As all things politic, there is never a perfect presidency. But Obama was the the first politician I gave money to (on the night of Sarah Palin's hockey mom speech at the convention)... and I gave the max, so my investment in his administration was higher than anyone else. I had hopes for more, but muted expectations, as I am a cynic.
Obama's Justice Department failed to pursue cases of white collar fraud against the perpetrators of the greatest banking scandal in history, a financial scandal so severe that a proper accounting of it's downstream effects would most certainly find thousands of deaths.
And yet not a single C-level executive, Vice President, Director, or any other title of substance went to jail, despite laughably obvious fraud across dozens of banks, regulatory bodies, lenders, and bond ratings agencies.
Obama's pretensions of idealism was betrayed at the start by this dearth of prosecutorial attention. Obama is a lawyer by trade and training, so he knows exactly what he was doing. This was a bought and paid for bribe by Wall Street to fund his presidency. Unlike what led up to the scandal and the recession, this was 100% attributable to the preference of Obama, and it will result in more fraud and abuse by this sociopathic element of our economy.
Obama ran on a platform of openness and transparency in government, a promised reversal of federal government's obsession with secrecy that expanded greatly under the Bush administration and the corruption that underlay the Iraq War.
Alas the opposite was true. It took Edward Snowden to reveal the full extent of the secrecy, spying, and modern totalitarian infrastructure that the US Government provided. FOIA, already a joke, became even more so. Principled leaks of unnecessarily classified information were aggressively prosecuted (and with all things like this, always remember what was NOT aggressively prosecuted).
As the information age progresses and governments have more tools to both hide their data and spy on the populace, it is important to establish boundaries of freedom to restrict the encroachment of the federal government, lest a less principled individual take the reins. Ruefully, that has come to fruition far too quickly.
For climate change, Obama was fine window dressing, but largely was a big pot of inaction, in the time we will very likely state was the breaking point of unavoidable changes. 400 ppm passed under his watch. The likelihood of any progress from an American president was very unlikely, given the nature of the venal and anti-intellectual American voting public and their love of SUVs.
However, under his watch solar and electric cars flourished, even under the collapse of oil prices, which paradoxically may be bad for the petroleum industry long-term, since it robs them of profitability and prevents funding of more complex petroleum extraction such as Alberta tar sands.
Finally, neoliberal economic management under Obama has been a failure. Wealth distribution continued turning us into a gilded nation, real costs rose for healthcare, housing, and education, real wages remained flat, real unemployment is high, trade deficits are high...
Keynesian deficit spending did well to get us out of a full blown depression, but the real recession lingers today 8 years later with a paper recovery. It may be that this was the best that could be done from a country hollowed out of manufacturing jobs by trade deals and a lack of investment in high tech automated manufacturing.
Obama's greatest failure was defining a progressive vision and defending it properly. A gifted orator, he disappeared and did not adopt a modern, constant, everpresent media campaign and network of thinkers to move progressive causes forward and expand them into general awareness, and challenge the lies of the right.
The Trump election has shown the mortal danger of the modern echo chamber, and Obama's failure to use his leadership to undermine this echo chamber has given us a neo-totalitarian.
Finally, some words for the "fake failures":
ISIS is a joke. It is a regional conflict that Obama has wisely avoided, although I would have backed the Kurds more staunchly as a regional ally in a region with no good choices. The right's paranoia of ISIS belies their lack of objectivity, racism, stupidity, and worldliness.
The ACA is not a failure, but it was also not a success, as it was politically poisoned by the Republicans and Joe Lieberman (may he burn in hell), but it was a necessary piece of legislation towards an eventual solution. It's basic ideas (exchanges) were created to appease Republicans, who only then turned on their own (and Mitt Romney's!) ideas.
The Iran deal is just diplomacy, and any right wing saber rattling and bemoaning of it was only due to the poisonous influence of petrodollars not wanting Iranian oil to flood onto a weak market.
Immigration was something that would always require bipartisan solutions, and really is a Republican problem, since that party is the one that talks out of both sides of it's mouth. Republican business owners love that immigration depresses wages and increases labor supply, but the "base" voters hate it for that reason. And remember, economic competition + racial divide = racism.
Obama's Justice Department failed to pursue cases of white collar fraud against the perpetrators of the greatest banking scandal in history, a financial scandal so severe that a proper accounting of it's downstream effects would most certainly find thousands of deaths.
And yet not a single C-level executive, Vice President, Director, or any other title of substance went to jail, despite laughably obvious fraud across dozens of banks, regulatory bodies, lenders, and bond ratings agencies.
Obama's pretensions of idealism was betrayed at the start by this dearth of prosecutorial attention. Obama is a lawyer by trade and training, so he knows exactly what he was doing. This was a bought and paid for bribe by Wall Street to fund his presidency. Unlike what led up to the scandal and the recession, this was 100% attributable to the preference of Obama, and it will result in more fraud and abuse by this sociopathic element of our economy.
Obama ran on a platform of openness and transparency in government, a promised reversal of federal government's obsession with secrecy that expanded greatly under the Bush administration and the corruption that underlay the Iraq War.
Alas the opposite was true. It took Edward Snowden to reveal the full extent of the secrecy, spying, and modern totalitarian infrastructure that the US Government provided. FOIA, already a joke, became even more so. Principled leaks of unnecessarily classified information were aggressively prosecuted (and with all things like this, always remember what was NOT aggressively prosecuted).
As the information age progresses and governments have more tools to both hide their data and spy on the populace, it is important to establish boundaries of freedom to restrict the encroachment of the federal government, lest a less principled individual take the reins. Ruefully, that has come to fruition far too quickly.
For climate change, Obama was fine window dressing, but largely was a big pot of inaction, in the time we will very likely state was the breaking point of unavoidable changes. 400 ppm passed under his watch. The likelihood of any progress from an American president was very unlikely, given the nature of the venal and anti-intellectual American voting public and their love of SUVs.
However, under his watch solar and electric cars flourished, even under the collapse of oil prices, which paradoxically may be bad for the petroleum industry long-term, since it robs them of profitability and prevents funding of more complex petroleum extraction such as Alberta tar sands.
Finally, neoliberal economic management under Obama has been a failure. Wealth distribution continued turning us into a gilded nation, real costs rose for healthcare, housing, and education, real wages remained flat, real unemployment is high, trade deficits are high...
Keynesian deficit spending did well to get us out of a full blown depression, but the real recession lingers today 8 years later with a paper recovery. It may be that this was the best that could be done from a country hollowed out of manufacturing jobs by trade deals and a lack of investment in high tech automated manufacturing.
Obama's greatest failure was defining a progressive vision and defending it properly. A gifted orator, he disappeared and did not adopt a modern, constant, everpresent media campaign and network of thinkers to move progressive causes forward and expand them into general awareness, and challenge the lies of the right.
The Trump election has shown the mortal danger of the modern echo chamber, and Obama's failure to use his leadership to undermine this echo chamber has given us a neo-totalitarian.
Finally, some words for the "fake failures":
ISIS is a joke. It is a regional conflict that Obama has wisely avoided, although I would have backed the Kurds more staunchly as a regional ally in a region with no good choices. The right's paranoia of ISIS belies their lack of objectivity, racism, stupidity, and worldliness.
The ACA is not a failure, but it was also not a success, as it was politically poisoned by the Republicans and Joe Lieberman (may he burn in hell), but it was a necessary piece of legislation towards an eventual solution. It's basic ideas (exchanges) were created to appease Republicans, who only then turned on their own (and Mitt Romney's!) ideas.
The Iran deal is just diplomacy, and any right wing saber rattling and bemoaning of it was only due to the poisonous influence of petrodollars not wanting Iranian oil to flood onto a weak market.
Immigration was something that would always require bipartisan solutions, and really is a Republican problem, since that party is the one that talks out of both sides of it's mouth. Republican business owners love that immigration depresses wages and increases labor supply, but the "base" voters hate it for that reason. And remember, economic competition + racial divide = racism.
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