I'm inspired by the people I meet in my travels--hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency. I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man. – Barack Obama
As we approach the end of Barack Obama’s tenure as the 44th
President of the United States, I have reflected upon what the past eight years
has meant to the United States, the world, and to me personally. I cannot speak
for others, though I know there are millions of Americans who feel, as I do,
deeply connected to President Obama and grateful for his leadership and the
example he set in office. For many African Americans, President Obama will
rightfully be a source of great pride and inspiration for generations to come.
For me and many Democrats over the age of 50, Obama is the first president since
John F. Kennedy to inspire a poetic sense of idealism and an aspirational sense
of service.
I am aware that not everyone shares my admiration and
respect for this president. But even for those Americans not enamored of President
Obama and who opposed his every action, I believe that history and the passage
of time will solidify this president as a man of character, decency,
compassion, and wisdom. For those are the traits I have witnessed since he took
the oath of office on January 20, 2009.
As the leader of the free world, Obama represented
everything good and decent about America. As president, he was a consistently inspiring
public speaker, a thoughtful man of ideas, a serious man with a good sense of
humor; an intellectual, a policy wonk, by his own admission a bit of a nerd, a
techie who understood the dynamics of world economic trends and quietly led us
into the digital age. He restored dignity to the nation’s highest elected
office and led a scandal-free administration. He elevated our national
discourse on public affairs. He maintained his composure through some extremely
difficult times. And he was the coolest, hippest president ever.
His accomplishments while in office are impressive. Although
he inherited one of the worst financial crises in American history, he saved
the U.S. economy from a second Great Depression. He restored stability to the
financial markets, pushed through a massive stimulus bill, and saved the
American auto industry from collapse. He guided the nation through a massive
recession and helped turn devastating and record-breaking job losses into 74
months of consecutive job growth. He achieved the lowest unemployment rate
since the late 1960s without a resurgence of inflation. And though middle class
wages remained stagnant for much of his presidency, there are today 18 million
fewer people without health insurance, a much improved housing market, a
downward trend in deficit spending, a booming stock market, record breaking
corporate profits, and a much improved economic outlook.
He advanced civil rights for gay people by allowing gays to
serve openly in the military. He was the first president to actively support
marriage equality, which is now the law of the land. On matters of race, some
believe Obama underplayed his hand and often ignored some of the racial wounds
and divisions that continue to haunt us. But as the nation’s first black
president, he has mostly led by example, through the love and respect he
displays regularly for his wife and children and the diversity of his
appointments to his administration. His meditation on civil rights in Selma in
2015 and his rendition of Amazing Grace at the funeral of the slain black
church goers in Charleston, South Carolina, were among his best rhetorical
moments. And his reflective, compassionate addresses to the nation following the
tragic mass shootings in Arizona and Newtown helped soothe a grieving nation.
He was the most environmentally conscious president in
history. Through his successful negotiation of the Paris Climate Accord, in
which the world’s biggest polluters, including China, agreed to take serious
action against climate change, he established the United States as a world
leader in defense of the planet’s future. He took bold action on fuel
efficiency and planted the seeds for reduced U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. Aided
by market forces, America’s dependence on foreign oil is down 60% from when he
first took office. He has greatly expanded America’s use of wind and solar power,
and begun to phase out our reliance on coal burning, acid-rain-causing power
plants.
He advanced the cause of peaceful diplomacy while protecting
American interests abroad. He ended the U.S. military intervention in Iraq and initiated
the eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan. He gave the order that killed bin
Laden. His administration’s successful negotiation of the Iran Nuclear Deal and
efforts to expand trade and improve relations with the countries of Asia and
the Pacific, have greatly improved our standing in the world. And he restored diplomatic
relations with Cuba, a long overdue move with historic implications.
To be fair, Obama’s foreign policy record is not entirely
rosy or error-free. His handling of the Arab Spring, his hesitancy in Libya and
Syria, and his inability to make any progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process, have been blemishes on a foreign policy that, while minimizing major
blunders, has sometimes led from behind. And his expanded use of drone warfare
to kill suspected terrorists abroad raises many troubling concerns under U.S.
Constitutional and international law, and may have created more future
terrorists than it killed. But as noted by author and former foreign correspondent James Mann,
“Obama will be viewed as the first president to take seriously the notion that
the dominant role America has played in the world both after World War II and
again after the end of the Cold War cannot be maintained over the long term. In
that sense, he was ahead of his time.”
