly couldn’t get much worse after Bush got done with it).
He deserves criticism for not being more firm in keeping us out of Syria; keeping us involved (albeit at a lower level) in nationbuilding in Afghanistan; getting dragged into the Libyan intervention; support for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen; allowing Putin to be provoked into intervening in Ukraine; and arguably the pivot to Asia has been an unnecessary provocation of China.
Killing Osama bin Laden will probably be a lasting part of his legacy. Frankly, I’m not so enthused about this one. It strikes me as an example of “bad process, good outcome.” Obama risked the lives of two dozen Americans and a potential major diplomatic if not military incident with Pakistan, all to kill some porn-addicted loser whose power to influence events had already been severely weakened. I get the cathartic value of killing the guy. But it was a huge gamble and I’m not sure it was worth it even though it thankfully worked out brilliantly.
Killing the Keystone Pipeline will be remembered as a milestone and his environmental record is good in general.
I agree that Obama did a great thing on ending the embargo of Cuba. That was an anachronism from the Cold War that should have been ended several presidencies ago. Other than that, I don’t think his foreign policy legacy will be very positive. It’s not my personal opinion that he did a bad job in the Middle East. I think the events that unfolded during his term were a long time in the making and there’s no way that any American President could have significantly altered them. There’s nothing he could have done to stop the rise of ISIS, the failure of democracy in the Egypt, or the failure to even try democracy in Libya, but the judgment of history generally isn’t nuanced about these sorts of things. Whoever was President when the Middle East descended into chaos will get blamed, regardless of whether there was anything he could do.
Regarding domestic policy, he had some good points, such as ending military discrimination against gays and small efforts at prison sentencing reform. I’d rather expect that he’ll be more remembered for tepid economic growth and the ACA, though.
The ACA will be remembered as a stumbling baby step in the right direction.
This Republican talking point really raises my hackles. It’s a perfect example of taking your own failure and pretending it’s a strength.
If it was Obama’s fault, why was I getting racist email and seeing watermelon jokes on Facebook before Obama even got the Democratic nomination, let alone winning the election?
White Republicans weren’t going to let it look like a black man was succeeding in the highest office, and they never let an opportunity go by to block him. Any failure in race relations in his two terms lays at the feet of whites.
Aside from the first black president I imagine he’ll be one of those presidents that don’t have a big place in the history books or public conscious, like Carter, Ford, Bush Sr.
Probably health care, drones, Bin Laden, maybe the Cuba situation but I think that really owes more to Fidel’s stepping down.
Or maybe politics really is the art of the possible.
The real victory here is surely changing the game - remember all those town hall debates about communists overrunnng DC, the ACA was unamerican, death panels and the rest.
You now couldn’t rip it from the cold, dead hand of the middles classes …
Stumbling baby steps don’t get remembered by history. Otherwise, Bill Clinton would be the President who brought us SCHIP and Bush as the Medicare Part D President. If ACA is actually supplanted by something better, then Obama will be known as the first black President and little else by future generations.
As for his legacy otherwise, hell, I don’t know. The things that bother me about him will be inconsequential in terms of how historians write about him, just as FDR’s ultra conservative 1932 campaign has been mostly forgotten. Obama promised change, he didn’t even try to change anything about the politics he claimed to abhor, if anything he doubled down on the old politics of spin and misdirection and personal attacks. But history tends to forget that. What is remembered is what was actually done, and nothing of great historical significance was actually done. Obama has been an ultra cautious President, the “no drama, don’t do stupid stuff” President. So unlike GWB, who was disastrous, or FDR and Reagan, who were game changers, he won’t be mentioned in the history books much at all. By 2150, he’ll be about as well known by American students as Grover Cleveland.
LOL.
He won’t be remembered for drones. He used them more than previous presidents, but that’s just because of advances in technology. Other presidents will use them just as much as him (or probably more, as the tech continues to advance), and they’ll quickly become taken for granted as just one more weapon the military uses. Nobody remembers the president who first used tanks, or who first used airplanes. Oh, we know that there was a time before those things, and that some president must have been the first, and it wouldn’t be hard to figure out who… but it’s still not relevant to their presidencies.
I don’t think Obama will be remembered with a capital R, for much of anything.
That I think will be what he’ll be remembered most for, in the sense of what might have the longest impact of what he’s done.
Woodrow Wilson, first world war, first use of tanks and airplanes in war. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to ride in a airplane though.
It’s something you average moderately interested in history person might think of him for.
I think foremost will be the retreat from the saber-rattling days of Chimpy and Darth. Treating other nations with respect has done a lot to elevate world opinion of the US. The long-overdue end to the Cuba embargo might be the biggest. For decades, the only thing that kept the embargo going was fear of losing Florida’s electoral votes. About damn time that we stop treating Cubans as the enemy. Another major accomplishment is the Iran nuclear deal. Despite the Republican orthodoxy that says Israel can do no wrong, Israel was wrong hear. Obama and Kerry deserve Nobel prizes for talking to the Iranians rather than demonize them. Not everything was peaches and cream, the Afghan situation is unsolvable and we should stop throwing good money after bad. But on the whole, Obama’s foreign policy has been outstanding.
Domestically, he’ll be remembered for coming out for gay marriage and recognizing that times have changed. He’ll be remembered for getting a tiny stimulus passed despite Republicans hell bent on destroying the economy. And he’ll be remembered for passing what was at one time the Republican alternative to Hillarycare.
Finally, he’ll be remembered as the Jackie Robinson of politics. He took all kinds of shit because of his race, enduring doubts about his citizenship and background that no other president has had to. He took it all with dignity and class, paving the way for other minorities to follow in his footsteps.
Actually, he sure did try. I’m old enough to remember 2009 and 2010. Here’s one review of the highlights, including:
President Obama has been a patient, wise, and visionary leader. I only hope we see another like him in my lifetime.
The ACA
Killing Bin Lden
Ending the war in Iraq
Returning to Iraq
Dodd-Frank (I’m iffy on this being a legacy item though)
The Iran deal
End of DADT
Restarting relations with Cuba
Sotomayor & Kagan to the Supreme Court
Beyond being the first black president, the first two items (vis-a-vis the ACA & Bin Laden) are the huge, monumentally game-changing things that will cement an Obama legacy; everything else, though important, will be seen as a footnote, for better or worse.
Skyrocketing health insurance premiums and deductibles
Mass shootings becoming commonplace
I thought this was an odd thing to tie to Obama. But perhaps you’re right. A whole lot of crazies are angry for crazy reasons. Having a black president probably bugs them a bit, and the right wing likes to stir things up for political reasons.