Legacy

As the country faces the end of Obama’s time the subject of his legacy is in the news. I think his legacy will be in two parts. The first will be short term and second more long range. To start with he will be remembered as he is now as a nice guy. He is physically attractive, personable, with lots of charisma, a good family man and a great public speaker. In short he is likeable and that is a big deal for many people. He had 8 years in office during which time there were no scandals. He is and will continue to be the leading figure in the party. As time passes and historians begin to examine his time in office they will move away from his personal likeability and look more closely at his record and it will be mixed but with more negatives than positives. While his signature achievement, Obamacare will be significantly changed the elimination of pre-existing conditions will remain and this is how he will be remembered, so that is a positive. The disintegration of the Democratic Party during his time will be his biggest negative on domestic policy and Syria will be the big problem in foreign policy. He is leaving the country in better shape economically than when he was elected but it took almost 8 years to achieve which is a positive but the blue collar people who were left behind is a negative. He came in with great fanfare, the darling of the national press, promising to unite the country with his campaign slogan of hope and change which is a positive but failed to convince the Republican congress to work with him and the country became more divided. He attempted to reach out to the Middle East and Europe and got a Nobel Peace prize for his efforts but the Middle East blew up starting with the Arab spring and Europe is overwhelmed with refugees. Some will say the fail to leave some troops in Iraq caused the birth of ISIS but others will say that was just the final result of the Iraq war. He tried a restart with Russia and ended up with Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine. He made a friend of Castro and an enemy of Netanyahu.