The rest of the story: What Obama won’t tell you about his legacy

From the economy to race relations, the president failed to deliver on his promise of hope and change

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-rest-of-the-story-what-obama-wont-tell-you-about-his-legacy-2017-01-05

1. It’s (still) the economy, stupid
The expansion that began in June 2009 has been the weakest since World War II, with real gross domestic product growth averaging 2.1%. At 7 1/2 years and counting, it is also among the longest on record. But it hasn’t packed much of a punch. Cumulative growth of 16.5% since the trough is well shy of the 38.4% increase during the 1982-1990 expansion and 42.6% from 1991-2001, according to the Wall Street Journal.

2. A Legacy of Ashes
Obama’s continued popularity hasn’t had much of a trickle-down effect. In the eight years since he was first elected, Democrats have lostmore than 1,000 seats at the state and national level. Republicans now control 4,170 state legislative seats compared with 3,129 for the Democrats, an all-time low.Republicans now hold 33 governorships and will have full control— governorship and both houses of the state legislature — in 25 states compared with five for the Democrats.Democrats lost 12 governorships, 13 Senate seats and 69 seats in the House of Representatives during Obama’s two terms, highlighting “a devastation up and down the party across the nation,” according to The Hill.

3. Keep your friends close
At his year-end press conference on Dec. 16, which was short on questions, long on answers, Obama spoke about his response to the Russian hacking of Democratic National Committee emails during the election.He said that when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in China in September, he told him to “cut it out” in terms of the hacking.Sorry, Mr. President, the world isn’t afraid of you and your empty threats. Eight years of leading from behind has left America’s standing in the world diminished, its moral authority compromised and its foreign policy in tatters.The wars Obama inherited are still going on. The Taliban has made a comeback in Afghanistan. Syria is in shambles. And Secretary of State John Kerry has been so ineffective that no one even bothered to invite him to the Syrian cease-fire negotiations among Russia, Turkey and Iran.If that isn’t wreckage enough, Obama broke with 36 years of U.S. policy by abandoning its ally Israel and allowing the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2234, declaring Israeli settlements, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount in East Jerusalem, illegal. It was a vindictive act that discourages bilateral negotiations and puts a two-state solution increasingly out of reach. Friends don’t knife friends in the back.

4. Divided we stand
Obama may have broken racial barriers when he became the first African-American president of the U.S., but his election did nothing to improve race relations. In fact, a majority of Americans (54%) say that race relations deteriorated under Obama, according to a recent CNN/ORC poll.Obama’s efforts on behalf of African-Americans often backfired. Before he had the facts in hand, the president accused Cambridge, Mass., police officers of acting “stupidly” when they arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his own home in 2009.

The police were responding to a report of a potential burglary, which turned out to be Gates trying to pry open his front door.The incident divided the country: blacks supported Obama’s accusations of racial profiling; whites said he had played the race card. Obama’s response was to bring the parties together for a “beer summit” at the White House.Obama has promoted the idea of a police force biased against blacks.

He vehemently denied FBI Director James Comey’s explanation for the surge in violent crime and homicide rates last year as a result ofthe “Ferguson effect,” with law-enforcement officers pulling back from proactive policing following the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.Chicago, Obama’s hometown, witnessed 762 homicides last year, the most in two decades, and 1,100 more shootings than in 2015. Obama’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, the reason is the Ferguson effect, according to the Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald. What’s more, statistics show that police are three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspectsthan white ones.

5. That which must not be named
Radical Islamic terrorism. Obama has spent eight years deftly avoiding using those three words to call an act what it is. He has intellectualized his position by claiming the phrase “equates Islam with terrorism,” which is counterproductive to U.S. counterterrorism efforts.Instead, Obama prefers terms such as “workplace violence,” even if the terrorists in question pay homage to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State. A terrorist act provides an opportunity for the president to lecture the nation on the need for stricter gun-control laws.Calling something what it is may not solve the problem, but avoiding it makes Obama look silly.
 Everyone remembers the gilded setting, complete with Greek columns, that served as the backdrop for Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver. Don’t expect the same pomp and circumstance at next week’s farewell address.

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