President Obama’s legacy

President Barack Obama spent an hour last night touting his legacy to an adoring crowd in his hometown of Chicago and urging his supporters to continue his work.

History and historians will be the final judge of his eight-year legacy as President of the United States.  No president can be sure of his legacy until at least 50 years have passed.    Harry Truman has been recognized as a better president than his news reports at the time would have suggested.   And, Lyndon Johnson is becoming recognized as one of the 20th Century’s greatest presidents.    So, we need time to really understand the legacy left by Barack Obama.

But, with an eye still looking at current time, we can say for certain, that Barack Obama will go down in the history books for one thing – – he was the first non-white man to hold the highest office in the United States.   Obama will always be a note in the history books because of that accomplishment alone.  In a lesser aspect, historians will say that he was a decent man who was a good father and a good husband to his wife.

In broader terms, his time as president was a time of new initiatives which failed.   His Affordable Care Act started the country down the road to socialized medicine, a path I suggest it was bound to take.   He put 20 million Americans on the health care rolls by borrowing three trillion dollars from the Chinese.

In an effort to Europeanize the United States, he politicized the federal agencies to an extent previously unknown, including the IRS.  He extended federal rules and regulations in areas previously the role of the states.

In the area of race relations, the president himself said that race relations are better now than they ever have been.   He organized minority groups to support his election but was unable to hold them in place for his designated heir apparent. Those constituents will not be able to stick together around the theme of race alone.

In the area of international relations, President Obama has had his biggest failures.   He has diminished the role of the United States to such an extent that our enemies no longer fear us and our allies no longer trust us.

The list of his failures goes on – China, Iran, Syria, Russia, Israel.  President Obama’s long term legacy will be one of over reach on the domestic front and abject failure in the international arena.

Those are my observations.  Lets wait 50 years and see what the historians say.   They always come up with surprises.