January 25, 2016
This week, President Obama delivers his final State of the Union address to the Joint Session of Congress. While it will detail his legislative agenda for the final year of his presidency, it is being widely anticipated as a retrospective and celebration of his two terms in office, which by all objective accounts, have been an unqualified success.
After a surprising landslide victory over Republican Senator and Vietnam war hero John McCain in November 2008, largely brought about by widespread (and ultimately justified) panic over the outset of a global financial crisis. Mr Obama secured 53% of the vote (the first Democrat in 32 years to win a majority of the popular vote) and 384 electoral votes compared to a 46% tally and 154 electoral votes for his GOP opponent. In a country that had been deeply split in half by partisan lines for the past few election cycles, it was seen as a clear repudiation of the preceding Bush presidency (now widely acknowledged by historians as the worst crisis ever in American leadership). Also, for the first ever African American nominee of a major party to win such a handsome victory indicated that the country was on its way towards shedding its tragic racist past.
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