Well, it's been eight whole years and two terms since a popular Senator from Illinois endeared himself to millions of Americans with an attractive campaign and promises of being the "change" that America needed. He has also been one of the most polarizing presidents that this nation has had since, well, George W. Bush. Talk to people on the street and he will be hailed as one of the greatest presidents this nation has ever seen or the hellspawn that sent this nation spiraling towards collapse. But this isn't about what he is now. The question I ask is how will people feel about him several decades in the future. Will he be thought of as someone like an Abraham Lincoln, a champion of civil rights and progressivism? Or a James Buchanan, a man who oversaw escalating internal tensions, whether by apathy or deliberately?
Personally, I'm leaning towards him being seen as a bad president. My reasoning is that he promoted himself as not being the status quo, a man who would lead America out of the beginnings of a brutal recession. At the end of the day, he was what I was fearing he would be: All flash, no substance. A lot of his policies and stances have done nothing more than to drive a greater wedge between Americans by race, class, sex, age and creed. The growth of the economy has been all but stagnant, with the Great Recession only truly ending for the extremely rich. His prize achievement in office, the Affordable Care Act, has been very slow to the uptake, with the majority of Americans on it had their health insurance either eliminated because of the ACA or because their employers have cut down their working hours in order to avoid ACA stipulations.
What other "change" has Obama brought to us over the past eight years?
- A massive increase in drone attacks on foreign soil
- Race relations at the worst they have been since the late 1960's
- An extremely frustrated and disillusioned lower- and middle-class
- Several nations (Libya, Syria, Iraq) that have been completely destabilized, creating the means for one of the greatest migrations of people since World War Two
- Renewed tensions with Russia
- Further bloating in national debt and gaps between the upper-, middle- and lower-classes
- A nuclear deal with Iran that some have said "is like giving Hitler the Sudetenland"
- A dramatic increase in crime in inner-cities, particularly black-on-black crime
- An embarrassing scandal involving the VA
To be fair, there is a chance that Obama can be seen as having a great presidency, but there are a lot of things that need to go right in order for it to happen: The ACA needs to be the gold standard for health care throughout the world, the Middle East makes a strong recovery in its stability, the tensions with Russia don't go further and the economy starts to get going again, thanks to his policies. Unfortunately, I give that a slim chance of it happening. Regardless, this will probably be a polarizing topic in the future as well.
So what say you Kiwis?
Personally, I'm leaning towards him being seen as a bad president. My reasoning is that he promoted himself as not being the status quo, a man who would lead America out of the beginnings of a brutal recession. At the end of the day, he was what I was fearing he would be: All flash, no substance. A lot of his policies and stances have done nothing more than to drive a greater wedge between Americans by race, class, sex, age and creed. The growth of the economy has been all but stagnant, with the Great Recession only truly ending for the extremely rich. His prize achievement in office, the Affordable Care Act, has been very slow to the uptake, with the majority of Americans on it had their health insurance either eliminated because of the ACA or because their employers have cut down their working hours in order to avoid ACA stipulations.
What other "change" has Obama brought to us over the past eight years?
- A massive increase in drone attacks on foreign soil
- Race relations at the worst they have been since the late 1960's
- An extremely frustrated and disillusioned lower- and middle-class
- Several nations (Libya, Syria, Iraq) that have been completely destabilized, creating the means for one of the greatest migrations of people since World War Two
- Renewed tensions with Russia
- Further bloating in national debt and gaps between the upper-, middle- and lower-classes
- A nuclear deal with Iran that some have said "is like giving Hitler the Sudetenland"
- A dramatic increase in crime in inner-cities, particularly black-on-black crime
- An embarrassing scandal involving the VA
To be fair, there is a chance that Obama can be seen as having a great presidency, but there are a lot of things that need to go right in order for it to happen: The ACA needs to be the gold standard for health care throughout the world, the Middle East makes a strong recovery in its stability, the tensions with Russia don't go further and the economy starts to get going again, thanks to his policies. Unfortunately, I give that a slim chance of it happening. Regardless, this will probably be a polarizing topic in the future as well.
So what say you Kiwis?
