The Obama Legacy

As I write this, Barack Obama is still President of the United States, but in a few hours his time in the Oval Office will end. Like most presidents, his record will depend in part on events that occur on his successor’s watch, but I think we’ve seen enough to put together a first draft of review. President Obama came to office with much potential; sadly, much of it was unfulfilled, or came with cost that could have addressed had the president recognized he can be wrong from time to time.

As the first African-American to serve as president, Obama had the opportunity to reorient how America views itself, and how Americans view themselves. He was somewhat successful here. He and his Administration were willing to ask questions that previously were dismissed as divisive and uncomfortable – yet needed asking all the same. He accelerated an updating of societal manners – wrongly blasted as “political correctness” by his critics – that was long overdue. Yet for all the questions asked, and efforts made in the zeitgeist, he found few serious policy answers. For all the president’s exhortations about local law enforcement’s treatment of minorities, there was no serious effort to even examine (let alone convince localities to address) the labyrnithine ordinance structure than ensnares so many caught between localities and their lust for revenue. Efforts at criminal justice reform came nowhere near civil asset forfeiture reform – to the point where one of the latter’s most virulent opponent’s is about to be confirmed as Attorney General without even serious discussion on the issue from the Democrats themselves.

A similar disconnect is attached to Obama’s signature achievements. Domestically, the health insurance reform will be forever mislabeled. It was more a product of Harry Reid and of John Roberts, and health “care” was hardly addressed at all. Again, had the president merely followed the advice of his own Federal Trade Commission and convinced states to dial back their odious Certificate of Public Need regimes, he could have achieved the better-care-at-lower-cost promise that was left unfulfilled. As it is, the shards of that broken promise are being used even now to slice “Obamacare” to ribbons.

Likewise, the tactical success that was the elimination of Osama bin Laden was assumed to be a seminal advancement in the “war on terror” (I still prefer my own term: the Wahhabist-Ba’athist-Khomeinist war), when it was far from that. Confusing a regime leader with the regime itself – an error that repeated itself in Libya, and to be fair, hobbled post-2003 policy in Iraq for a few years – was part of the problem.

However, it was augmented by a flaw that rippled throughout the Administration, one Obama shares with his successor: the refusal to acknowledge other points of view.

Washington is full of tales (mostly from Republicans) of how Obama either dismissed their opinions as donor-driven or voter-driven. Similar conversations with Democrats nearly sank Trade Promotion Authority in 2015 – one of the few times Obama and Congressional Republicans saw eye to eye. In short, Barack Obama simply could not comprehend anyone disagreeing with him. No one could hold a viewpoint that was honorable unless it was also his own. He resorted to amateur psychology (“they cling to guns and religion”), political calculation (see the aforementioned donor-driven assumption), or – ironically – self-criticism on political acumen or communication skills. The notion that anyone could respectfully disagree with him seemed impossible to him.

Of course, in domestic politics, that merely meant feathers ruffled, deals left unmade, and greater polarization. In the international realm, it has led to a painful naivete that has left millions dead or homeless in Syria, Eastern Europe on edge, and Vladimir Putin ascendant. A president who understood that not everyone saw the “arc of history” in the same way – or that, in fact, others would try to bend it their way – would have anticipated many of the actions that left the Obama Administration flat-footed.

In the end, the Obama Administration made progress in certain areas, but not nearly as much as it could have done. Meanwhile, Obama leaves a party that has dangerously internalized his intolerance of differing opinions, and thus as unable to respond to Donald Trump as he was in respond to Trump’s friend in the Kremlin…

…and a continuous bloodbath in Syria.

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