Good
One of the biggest successes of the Obama Presidency is the turnaround in the economy. When the Great Recession hit in 2008/2009, the country was in a dire place. And Obama — once he got settled in — made some clear strides to correct that. The ARRA (aka the "stimulus") was actually a large success, bringing jobs, improved infrastructure and more that wouldn't have been possible without it. In an example of what can happen when the two parties aren't at odds, George W. Bush passed the auto bailout, but left it to the incoming administration to distribute and manage. It's to both presidency's credit that the auto industry was triaged, saving what could. Chrysler and GM were eventually saved and the auto industry is doing well again. Unemployment is half of what it was (depending on your choice of measure) and Wall Street is booming. Job growth has been good. We are in a better financial place now than when he took office. You could argue that there's nowhere to go but down; You could also argue that any president would have done something. But we didn't have any president, we had Obama. And he deserves credit for taking action and having success.
I think the Iran nuclear agreement will be seen as a success, too. America has a lot of problems with Iran. Many of those are legitimate. We see them as an agitator in the Middle East. They probably are. This deal, however, agrees to limit the nuclear weapons capability of a country that could have pursued it if they wanted. We have monitoring, we have an agreement in place, and we have parameters. That's better than the nothing that we would have had. Is it perfect? No. But it takes compromise to get a deal.
American troops are no longer in Iraq and Afghanistan to the same extent as they were. We're practically out of Iraq already, and there are some troops still in Afghanistan. However, they are fractions of what they were. There were about 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan when Obama took over. Even after the surge (which reached nearly 100,000 troops), the number of troops is closer to 10,000, with plans in place to drop to 5,500 by the end of the year.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. There are reports that the previous administration moved away from targeting him. However, Obama made the decision to target him and also made the decision to do a stunning raid to take him out. This is arguably the best moment of his presidency. Further, al Qaeda is crippled both for reasons Obama can take credit for and those he cannot (See below, re: ISIS).
I go back and forth on this subject, but I think taking immigration seriously as a subject also includes being tough on those that break the law. While Obama had some major changes with DACA/DAPA (See below), it would have been hard for him to speak with authority if he didn't take the deportation of foreign criminals seriously. And he did, deporting 24 percent more people than George W. Bush and leading some to call him the Deporter-in-Chief. The more you look at his record, the more you can tell he has been very tough on those attempting to cross the Mexican border or those who commit crimes once already here. But for non-criminals and those who were already in America, he has been more lenient.
Climate change is real, and it is happening. And Obama was part of an international delegation that reached an agreement about it, called the Paris Climate Agreement. It's significant enough that climate change is being taken seriously. It's more significant that the U.S. did not stick its nose in the sand while other countries addressed the problem — we were an active participant. Again, the agreement isn't perfect, but building something is always harder than tearing down.
Obama's most significant change in rhetoric came in the area of LGBT rights. He did not start out in favor of it, but has come around to it. On a national scale, he's made moves to make LGBT discrimination illegal. While he didn't directly do it, the Supreme Court codified gay marriage into law during his tenure. The societal ills of passing gay marriage have not come to pass.
The Lilly Ledbetter Act is not the panacea to wage discrimination that it's declared to be. But it's a major step. It was one of his first major proposals to address the wage gap between men and women in the workforce.
The most significant thing about Barack Obama is something he could not control, but is probably what lifted him to the Oval Office — symbology. In the photo at left, 5-year-old Jacob Philadelphia touches Obama's hair back in 2012. "I want to know if my hair is just like yours," the boy said. And the President bent over to let him discover for himself. It makes me tear up every time, because it's so powerful, and the President didn't say a word. On the right is a picture that shows 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin dancing with Barack and Michelle Obama. She's now 107 and still dancing. She was born in segregated South Carolina, and picked cotton in her youth. She saw and met the first black President. That's worth waiting for.
