The Legacy of the Obama Administration

"I don't think any president has left more popular than he entered, except for maybe John F. Kennedy, for obvious reasons."
"We asked questions about how's he doing on foreign policy, immigration, federal budget, health care, economy and terrorism, and the only thing he had in the plus column was a 10%-plus rating for terrorism. Everything else was 15 points south."
"The website glitches and the promise of better health care for millions of people, when you promise that it doesn't happen, that goes right into the American home. People who needed health care tried to get it, were told they'd get it, and couldn't get it. They may eventually get it, but this is something that affects your kids, affects your income, it's an American home issue. So when it didn't happen, people took it personally."
"He needs a win. These are the worst ratings he's ever had with us. A monumental foreign policy triumph right now sure would be welcome, because on the domestic front, he's got real issues."
"ObamaCare was going to be his legacy. It may still be. They could right the ship here. Six months from now, maybe we won't be talking about this anymore. The other side of the coin for the president right now is that the stock market just went through 16,000 [on the Dow Jones Industrial Average] for the first time. People's 401ks [pensions] are turning around. Houses are starting to sell. The job picture is better."
"I'm not saying this [trust problem] is a glitch, or something that's going to go away in a few weeks, but the economy has gotten better since the president became president. His supporters will say he took something that was going over a cliff and saved it."
Tim Malloy, assistant director, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, Hamden, Connecticut

Doug Mills/The New York Times    President Barack Obama speaks to navigators hired to help people enroll in the HealthCare.gov site at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 5, 2013.

Hope, trust, new beginnings, audacity, all the buzz-words that Barack Obama used to great effect during his election campaign, and relied upon during his re-election campaign, vowing then to complete the job he set out to do when he first became elected President of the United States of America. A global financial turndown might not have been attributed to the inattention of a one-term Senator, but as president he hewed to the same track as his predecessor in rescuing financial houses and car manufacturing.

And housing and unemployment and bankrupted cities kind of limped along resurrecting themselves as time allowed them to do, gradually and painfully, to achieve the inevitable. American corporations were long realizing profits and sitting on them rather than reinvesting and making jobs, fearful of moving themselves back into the red, and the transition to a healthier job market took its daunting time. It has been during this presidency that the reactive hostility between Republicans and Democrats have reached their bitterest apex.

And the fiasco of unrolling ObamaCare after the confident assurance and reassurance of the President that people satisfied with their health provider, happy with their health insurer need make no changes and others, uninsured and unable to afford costly American health care, would now be in good hands clanged to the reality of complete chaotic uncertainty. A man not given naturally to apologizing for misleading people has had to humbly proffer an apology and promise the mess will be swiftly rectified.

Guantanamo Bay has not been closed down. Iraq has been vacated, and no good has come of it, the country just as viciously conflicted as ever. Taking his cue from Iraq, President Obama is pressing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign on to keeping a level of American troops on standby to continue guiding his country and countering the Taliban, when what Mr. Karzai really wants is for billions in funding to be directed to his administration, feeding on the guilt and responsibility of the West.

Those billions, much of which has been pledged by Western sources, primarily the United States, to ensure that the current corrupt government is capable of expanding on the infrastructure aid and responsive administration benefiting the country that foreign treasuries and humanitarian aid agencies have channelled him toward might also offer a type of insurance that the Taliban with whom Mr. Karzai has offered to share governing with, might not wish to tip the boat of international aid.

The conflicted mess of abandoning old allies in the Middle East that the Obama administration found itself in with Egypt, with Syria, with Iraq and Libya has been compounded enormously by its blundering toward making accommodation with the Islamic Republic of Iran -- a country whose religious culture leads it to a fundamentalist political ideology totally averse to peace with its neighbours, on a steady course to achieve command-and-control by stealth and fearsome nuclear technology in intimidation and terror -- has been given a mute blessing by the U.S.

Head of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Ala'eddin Boroujerdi, says talks with the G5+1 will continue until all tyrannical sanctions against the Iranian nation are lifted, IRNA reported.

President Obama's legacy looms into the future of American historical interpretation. The promise that his election presaged as a true potential for change and hope has been eclipsed by the reality of the man's own severe limitations, his hesitation to take the lead and become a responsible and intelligent leader when his time had come to demonstrate he was capable of doing just that.

In his time he had to leap over his biracial identity to achieve the presidency just as John F. Kennedy had to convince Americans that his Catholic religion would not detract from his capacity as the country's chief executive and Commander in Chief. The hope that was invested in each of these men who presented with youthful energy, optimism and promise of greatness was not realized, much to the reluctant chagrin of their public.

President Kennedy's untimely death through assassination kept him from achieving his potential destiny. President Obama has been given opportunities, trust and expectations and the space to expand on his promises, but none of those anticipated moves intended to advance America's interests and the world's hopes ever came to fruition. History will describe him as a Nobel Laureate whom the unfortunate confluence of events restrained from attaining his promise.

Skeptics will remember him as a man in whom much trust and hope was placed, only to stagger back in the realization that the trust and hope was, in effect, hugely misplaced.

"Trust is a muscle -- if not exercised effectively, it withers, and if torn, it takes a lot of time and luck to repair."
"You don't get do-overs in politics. [To lose trust is to lose the] essential political insulation he has enjoyed during these tumultuous times.".
"Obama has had a longer and luckier run [than recent presidents]. He is a sober, straightforward type, broadly respected, in marked contrast to Clinton's charming and needy sloppiness."
"He has enjoyed tremendous personal support from the American people, even when they have questioned his policies. The ObamaCare threatens to undo all that good work and goodwill."
"Pulling off an Iranian deal somehow will certainly lead to articles talking about how he shored up his credibility, but it won't be the kind of boost that Reagan got for winning the Cold War."
"There is no excuse for blowing the website of your signature piece of legislation in the age of Facebook, Twitter and Google."
Gil Troy, historian, American politics and presidents, McGill University, Montreal