Why Obama Will Go Down as One of the Greatest of all time

Something is dawning on us—it’s almost too soon for us to admit, but it’s there, a half-considered thought only now blooming in our brains. Maybe we dismiss it with one of those quick cognitive fly swats. Nah, too early to say or I hate that guy. But the truth is coming, and it sounds like this: Barack Obama will be inducted into the league of Great Presidents.

Wait. One of the Greatest? you ask, your thumb emoticon poised to turn up or down on me. The guy haters love to hate with their very best hate game? Like 20-Dollar Bill great? Like Mount Rushmore great?

Yep. (We just won’t build Mount Rushmores anymore.) In so many ways, Obama was better than we imagined, better than the body politic deserved, and far, far better than his enemies will ever concede, but the great thing about being great is that the verdict of enemies doesn’t matter.

In fact, and I say this as a Bill Clinton fan, I now feel certain that, in the coming decades, Obama’s star will rise higher than Clinton’s, and he’ll replace Bill in the public mind as the Greatest Democrat since FDR.

This has to do with the nature of Obama’s leadership, which is to play to legacy (and Clinton’s impulse, which is to play to the room). Bill Clinton will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the presidency. He’s simply bigger than Bill.

More to the point, Obama’s legacy is the sort that gets canonized. Because the first rule of Hall of Fame-dom: The times have to suck for the president not to. Civil wars, World Wars, depressions and recessions. You got to have ’em if you wanna be great. That’s why we rate the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts over That Fat Guy with the Walrus Mustache. Like Obama, these Great Men were dealt sucky hands, won big, and left the country better off than it was before.

    To unify where and however we can. In this way, too, Obama pointed the way forward.

But it’s also why we downgrade the Jimmy Carters and Herbert Hoovers. Were they as bad in real time as we remember them in history? Probably not. But they were dealt sucky hands, only played one round, and left the country feeling worse off. Legacy Game over. (Hoover reminds me more and more of Donald Trump! Elected with little political experience, Hoover was a rich bastard whose central theme was that government was wasteful. His answer to the Great Depression was to start a trade war and build a massive project called the Hoover Dam. The dam turned out to be a giant wall that did not stop or solve larger problems. Déjà vu, thy name is Trump Wall!)

Obama has a few other edges in the long haul of history, beyond specific hurrah moments like Obamacare, rescuing the economy, and making America way more bi-curious. Being the first black president of course secures a certain legacy. But what now feels distinctly possible is that, just as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, over time he may be judged less for the color of his skin than for the content of his character. That character came across every time haters or Trumpers or birthers tried to pull him down into the mud or question his American-ness. He just flew above it all. And, luckily, he took most of us with him. He was the Leader not only of our country but of our mood and disposition, which is harder to rule. At a time when we became more polarized, our discourse pettier and more poisoned, Obama always came across as the Adult in the Room, the one we wanted to be and follow.

Ironically, one of the lock-ins to his Hall of Fame Greatness was originally supposed to be his Achilles’ heel, the shallow thing critics loved to smear him with: his eloquence, his “reliance” on speeches and teleprompters (Sarah Palin once famously screeched, “Mr. President…step away from the teleprompter and do your job!” while herself reading from a teleprompter), as if addressing the country as a whole, trying to unify or inspire people, were a superficial thing. But pivotal words at pivotal moments are not only how we come to admire great leaders, it’s the primary way we remember them. The first thing most people can recall about Lincoln? The Gettysburg Address. FDR? Fireside chats. George Washington? His amazing Snapchats. (George was first with everything.)


With Obama, each thoughtful step of the way, from his soaring acceptance speech (“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep…”) to his epic speeches on race and religion, his responses to the shootings in Tucson and Newtown, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the opening of Cuba (“Todos somos Americanos!”), and countless other momentous occasions, he knew how to speak to our better angels at a time when it was hard to locate any angels.

cont...

Yeah, trying to rule via fiat instead of the Senate.

Redmond Neck wrote on Jul 24^th, 2016 at 6:55pm:



There are always alternatives. Just imagine if Abbott had tried that, ruling by decree.

Redmond Neck wrote on Jul 24^th, 2016 at 5:21pm:



How pathetic.


It's all emoting, no mention of any achievements - because there have been none.




meanwhile at the democratic Party Convention;

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) adopted a slogan from the Republican National Convention in their protests against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Sunday: “Lock her up!”

issuevoter wrote on Jul 27^th, 2016 at 8:18am:


I just think he is a lot better than all the rightards claim, the hawks all say he is too soft militarily but he just did what the public wanted when he was initially elected  and pulled the troops out of the ME, despite this the USA has used aircraft and drones to massively bomb the crap out of IS and lots of the other terrorist groups in ME and Africa

as far as that graph below is concerned (origin unknown), I think he will be be seen in a better light as years go by, unfortunately he is in his second term and the usual lame duck president applies to him as most others in the same boat. I really think the two term rule really needs dropping.

