Farewell, Barack Obama

Finally, after eight long years, it has come time to say goodbye. Today is the last full day of the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. Tomorrow, Donald John Trump will be formally sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States.

On 60 Minutes last Sunday, Obama gave his farewell interview. Near the end, he was asked what he thought his legacy would be, ten years from now, and he declined to answer. Much can change in ten years. But it seems clear, with his eight years almost up and only days from the inauguration of a fervent political opponent as his successor, that the Obama legacy will be one of failure and wasted opportunity.

The 44^th President entered office with a landslide victory, sky-high approval ratings, and a Democratic supermajority in both houses of Congress. He could have achieved nearly anything. Instead, his signature legislative achievement was a health care bill that became a national joke and will soon be repealed entirely. He presided over one of the weakest economic recoveries on record, one that still feels like no recovery at all to millions of Americans. He gained office in part by railing against George W. Bush's high spending and expansive use of presidential power, and promptly doubled the national debt and made the pen and the phone the new symbols of the imperial presidency. And in foreign affairs, he presided over the rise of ISIS, the weakening of Israel, and the emboldening of Iran and Russia.

Even now, in the last months of his presidency when one would think he couldn’t possibly get any worse, he stabs Israel in the back at the United Nations, and commutes the sentence of a traitor that put American lives at risk all over the world. Perhaps the Founders would have given more serious discussion to curtailing the pardoning power, had they known a future President would use it in such an egregious way.

It is now far too late for Obama to turn his presidential legacy around, with almost exactly twenty-four hours left in his term. But he had eight years to get things right, and he failed. His tenure may have been groundbreaking as the first black President, but history will not look favorably on the results.