Those going to the polls today to cast their ballots against Barack Obama will no doubt disagree, but the truth is that once his second term is completed, history will record him as a successful president of considerable accomplishment given his situation.
Long after he's gone, for example, the health-care law that opponents tagged with his name in hopes of tarnishing it will instead prove to be a source of lasting pride, providing coverage to tens of millions of Americans who otherwise would be forced to go without. As even Mitch McConnell has essentially conceded, repeal of ObamaCare has become impossible. The latest polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation helps to explain why, with almost two thirds of Americans saying they want the law improved with just one third saying they want it repealed and replaced with something else:
The law will be tweaked and adjusted, as any program of that size must be, but it will remain as evidence that Obama accomplished what others before him had failed to accomplish.
In addition, historians will note that Obama took office in the midst of the biggest financial crisis to hit the global economy in 80 years. The much-derided stimulus bill, the auto bailout and the Wall Street regulatory package passed under his leadership were not as comprehensive as they should have been, but given the political situation, they were all that was attainable.
The unemployment rate is 5.9 percent; the deficit fell by $197 billion in 2014 and as a percentage of GDP is now below the 40-year average. The economy is growing steadily, and at a pace that exceeds almost every other Western economy. And if Obama's opponents had gotten the do-nothing policies they had advocated, the recovery would have been far more anemic.
In addition, gay Americans have been welcomed openly into our military with none of the disastrous consequences predicted by conservatives, and gay marriage will soon become the law of the land. President Obama is also expected to take executive action on immigration, providing a degree of protection to those millions of people who had come to this country illegally at a time when their labor was highly sought and official policy was to look the other way as they entered and made lives for themselves and their families.
On foreign policy, the record is admittedly less clear, in part because of the long time frame needed to judge ultimate success or failure. For example, the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- a bad decision compounded by incompetent, even delusional execution -- continues to have repercussions that will also hound the next president, and the president after that as well. The political, moral and religious crisis within the Islamic world has become a chronic issue well beyond the power of outsiders to resolve, especially through military means, and is likely to continue for decades.
Some problems have not and will not be solved under this president. He has been unable to craft a longer term approach to the nation's fiscal challenges, trading adjustments in entitlement programs for increases in tax revenues that would set us on a sustainable course. Nor has he been able to reverse the decline of the middle class, a trend now in its fourth decade that continues to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands. That is, or ought to be, the most compelling economic issue facing this country, with profound implications for its basic character.
And much too little progress has been made in addressing climate change.
Scientists say that 2014 is likely to prove the warmest year on record, continuing an alarming trend that has been predicted for the last 30 years and longer. According to a new UN report, some climatic changes are already irreversible, and the challenge is now to limit rather than prevent further damage. Obama has recognized the danger of climate change and addressed it in some ways, but he has been unable to alter the political climate that continues to frustrate more effective action. That will probably be considered his most important failure, but again, I'm not sure that better options were available to him.
All in all, however, it is a record of success against a determined, stubborn opposition. If that opposition becomes still more determined and stubborn in the last two years of his presidency, it may actually heighten his standing in the eyes of history, confirming how much he was able to achieve even without a partner interested in progress. He has taken their best blows and is still standing, and come 2016, I expect American voters will endorse a continuation of the approach that he has taken.
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