When he took the stage last Wednesday night for his farewell address,
Barack Obama made his case for the agenda he doggedly pursued these
past eight years – touting gains in the job market, the implementation
of the Affordable Care Act, legalized gay marriage and breakthroughs in
foreign affairs stretching from Cuba to Iran.
“By almost every measure, America is a better,
stronger place than it was when we started,” Obama told the audience in
hometown Chicago.
While Obama’s pronouncements were met with applause
from the friendly crowd, several of his policies now face an uncertain
future as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office Friday.
The legacy of the 44
th president stands to be shaped almost
as much by the man who will follow him into the White House and the
Republican-controlled Congress as it was by him.
“His legacy is really in the hands of his successor,”
Patrick Maney, a presidential historian and professor at Boston
College, told FoxNews.com.
No matter what comes next, Obama’s two terms will go down as some of the most active – and controversial – in modern times.
As the first black president, Obama already had
claimed his place in history in January 2009. But the ensuing eight
years were consequential – whether that was for better, or for worse, is
a matter for the historians to decide.
The Economy
Maney argued Obama will be graded on “the degree of
difficulty of when he took office.” When it comes to the economy, Obama
entered office at a period of immense challenge.
He took the oath of office just as the country was
embroiled in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. After
the outgoing George W. Bush administration kick-started a contentious
auto bailout package, Obama oversaw the financial lifeline that helped
Detroit rebound -- and was able to push through the equally contentious
stimulus, which many Republican saw as wasteful but some economists
credited with cushioning the blow from the recession.
Over the course of Obama’s two terms in office, U.S.
employers added more than 11 million jobs and, following almost a decade
of stagnant wages, median household income jumped in 2015.
Despite his administration’s work, the job market for
the last two presidential election cycles still has served as a
Republican rallying cry. They point to a shrinking labor force due in
part to more American retirees and to younger Americans heading back to
school, as well as a widening gap between rich and poor amid
globalization and technological change.
Some historians say Obama did not get the credit extended to other presidents who faced similar economic crises.
“It was an economic success, but a political
failure,” Maney said. “In the 1930s, when people saw bridges and roads
being built, they said that was because of [President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt]. With the stimulus jobs of the last eight years, nobody said
that was because of Obama.”
ObamaCare
Whether history will give Obama more credit than the
present on the economy is up for debate, but there is one contentious
policy that will be forever attached to his name: The Affordable Care
Act, or ObamaCare.
The law passed with no Republican support in 2010 and
has since expanded health coverage to an estimated 20 million people,
with the help of subsidies and additional Medicaid coverage. The law’s
core consumer protections required insurers to cover people who are
already ill, and placed limits on the amount the sick and elderly can be
billed for health care.
But the ACA also has been saddled with problems
including rapidly rising premiums, particularly for those unable to
qualify for subsidies, and a decrease in coverage options in some
markets.
Some still warn about a “death spiral” leading to an eventual collapse in the insurance market.
Amid such warnings, Trump and his congressional allies are determined to “repeal and replace” the law.
Many want to end the “mandate” to buy coverage – but
how they do that while still preserving other politically popular
benefits remains to be seen. Lawmakers are at sharp odds over how to
proceed, and Obama has openly challenged them to come up with a better
plan if they can.
Trump recently told the Washington Post he is close to finishing a plan to replace ObamaCare.
Foreign Affairs
Inheriting two wars from the previous administration,
Obama came into office promising to wind those down and keep American
troops out of conflicts abroad.
But the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize will now
leave a foreign policy record under fire from both sides of the aisle –
to his liberal critics, Obama wrongly continued a state of perpetual
war, expanding the U.S. drone campaign to no fewer than seven countries;
to hawkish conservatives, his restraint in deploying American military
power elsewhere allowed bloody conflicts to worsen.
The president, per his campaign promises, was able to
draw down the number of troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But
critics argue the withdrawal in the former ultimately left a power
vacuum that led to the rise of the Islamic State and the return of U.S.
forces to the region.
Perhaps the biggest blotch on his record is the
still-raging civil war in Syria. He did not follow through on enforcing
the so-called “red line” after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used
chemical weapons. And the administration was criticized for taking only
modest steps to nudge Assad out of power. Russia’s more recent military
support has only strengthened Assad’s position, while the war itself
created a refugee crisis that has overwhelmed Europe and Syria’s
neighbors.
“Syria is a demonstration of how international action
does not occur without the U.S. getting involved,” Jeffrey Engel, the
director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist
University, told
FoxNews.com.
Obama’s decision last month not to have the U.S. veto
a U.N. Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlements in
East Jerusalem and the West Bank -- and Secretary of State John Kerry’s
speech two days later accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of undermining the possibility of a two-state solution – also created
even more tension in the already-rocky relationship between his
administration and the Israeli government.
While Israeli-Palestinian peace was never realized in
Obama’s term, the president did log two major diplomatic breakthroughs.
He quarterbacked the thaw between the U.S. and Cuba that led to the
restoration of diplomatic relations after more than 50 years, and his
administration helped broker the Iran nuclear deal that granted the
Islamic Republic sanctions relief in exchange for strict monitoring and
limits on the country’s nuclear program.
The Iran deal, though, also fueled tensions with
Israel and is another policy that could be revisited under the Trump
administration.
There is one bold-print, all-caps entry in Obama’s
national security legacy, though, that no successor will be able to
touch: He green-lighted the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Usama bin
Laden.
Regulations
The Obama administration set records for the sheer
number of pages in the Federal Register, which lists federal
regulations. The Register stood at the end of 2016 at a whopping 97,110
pages – shattering the previous record of 81,405, also set by Obama in
2010.
Many of these regulations were enforced by the
Environmental Protection Agency as part of the administration’s plans to
curb carbon emissions and combat climate change. The coal industry,
which has been on the wane for a number of years as Americans move
toward cheaper, cleaner alternatives like natural gas, was hit hard by
tighter regulations.
Here, too, Trump has promised to rescind many of
those programs including the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Mercury and
Air Toxics Rule.
Unfinished Business
All presidents leave office with campaign promises they failed to meet, policies that got shelved and projects left half-done.
And Obama had his share.
While comprehensive immigration reform took on
greater political importance over the last eight years as the U.S.
Latino population grew at record rates, no major legislation was passed.
Obama’s executive actions helped keep some young immigrants in the
country, but his most recent actions were also blocked in the courts.
Obama’s hardly alone, however, in struggling with the issue.
“Given that George W. Bush couldn’t solve it,
especially with the advantages he had,” Engel said, “I’m not surprised
that Obama couldn’t do it.”
Strong opposition from Republicans and the National
Rifle Association also frustrated Obama’s moves to set stricter controls
on firearms amid a slew of mass shootings from Newtown and Charleston
to Aurora and San Bernardino.
He also was unable to achieve one of his biggest
campaign promises: shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. He has
significantly reduced the prisoner population there from the 242 when he
took office, but he leaves office with 41 still remaining at the camp.
When Obama entered office in 2009, there also was a
great deal of talk about how the country’s first black president would
usher in a new “post-racial America.” But during his farewell address,
the president acknowledged that “however well-intended,” that idea “was
never realistic.”
“Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society,” Obama said.