Bad
Barack Obama's biggest failure is in the Middle East. In removing the Armed Forces and much of the muscle from the region, that left a power vacuum that was not filled by the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has largely turned out to be unhelpful, but they seemed to stoke sectarian violence. Into that breach came more radical sectarian groups, first called Al Qaeda in Iraq (in the Bush years) and operating in war-torn Syria before seizing land and declaring itself ISIS. The rise of the brutal and violent ISIS has been the biggest fault. On one hand, it's understandable — we just got out of land wars in Asia, and it doesn't usually turn out well. On the other, ISIS was given plenty of space and time, and it grew to dangerous levels. They were not dealt with, and it metastasized into an international threat. There are ISIS-inspired attacks in our country, there are ISIS attacks internationally, and ISIS seems to be planting seed groups in many hotspots. Barack Obama did not want to get us into another war. But it found him anyway.
Another example of his reticence to take military action was in Syria. Specifically, I remember his "red line" about the use of chemical weapons by Assad. Then Assad used chemical weapons. And we got to the brink of doing something. Then Secretary of State John Kerry was asked what could Assad do to prevent a U.S. attack, he offhandedly said Assad could admit to having chemical weapons and give them all up peacefully. There wasn't the honest expectation that it could be done. Almost immediately, Russia forced Syria to do just that. America stayed out. Syria remains in Civil War, and Russia looks like a major player in the Middle East. The good news is that we got chemical weapons out of Syria (and therefore removed a threat to Israel and other allies in the region). The bad news is that Syria's still a mess, and we looked weak.
Guantanamo Bay is still open. This was a big campaign promise, and he never could do it. The number of prisoners is down (from nearly 250 to roughly 60), but this is still a black mark on the nation.
The economy didn't come back better than ever. GDP growth has been close to 2 percent. It "should" be at 3-4 percent. So it's growing, just not as fast as we want. The labor force is falling (though much of this can be attributed to Baby Boomers retiring and people deciding to pursue college degrees). The number of Americans in poverty has risen. The number of Americans on food stamps rose dramatically. Net household wealth has been relatively stagnant until late. Manufacturing took a lot of hits, and they weren't fully replaced. The gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us has only continued to grow. We haven't fixed the structural issues of our economy.
One other issue is racial relations. Tension has boiled over several times, and while Obama's rhetoric wasn't always as divisive as it was painted to be, I don't think it always helped. Sometimes it's OK to sit back and let justice be done. Other times, like the investigation into Ferguson, deeper issues were revealed. I would say that we haven't done anything to address racial relations in America. We like to ignore it. When it does rise up, it becomes this question of Who do you Support?, pitting cops v. people of color. And that's a false dichotomy. Finally, while the trends are still down, there has been a spike in murders in the last year in big cities. Gun violence has not been addressed at all.
Somewhere In The Middle
You've said it; I've said it; even Barack Obama's said it: I still don't know why he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy has been both successful and found to be constitutional. Effectively, it's a policy of not prosecuting children who are brought to America illegally as minors. It also makes them eligible for work permits. This is good. Its sister program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) extended that policy to parents of American-born citizens. It has been blocked by federal judges until its constitutionality can be determined, but it's likely to be a moot point with Trump coming in.
His signature health plan, Obamacare, is listed here. I think there is no doubt that it was better than what we had before. It offers many protections and possibilities that were not available. I also think it's fair to say it didn't live up to hype. It's better than you think because you forget what it was like before it and it has legitimately saved the lives of many people. It's also worse than you think because many of its provisions were gutted by Republican opponents, it was tasked by the public with solving a problem it wasn't meant to address (health care costs), and it's been dramatically misinterpreted by even those who have stood to benefit from it. I give him credit for putting his neck on the line for such a big piece of legislation. I also take credit away because he always felt defensive about it. Life is better with Obamacare existing, but its lack of total embrace nationally has left it with a bumpy future.
Drone strikes are a necessary evil, I think. I don't like them and think it makes the decision to act in war seem like a video game — there's no personal stakes if you can kill from a computer desk on a different continent. But I also understand that they prevent human deaths.