Apart from the stimulus bill, the Affordable Care Act
remains his most significant legislative achievement. For most of the 20th
Century, U.S. Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Bill Clinton tried and failed
to enact some form of national health care. Whatever the future of Obamacare,
and whatever its shortcomings (and there are many), as the first president in
American history to succeed in enacting a comprehensive health care law, he
moved us decisively toward universal health care. It remains to be seen if
Trump and the Republicans will repeal and replace Obamacare, but whatever they
do, Obamacare’s key provisions – preventing insurance companies from denying
coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, allowing parents to maintain
coverage for their children to age 26, the use of insurance exchanges, and
expanded eligibility under Medicaid – are likely to remain.
When Obama ran for the White House, he did not want simply to
be a good president, but a transformative one. Hope and change were his calling
cards. He wished to fundamentally alter the way politics worked and believed he
could unite a deeply divided nation. He called upon Americans to erase the
false dichotomy between “red” states and “blue” states and to instead see America
at its best, as a people united, a multi-cultural mosaic of races, ethnicities,
and faiths bound together by one flag, one Constitution, and a sense of the
common good.
Eight years later, the lack of civility in our politics and
the entrenched divisions in U.S. society are among Obama’s biggest
disappointments. There are global forces at work in the world today that no one
person or leader can control or counteract. The resurgence of the populist
right and nationalism in Europe, Latin America, and the United States are
forces too large for even an aspirational leader like President Obama to
overcome. I do not blame Obama for this reality. It is not his fault – division
and opposition, organized Republican efforts to defeat his every achievement in
the hopes of making him a “one-term president” was the clearly delineated
strategy of the Republican leadership in Congress. Combined with the rise of
the Tea Party and the increasingly Balkanized media in which everyone’s thought
processes are reinforced and further inflamed, Obama’s vision of a “united
states of America” seems naïve in retrospect.
But I think that history will look kindly on the Obama Era,
and that many of the people who opposed him these past eight years will someday
come to appreciate his seriousness of purpose and the dignified manner in which
he performed the duties of his Office.
History will not record Obama as a transformative president
in the same manner as Franklin Roosevelt (on the left) or Ronald Reagan (on the
right); for they changed the way Americans viewed the role of the federal
government and their relationship to it. But Obama’s presidency was
transformative in another sense. His very presence in office for eight years
and the manner in which he and his family conducted themselves were culturally transformative.
Think of the millions of young Americans, children and teenagers, who came of
age with a dignified, good looking, graceful black First Family in the White
House. To younger Americans, who are already more open to differences in race,
gender, sexual orientation, and lifestyles, having a black family living in the
White House was the most natural thing in the world. It is difficult to
underestimate the long-term impact that will have. And Obama connected with
younger people. He understood them and knew how to communicate with them; he
understood their comedy and late night talk shows, their podcasts, their music,
and their uses of social media.
I especially admire the heartfelt thoughtfulness displayed
by Obama in one-on-one interviews. In September 2015, Obama participated in a
lengthy two-part conversation with author Marilynne Robinson in The New York
Review of Books, in which they discussed religion, philosophy, literature and
history. It was an extraordinarily candid and intellectual conversation not
regularly witnessed from an American politician. And he has had similar
conversations with a number of journalists, hosts of podcasts, and authors. He is
equally adept at discussing music and sports, and he is genuinely funny. Andrea
and I looked forward every year to watching (on C-SPAN no less) his appearances
at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. His comedic timing and
execution of a good joke is unmatched by past American presidents.
I am deeply concerned that the ascendancy of Donald Trump to
the White House risks undoing many of President Obama’s accomplishments and
much of his legacy. It is difficult to imagine a more radical shift in
direction than Barack Obama to Donald Trump. For those on the Left who bemoaned
Obama’s shortcomings, his failure to close Guantanamo or to seriously address
rising income inequality, the next four years will make you wish for Obama’s
pragmatic liberalism. For those on the Right who value character and dignified behavior
in our public officials, you should already be missing the current President,
who for eight years has been a model of dignity, an exemplary father and
husband, a role model for our youth and a source of inspiration for anyone
willing to listen.
Someday we will look back on the Obama years and recall a
president who acted with grace and poise in extremely difficult circumstances,
who withstood insults and disrespect, and was opposed and ridiculed by the
opposition and in the right-wing and conservative press (and by certain
segments of the left), and handled all of it with extraordinary composure and
goodwill. I will miss President Obama in the White House, not simply because he
was a good president whom I trusted to act in America’s best interests, but
also because he inspired me to be a better citizen, a better man and a better
father, and because he made me feel good about America.
We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense. – President Barack Obama—September 6, 2012
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment