The Obama Legacy

The Obama Legacy January 19, 2017

By Ross Douthat.  Probably the fairest appraisal I’ve read.   It’s impossible to guess how future generations will rate Obama.   That will be based on the values of those doing the rating.  It was certainly a drop from the predictions, that’s for sure.  After all, no president in my lifetime came into the White House with such lofty expectations.  Anything short of ending death and aligning the planets would have fallen short.

Still, not all was bad (sorry for his critics) and not all was good (sorry for his fans).  Like most presidents, it’s a mix of good and bad, success and failure.  Sometimes we have to wait and see where things end up to figure out the net result.  Pulling back on regulations in the 80s seemed a great idea at the time, but later abuses by corporate interests at the expense of basic folk changed that appraisal.

Likewise, the 90s seemed pretty awesome: Prosperity and peace.   Just like the roaring 20s.  But as we learned about the 1920s when I was growing up, they weren’t all that roaring if, in the space of a decade, we ended up with a Great Depression and WWII.   How much less if within months everything blew itself halfway to hell.

So we’ll see. I don’t think, however, that Ross is too far from the mark.

 


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