Probably the biggest mixed bag has been that he couldn't find any common ground with Republicans. They were obstructive to a fault. Whose fault is it? Your answer may vary, but I certainly think fault lies on both sides. There were some battles that didn't need to be fought (debt ceiling, for one) and others that were fought vindictively. Not one Republican vote for Obamacare. I personally find that the GOP made things difficult from Day One for him, but I also think he made some enemies before he should have.
Gang of Eight
Since this blog originally started out to critique the news organizations, it's time I got back to that a little bit. In a recent CNN story about the troubling intelligence that was given to our nation's top leaders about Russia possibly blackmailing our President-Elect into supporting their positions (It's messy and I'm not sure how much I believe it, but it's troubling that the allegations exist at all), CNN referred to the "Gang of Eight" as the top four Congressional leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate/House intelligence committees.
The positive news is that they explained what they meant by "Gang of Eight." Unfortunately, this was potentially confusing. The term most famously referred to the bipartisan group of eight senators that pushed a 2013 immigration bill (that ultimately failed). Members of that group include Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Jeff Flake. What a diverse group!
It turns out that "Gang of Eight" originated with its intelligence use — the one CNN used most recently. It was particularly in use in the late Bush 43 years, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez repeatedly used the phrase in hearings on the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance/domestic spying program.
To make matters more confusing, there was another "Gang of Eight" that formed to avoid the Fiscal Cliff issue. There's also a Canadian "Gang of Eight" and an attempted coup of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR by a "Gang of Eight." There was also a 1962 Mexican-Spanish movie called.... "Gang of Eight."
In short, there are several uses of "Gang of Eight." The first two (immigration and intelligence) are fairly regular terms in Washington. To avoid confusion, I propose that the immigration "Gang of Eight" be renamed. It's not exactly a term that rolls off the tongue anyway, and there's no reason "gang" needs to be there. Since I'm rolling over a new leaf this year and proposing solutions instead of just complaining, I propose the immigration group goes by "Banda de los Ocho." It's Spanish for Gang of Eight, and it's at least a tie to the Spanish-speaking immigrants that they're trying to help.
Summary Judgments
I've barely stepped foot in California in my entire life. But going there to explore Yosemite and the Sequoia trees are on my bucket list. After heavy rains and a long life, the famous "drive-thru tree" or "tunnel tree" at Calaveras Big Trees State Park will no longer be an option. I'm saddened. • • • Charlie Brotman has been the Inauguration Announcer for every President since 1957. He was unceremoniously dumped by our incoming President to make way for a campaign supporter. Was this necessary? It doesn't take any effort to be kind, and this was the smallest possible act of kindness the President-Elect could have made. • • • I'm both an OU fan and a Chiefs fan. This story by ESPN's Mina Kimes about the struggle to be a fan of players who have domestic violence backgrounds like Joe Mixon and Tyreek Hill hit the nail on the head. Also, Sports Illustrated beat ESPN to a similar story. I want to cheer these players on the field, but knowing what they've done off the field makes me question that. Although they're saying and doing the right things now, do you permanently paint them by their sins or, by forgiving them, are you tacitly forgetting the heinous things in their past? It's a question without an answer, I'm afraid. • • • I think I want to see this Russian version of X-Men/The Avengers? • • • Running starts up next week, or as soon as this weekend's expected ice storm melts enough. I'm planning to sign up for four runs, each 4 miles long, with the first on St. Patty's Day. I'm also going to do a 5K obstacle course in April and probably run two other races (the same ones I did this year. My goal is 32 miles at age 32. I just want it to warm up a bit so I can get on that. • • • Roland's definitely more talkative than Evie, but he's also WAY more opinionated, bordering on rude. I'm usually the first up with the kids in the morning before I take my shower after Alyson wakes up. But when Alyson wakes up first or early? "No, Mommy. Go back to bed. No talking!"
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