by evilgenius » Sat 17 Dec 2016, 17:15:11
There is something to being the first black president, I'll give you that. That wasn't enough, however, to overcome the expectations that people had of him. Very early on into his first term he began to let people down. He wasn't the second coming, and it hurt his reputation. Turns out he was just a man.
All kinds of people have tried to fling poo at him, and most of it hasn't stuck. In terms of his reputation he will be known as the guy who managed to prevent us going down into a second Great Depression. Along with that, for those who inquire more closely, there will be the fact he didn't throw too many bankers in jail. He didn't break the system in an effort to fix it. He managed it from within. And he managed to keep it upright even though it was teetering for a long time while under his watch.
His foreign policy did focus on Asia. At a time when most people were quite happy to purchase almost everything they owned from Asia, a trend that had its origin in the time before Obama, he had the temerity to focus on Asia. No, he didn't do anything emblematic towards Asia. He didn't 'go to China' like Nixon. He did try to focus on the other Asian nations, other than China. He did realize that one day Vietnam would be taking jobs from China in the same way that China took jobs from the US. He did engage the other Asian nations in such a manner as that they had status with the US when their time came.
He did realize that one day the Chinese wouldn't be able to willy nilly devalue their currency in the way they had always been able to and that they would face having to deal with a more structured order internationally. For all that, he didn't engage the Chinese in places like Africa, where they fought hard to gain an economic foothold that has become intrinsic to many African nation's economies. Neither was he very good at combating African corruption.
He didn't cancel any big defense initiatives. Unlike Jimmy Carter, who was cratered for canceling the B-1 bomber program, he didn't cancel the F-35. What he did do along those lines was to go whole hog after the use of drones to project American power without putting American lives at risk. There was blowback from this, in the form of increased terrorism as a result of the agitation too many collateral deaths brought on, but it was manageable, sort of. Obama managed to project American power without putting very many American lives at risk. His legacy along those lines may have more to do with how Americans sometimes need to take on some of the risk that he allowed them to take off of their shoulders, in order to feel more a part of what they are doing and to understand who they are as Americans in the greater world. He wasn't thought of as presiding over a producing America when actually America under him produced quite a bit. The way he separated average Americans from their responsibilities may have played some part in that.
Obama let the Europeans go their own way. He didn't try to rein them in economically. He didn't attempt to tie their economic policy to that of the US. He didn't engage with the more socialist experiments in Europe and try to discredit them. He just let them fail, if they were going to fail. He let the Europeans worry about Europe. What was going on over in the US was enough for him. If it was built up and running with some steam when the Europeans were failing, or stagnating that might be a good thing.
He was aggressive at threatening Russian hegemony over the territories south of Russia. He engaged in a lot of posturing, military and otherwise, in those places in order to keep the Russians off step. He did try to get them to change their corrupt way of doing things, but only in the manner of offering the olive branch with the left hand, not the right.
Last edited by
evilgenius on Sat 17 Dec 2016, 17:39:50, edited 1 time in total.
