As Donald Trump prepares to take his place in the White House this week, CommonSpace columnist Shaun Kavanagh reflects on President Obama’s legacy
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils…
(Revelation 18:2)
FAREWELL Barack Obama. The current analysis of his presidency that has been ebbing out of the free press in the last few weeks has been variable, to put it kindly.
Journalists, commentators and pundits on TV and radio have all taken their turn to pay tribute to the Obama brand. High up on the list of plaudits are how identifiable as Obama is as an ordinary guy: installing a basketball court in the White House; the visit to a Dublin pub to down a pint of Guinness; the ‘bromance’ between him and his vice president, Joe Biden; and the numerous other heartfelt moments that trended across the world.
For all that Obama may have been a decent man, he has his fair share of critics. Perhaps with good reason.
Obama escalated fighting in Afghanistan; deported more people than any president in US history; he didn’t close Guantanamo Bay as he promised during his election campaign; and he presided over an era where the top one per cent of society got nearly two-thirds of the income growth in eight years even as child poverty, especially black child poverty, remained astronomical.
For all that Obama may have been a decent man, he has his fair share of critics. Perhaps with good reason.
Yet there is a palpable sense that some of Obama’s critics are being slightly unfair in their analyses.
Indeed, when the cruel mistress of time doth pass, my reckoning is that the annals of history will be kinder to Barack Obama than the current scrutiny suggests. My reasoning for that is quite simple – Obama never promised to be a revolutionary.
Obama stood on a fairly centrist platform, promising healthcare reform and moderate wealth redistribution. Effectively, this was the same programme that mainstream Democrats had stood on for a generation.
During the presidential election campaign, Obama showed that he was a fantastic orator, and he promised hope and change. To some extent, he delivered on that promise. It’s important to remember why.
In 2008, Obama inherited the reins of a country that was in a relative crisis. The US had lost one war in the Gulf and was losing another in Afghanistan. The country was still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. This was one of the worst natural disasters America had ever seen.
Yet there is a palpable sense that some of Obama’s critics are being slightly unfair in their analyses.
Sixty-seven per cent of New Orleans was African American and 30 per cent of the residents were poor, creating the impression that the government was insensitive and neglectful of minorities and the less fortunate, which was a contributing factor to George W Bush’s stained legacy.
Due to Obama’s administration, more than 90 per cent of Americans have health insurance since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the highest proportion ever. He defended the rights of immigrants and muslim Americans. He lambasted those who refuse to accept the science of climate change. He reformed the student loan programme, which will have a huge impact on a generation of students.
Crucially, though he has often been keen to downplay this, Obama will forever be known as America’s first black president. His victory was symbolic of a new era for African American societal recognition and acceptance.
Paradoxically, Obama embodied the anxieties of a particular section of white America. The son of a Kenyan immigrant at a moment when America is struggling to come to terms with the impact of immigration and foreign trade.
The Republicans challenged him not through reasoned debate, but by engineering a government shutdown in the House of Representatives. Whether this was partly due to his race, or simply that he was a Democratic president, is beyond the scope of this article.
Indeed, when the cruel mistress of time doth pass, my reckoning is that the annals of history will be kinder to Barack Obama than the current scrutiny suggests.
It would be a fair point to say, however, that Republican politicians and white voters abandoned policies they had long supported once they were endorsed by an African-American president.
Fundamentally, the failures of Barack Hussein Obama, are our failures too. For we, as human beings, are too ready to unload our utmost hopes and dreams on to the shoulders of others. Obama was elected on a tidal wave of optimism, promising to heal America’s wounds. Could he ever realistically have lived up to this pressure?
The fractures of American society have taken centuries to accumulate, and simply cannot be fixed over two presidential terms.
We are too quick to look to one person as our saviour; who will represent our values, our desires; our wishes, however varied they are within ourselves, or with others. When we place our complete optimisms and hopefulness in the hands of others, we will ultimately be disappointed in the long run.
Especially when we pin our expectations on to one individual. Nelson Mandela could not alone solve the racial tensions in South Africa; Che Guevara could not deliver the socialist utopia he espoused in South America; even Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross for his trouble. Sadly, far against the grain of the more exciting narrative, real life is far more complex.
Obama will give way man who has made it his purpose to shatter the cohesion that generations have worked towards and taken for granted – not only in America, but across the democratic world.
Whatever disappointments people may have with Obama; it often says more about them than the former president. That’s not to say that some criticisms aren’t warranted, or that Obama didn’t have flaws – he did. Yet it’s important to remember the not too distant past of where America was before Obama – and the unwritten future of where it is going.
Obama will give way man who has made it his purpose to shatter the cohesion that generations have worked towards and taken for granted – not only in America, but across the democratic world.
Donald Trump is a grotesque man-baby. He is utterly without ethics or any base sense of decency. He is an admitted sexual predator; a vicious, narcissistic bully, with all the loyalty of a shark that has been poked in the eye. He is a man who can self-congratulate his own ability to shake someone’s hand and stab them in the back at the same time.
Trump is building a movement on grievance. It maintains that Americans are unemployed because immigrants stole their jobs. It argues that Hispanics and African Americans are diluting the culture of America and that LGBT people having rights is an attack on the traditional family.
His slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, is indicative of this narrative. America was great once, but not anymore, because of the ‘others’. Renounced is the premise of the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
Donald Trump is a grotesque man-baby. He is utterly without ethics or any base sense of decency.
This is the politics of fear and loathing, and it goes right to the heart of Washington. Welcome to Trumpville. Trump has already amassed humiliations that have gone beyond any presidential scandals in the last two decades – and he isn’t even president yet.
For all his faults, Barack Obama was at his best a progressive who held the office of president higher than himself, and at his very core a thoroughly decent human being.
Watching his farewell address in Chicago last week brought me right back to when I stayed up to watch his victory speech in November 2008. From then until now, he has been a rock of integrity and eloquence. He has been the beacon of enlightened hope.
We would do well to remember his like – for the big darkness is coming.
Picture courtesy of Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann
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