Two things:
1) Obama is a man of tremendous dignity and class, a great role model, cool under pressure, thoughtful, charismatic, and inspiring.
2) Obama would have blown Trump out in this election, hands down, no question.
That said, while I am proud of him and the leadership he offered a troubled nation, I think there were some serious flaws in his approach to the job as not just America’s president, but our country’s leader:
- He lacked a street-fighting quality that could have helped demonstrate to his supporters and working class families across the country that he was on their side and willing to fight. I’m not saying we needed a modern day Eugene Debs or Huey Long, but a little FDR moxie would have been very useful over the last eight years.
- Similarly, he was too measured in his approach — not just his presentation, but also his politics. He never made a major push for the public option. He brought up but never really fought for increasing the minimum wage. He was virtually absent in 2009 and 2010 in the fight for comprehensive climate and energy legislation. I mean, what if Obama had met with McCain after the 2008 election to honor McCain for his patriotic service and to ask if McCain would be willing to help lead the charge in Congress to pass McCain’s own climate bill? Talk about a team of rivals. But instead, it became a partisan fight and Obama never engaged. When the Flint crisis hit, he never seemed to really get the fear and despair so many in that community felt. He never really fought, never really leaned in all the way on infrastructure — just a few little events here and there. On so many issues, where was the boldness of his campaign?
- He never developed a clear policy for dealing with the Arab Spring and the civil wars that ensued in Libya and Syria. It was an approach that never had or developed a clear strategic focus, and that contributed to the chaos in those countries, which then led to public backlash from the left and the right here at home. As a result, we saw us taking on ISIS as a major focus of our policies in the region, but then ended up supporting Syrian rebels with close ties to the jihadists that look and act a lot like ISIS. Similarly, I don’t know that our Afghanistan surge has accomplished anything. We’re still in bed with the Saudis, which is the breeding ground for so much of the Wahhabi extremism bleeding into the rest of the region.
- He let the bankers who crashed the global economy off the hook. I personally think the Dodd Frank financial reform bill is better than many on the left give it credit — but the fact that no one was led off in handcuffs after they gutted our country with their greedy, fraudulent, criminal acts is really unforgivable, IMO.
- He let the torturers in the Bush administration off the hook. Of all the complaints I have of Obama, this would have been the hardest sell politically. But when he blinked and let the torturers get away it, I think the wrong signal was sent to the left and right alike — this guy is weak and can be rolled.
On these and other issues, while the Obama administration made important progress, it was always so measured and restrained, never really reaching with the same inspired vision that he ran on as a candidate in 2008. And so we will now limp into the Trump adminstration, which is posed to undo so much of the Obama progress on so many issues.
Yes, Hillary did herself few favors by not running hard on these issues. She was compromised with too many years grappling with too many of these issues. And she never cut through with a big, bold message for the country, other than that Trump was unqualified and dangerous. That too is tragic.
But to be fair, it’s not like Obama did much better developing a clear message as president.