Obama's Hopeful Legacy

President Obama in a broad sense was an average president, although it very much depends on what happens in the next few years. Regardless of what happens to the policies, he put in place, the fact that he was the first African-American president amidst such a racially divided country will alone go down in history as a reason to remember him. He was also president during the first wave of marijuana decriminalization, something that we are spearheading the world in, and is constantly growing.

To have a sense of Obama's presidency, we have to go back to his first year in office. With a struggling economy that had just been in recession, and having troops in two unfavorable wars the middle east, Obama did his best in his situation. Obama got a lot done like getting us out of the wars, rebuilding the country’s economy, and getting re-elected into another term, but there was one big problem with his presidency. Although he did win a mandate victory in 2008, he wasted a majority of his presidential power on trying to get ObamaCare passed. He overestimated his mandate in trying to get it passed and was possibly a result of the Democrats crushing midterm election defeat in 2010 considering more people identify themselves as conservative and liberal. We can see this is true due to the fact that he failed at getting Guantanamo Bay closed, even though he had promised to in his campaign. With the stark opposition he faced with the Affordable Care Act, he knew there was no way the Republicans would hope on board with that idea. While over 96% of African Americans that when to the polls voting for Obama in 2008, and almost the same percentage in 2012, many of them thought that Obama would heal the racial tension in the US, but the opposite actually came true. Racial tensions have been on a rise for a while, and it seems that with his presidency it has gotten worse.

The true test of his legacy will come with what Trump will do with his policies and the dialogue that come from his presidential office. Trump is surrounding himself with figures like Jeff Sessions, which is accused of being racist and xenophobic. This coupled with his support base, that includes fishy individuals like David Duke that endorsed him, can intensify the racial divide and cause an uproar in racial tensions. Not to mention that most of his base has the strong anti-LGBT element, much of the progress of these people in the past years could come to a screeching halt. Trump's whole campaign was just a result of reactionary rhetoric against the liberal policies of Obama and directed at Hillary Clinton, the status quo candidate of legacy.

Trump's opposition to ObamaCare is not the biggest challenge to Obama's legacy. It is the fact that if ObamaCare is repealed and replaced with a system that actually works, it would work in support of Donald Trump at the cost of Obama's legacy. He could be seen a savior from Obama's failed policies and a messiah to the conservative movement like Reagan was in the 80’s. In conclusion, the only way we will be able to know how lasting Obama’s legacy becomes is in 10, 30, or even 50 years when we see the long-lasting effects of his policies and Trumps changes to them.