Summary of international and national legacy.
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Obama’s Legacy Is the Trump Presidency
His foreign policy was one of retrenchment, and his signature health-insurance law made things worse.
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Close to a decade in the making, the $850 million Obama Presidential Center opens to the public on Friday. The 225-foot brutalist building—dubbed the Obamalisk—looms over a 19-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side. Even the most imposing facade can’t mask the failures of the 44th president.
Barack Obama has remained popular. As America’s first black president, he is guaranteed a place in history. But his grand ambitions now seem quaint. In 2008 Mr. Obama likened himself to Ronald Reagan, who he said had “changed the trajectory of the nation.” If Mr. Obama altered the nation’s direction, it was toward decline.
Start with foreign policy. Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama sought to retrench U.S. power. His “reset” with Russia, surge of forces in Afghanistan, withdrawal from Iraq, and failure to enforce red lines in Syria had lethal effects. In his first term, Mr. Obama canceled missile defenses and promised Russia more “flexibility” in his second. He tolerated dictators such as Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, even taking in a soccer game alongside Cuba’s Raúl Castro.
Ambivalence and half-steps marked Mr. Obama’s efforts in the Middle East. He paired an increase in troop levels in Afghanistan with a timeline for withdrawal—thereby giving the Taliban reason to keep fighting. He alternated between apathy and encouragement as Islamist uprisings overthrew strongman allies in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war contributed to the migrant crisis that overwhelmed Europe. America’s retreat from Iraq in 2011 created space for the rise of ISIS in 2014.
Mr. Obama’s hundreds of drone strikes and the successful attack on Osama bin Laden didn’t halt terrorism. On the contrary, jihadism spread. Global disorder spiked. America’s standing took a hit. In 2013 Mr. Obama backed off his pledge the previous year to retaliate if Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons. Then he invited Russia to play a role where it had been absent for decades. In 2014 Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and launched an insurgency in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Secretary of State John Kerry chided Mr. Putin for “19th-century behavior.” Mr. Putin ignored him.
Russia wasn’t the only U.S. adversary that grew stronger. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran, legitimized the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The regime’s missile production and support for terrorist proxies went unaddressed. America sent more than a billion dollars to Iran even though it wouldn’t disclose its nuclear secrets or submit to anytime, anywhere inspections. Money flowed to the regime. The mullahs poured these resources into their “ring of fire” targeting Israel.
The JCPOA was only one point of dispute between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two leaders clashed over settlements, Gaza, Lebanon, the two-state solution and Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in 2015. By the end of Mr. Obama’s presidency, tensions had reached the point that the U.S., for the first time in 35 years, refused to veto an anti-Israel U.N. resolution. The “daylight” Obama fostered between the U.S. and Israel didn’t go unnoticed. It illuminated a path to power for anti-Israel activists in the Democratic Party—a path they have traveled.
Meanwhile, North Korea improved its nuclear arsenal, and Mr. Obama’s ballyhooed “pivot to Asia” didn’t slow China’s rise. How could it? U.S. military budgets fell, eroding the defense industrial base and contributing to weapons shortages. Mr. Obama’s environmental policies bolstered China’s green energy advantage. Foreign and domestic policy combined to undermine the U.S. position.
If Mr. Obama was a minimalist abroad, he was a maximalist at home. He used executive power whenever Congress or the public rebuffed him. When cap-and-trade legislation failed, Mr. Obama took executive action that required neither congressional approval nor democratic consent. The Paris Climate Accord, Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule extended government’s hand into the economy’s nooks and crannies, suppressing growth.
Mr. Obama’s disregard for voters was also evident in healthcare and immigration. He jammed the unpopular Affordable Care Act—ObamaCare—through Congress with the promise that Americans could keep their plans and premiums would fall. Millions of individual health insurance plans were canceled and premiums doubled. Changed beyond recognition, ObamaCare is a zombie policy. Its costs continue to mount.
Eager to secure Hispanic votes for re-election, Obama issued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order in the spring of 2012. He then spent years saying he lacked constitutional authority to expand the program—before doing exactly that after Republicans picked up 13 House seats and nine Senate seats in 2014.
The cavalier attitude with which Mr. Obama imposed such policies, acting as if the opposition didn’t exist or was beneath consideration, made backlash inevitable. The public rebelled against Mr. Obama’s governing style, handing Republicans Congress, a majority of governor’s mansions and most state legislatures by 2017. Donald Trump’s presidency may be Mr. Obama’s most enduring legacy.
Mr. Obama’s vaunted political instincts were ineffective against Mr. Trump. He lost his touch. The 2024 election exposed the depth of Mr. Obama’s estrangement from a country that still looks on him fondly, if distantly. His impassioned speech at the Democratic convention couldn’t carry Kamala Harris over the finish line. His accusation that black men “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president” dripped with condescension and false motives. The “bitter clingers” Mr. Obama disdained in 2008 had been racially integrated.
Mr. Obama’s presidency casts a fading shadow. Most of his plans have been dashed, his achievements reversed. He promised to lay “a new foundation” for the country—only to see his successor tear it up. He won’t be known for lasting reform, but for symbolizing an era of rapid social change and preparing the way for Mr. Trump’s rise, fall and restoration.
The true story of Mr. Obama is hubris meeting nemesis. But you won’t hear about that at the Obamalisk.