  You gotta love Obama ........ not!
What a great salesman he is - conned millions of Americans. Seems that the conspiracy theorists were right.
Watch!

 
​XXXX​


Only 19 seconds, Sent by a German friend after the YouTube version from the US was pulled.

If you haven't heard this you should listen to it. It only takes 19 seconds.

It's unbelievable that Obama actually says this out loud!  This Obama speech was given at the Bilderberg Group conference in Brussels, Belgium, on May 23, 2014. Obama's comments are chilling - THIS IS THE NEW WORLD ORDER that has been percolating through a number of American presidencies and other world leaders, and now seems to be coming into fruition

PLEASE pass it on to everyone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfRtbIQ1kTw&feature=youtu.be

Obama erklärt in kürze die Neue Welt Ordnung ... - YouTube
www.youtube.com
Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. http://www.Wahrheitsbewegung.net - Die neue Weltordnung ist kein Mythos. Wir leben ...

Squire wrote on Jul 27^th, 2016 at 10:14am:



It will be interesting to see what decree rulings will be overturned by a new President.

America, or the idea that is America, has been SOOOO successful because it has always been wary of big government.

europe and the soviet union say that the right place for power and control of the flow of $$$ is with a central authroity. a central authority knows best what is good for the people.

America, at its core, has always believed that the people know best how to earn a buck and how to spend a buck (well at least until recent decades).

And the fall of the soviet union leaving the USA as the one remaining superpower showed that the american model was the correct model.
The american model of smaller government and capitalist competition had prevailed, It had won.

And then, at the very pinnacle of their success, they, for reasons unbeknown to common sense, started to copy the failed policies of the socialist democratic countries of europe with expanding welfare system and worrying more about minorities then the engine room of growth...the marvellous entrepreneurial spirit of Wall St and Silicon Valley  had to play second fiddle to "affirmative action" and "medicaid" and a blossoming welfare state.

America is living proof that the mountain you have to climb , the mountian of success you climb, so that you can reach the pinnacle , is a muddy mountain. When you get to the top, if you just rest and admire the view, you immediately start slipping down those muddy slopes. You have to have a rational paranoia about failure and realise that success is difficult to obtain and fleeting in its nature.
America did not learn these lessons and successive poor leadership from carter, the bushes, clinton, obama and now probably clinton again have seen them sliding down that slope.
There is a very narrow road to success and Obama has been asleep at the wheel.

issuevoter wrote on Jul 27^th, 2016 at 4:10pm:


Good reply!

Thanks 

One of the greatest white and christian hating mistakes the American people have ever made.

The White House economists just announced that GDP for Obama’s last year will be 1.9 percent. Obama will therefore become the only president in America’s history to never produce a single year of 3 percent or higher GDP. Even Herbert Hoover outperformed Obama!

The longest previous streak of under 3 percent GDP in the history of America was four years (1930 to 1933) during the depths of the Great Depression.

From 1790 to 2000, America’s economy averaged GDP growth of 3.79 percent. Obama’s eight years are on pace to average GDP of 1.55 percent — substantially less than half of our country’s average economic growth for 210 years.

Even worse, GDP for Obama’s entire time as President was just downgraded by the Commerce Department by more than $300 billion.

For the first time in American history, more businesses are being destroyed each day than are being created.

There are 70 percent more Americans collecting entitlement checks than working in the private sector (148 million “takers” vs. 86 million “makers”). This is a fact provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Thirteen of the 23 Obamacare State Co-Op Exchanges have failed (gone bust and broke). The remaining 10 have losses of over $200 million per year. The $1.24 billion of federal start-up money used to start them all is most probably gone forever. It will never be repaid.

In this Obama economy, 40 percent of American workers now earn less (adjusted for inflation) than a full-time minimum wage worker in 1968.

Some 20 percent of U.S. families don’t have a single member who is employed:

A record number of Americans are not in the workforce (over 94 million):

More Young Americans now live with their parents than at any time since Great Depression.

43 percent of the 22 million student loan borrowers aren’t making any loan payments.

Two thirds of Americans don’t have $500 for an emergency bill.

Food stamp use under Obama is up by 43 percent.

The number of new food stamp recipients under Obama is 3 times higher than new job recipients (13,298,000 added to food stamp rolls vs 4,276,000 new jobs since January 2009).

The middle class has shrunk in nine out of every ten U.S. cities.

For the first time in almost a half century, the middle class is no longer the economic majority in America. Pew reported the middle class is “disappearing” and “hollowing out.”

It’s time to make the U.S. economy the centerpiece of the Trump campaign. Run TV ads 24/7 touting the real facts about the Obama-Hillary economy.

Obama doesn't even come close

He's down there with Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson & etc.

Correction: he's not "with" them he's below them.