Obama: A Legacy of Abject Failure & Deceit

Alas, there is little else that can be said of him and his time in office that is positive. Given the high expectations that accompanied the beginning of his Presidency, it was almost inevitable that Obama would come to disappoint in some ways. Too often, however, his promised potential proved to be unfulfilled, as the audacity of hope became but an empty pipe dream. 

 Obama the candidate promised a new bipartisan era that would heal America's divides but the country he leaves as his presidency ends is now more divided than ever. Political polarization is more pronounced than possibly it ever was before.

 In his initial years, buoyed by a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, he made little effort to be conciliatory and rammed through his signature health care reform bill without a single Republican vote. When the Republicans regained control of House in 2014 and later the Senate four years later he made no serious attempts at outreach. Gridlock between a Congress and the White House of budgetary matters did not even elicit an attempt by Obama to find middle ground. 

 When legislative initiatives such as gun control failed to secure the necessary votes to pass Obama descended to moral lecturing and at times outright pouting. 

 Stubbornness was met with stubbornness, and in later years the President increasingly resorted to rule by executive order and weakening of Congressional checks such as the filibuster. With Republicans now hold both the White House, Congress and soon to once again have a majority on the Supreme Court, the now established precedent of "I won" may very well become a nightmare for Democrats of their own making.

 Obama took something of a victory that had been achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan and replaced it with defeat born by the premature withdrawal of American troops for no other reason than a crass political desire to be done with the whole affair and, in the former's case, he facilitated the rise of the Islamic State, possibly the most heinous entity of the twenty-first century. 

 He stood by and did nothing as the Arab Spring destabilized the entire Middle East, and in those cases where he did act, such as Libya, his interventions served only to make matters worse. Iran is now on a clear road to a nuclear weapon, and Turkey - next to Israel possibly America's closest ally in the region - is now under the thumb of a soft-Islamist autocrat who increasingly is joined at the hip with Russia.

 Syria will doubtlessly be remembered as the greatest black stain upon Obama's tenure. Under his watch, a rebellion against the Al Assad regime grew into a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more. 

 Red lines were declared and then quietly ignored as they were crossed, as the chlorine gas and barrel bombs of the Damascus regime rained death from above. 

 That Aleppo, the birthplace of the rebellion and the last urban centre held by those rebels not openly aligned with Islamic State, has finally fallen only weeks prior to the forces of Al Assad backed by Russian jets and Iranian militiamen is a poignant symbol. America, for its part, has been reduced in this whole sorry affair to dispatching Obama's UN ambassador to berate Al Assad and his allies with empty declarations of "have you no shame?".

 As we say goodbye to Barack Obama, we would be forgiven for accompanying it with a corroding good riddance. His place in history, by virtue of him being the first African American president, is secure. It will be more just, however, if he is remembered for what he truly was: a failure who oversaw the decline of Pax Americana and the descent of the world in chaos.

http://www.poletical.com/obama-abject-failure.php


Obama’s Legacy Of Deceit

 In its remaining days in power, the Obama administration suddenly punished Vladimir Putin’s Russia for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election. It claimed that Russian or Russian-hired hackers tapped into the records of the Democratic National Committee as well as the correspondence of John Podesta, a Clinton advisor.

 But what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation

 The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred largely because of Podesta’s own carelessness in using his security password. Moreover, it failed to acknowledge that the Republican National Committee was likewise targeted, but apparently had enough safeguards to prevent successful entry into its records. Finally, the administration refused to mention that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange went on the record saying that he did not receive the email trove from the Russians.

 The truth is that Obama, throughout his presidency, has appeased Putin. As president, Obama ended the previously agreed-on Eastern European missile defense; he made open-mic promises to be more flexible with Putin after his reelection; he barely responded to Russia’s aggression toward Crimea and Ukraine; and he constantly criticized both George W. Bush and Mitt Romney for being inordinately tough on Russia.

 Until now, he saw no reason to stop enabling Russia. Had Hillary Clinton won the election, Putin’s alleged hacking would not have earned any administration attention. But this time around, an emboldened Putin allegedly went too far and crossed the only red line that Obama might have enforced by supposedly enabling the release of information that might have turned off some voters on Clinton.

http://www.hoover.org/research/obamas-legacy-deceit