As Uncompromising As Possible

Observations of Obama’s Over-Branded Presidency, Part II

In part one of our deep-dive evaluation of Barack Obama’s presidency, we covered an array of foreign policy missteps.  In this second part, we focus on how his presidency harmed Americans at home.  The title for part two is a call back to his speech to the 2016 class at Howard University, in which he said, “If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.”  He added that such an uncompromising approach will result in “a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair, and that’s never been the source of our progress.”  What would the world look like if “2016 Obama” could have had this little chat with “2009 Obama”?  Perhaps a little more compromise would have yielded a more unified and healthy nation. Alas, his legacy — is actual legacy, not the one that Obama apologists want to be his legacy — is a sicker (both literally and figuratively) nation tainted with the division that he cultivated.

Increasing Health Care Costs, Decreasing Health

The promise from President Obama was that he would make it “a right” rather than a privilege for all Americans to have quality, affordable health care with the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as “ObamaCare”), which he signed into law on March 23, 2010.  There are two key words that we feel should be a focus when reflecting upon and evaluating the success of the ACA: “quality” and “affordable”.

Prior to Obama entering office, healthcare policy was a disaster.  Healthcare was too costly for ordinary Americans and lack of access to affordable healthcare was a major contributor to personal bankruptcies.  However, a large portion of ObamaCare was written by the health insurance industry to help protect the health insurance industry.  As a result, ObamaCare failed to address a system that is structured to create cost overruns and that ultimately is bad for Americans.  Given that Republican groups had been working on proposals for healthcare reform for years, Obama had the opportunity to lead a truly bipartisan effort to bring about changes that would be good for Americans.  That would have been tough work but was totally manageable.  However, Obama was gifted with a Democrat-controlled Congress.  Obama and his Democrat kin knew they did not have to bother with Republicans since the minority party did not have the numbers to slow down the passage of ObamaCare. 

The ACA was an opportunity for creating unity to benefit Americans, but Obama took the easy way out — the path to more division.  The president set the tone of division during the generation and passage of ObamaCare.  As the sides fought over ObamaCare, there was an undercurrent in America pulling voters further and further to the Right.  ObamaCare itself and Obama’s own leadership in its enactment was a major contributor to the fuel behind the explosive political changes that were to come. Donald Trump was the spark that ignited it.  But it was Obama’s poor handling of policies like ObamaCare that drove the political division that America likely will not recover from for a generation.  But that is all just politics.  Let us look at the policy itself and how it has “helped” Americans, how it has provided “quality” healthcare, and how that healthcare has become more “affordable.”

A 2018 Cato Institute article by Michael F. Cannon points out that multiple sclerosis (MS) patients filed an average of $61,000 in claims annually.  Insurers received only about $47,000 per MS patient, even after risk-adjustment and reinsurance subsidies.  So, insuring those MS patients resulted in a $14,000 penalty per patient.  The response by the health insurance industry to ObamaCare rules about covering pre-existing conditions has been undesirable.  How are the insurance companies going to cover that cost?  The answer is simple: by charging more to insure younger, healthier patients and by sacrificing the quality of their coverage.  A 2016 study showed that the insurance companies are discouraging patients with pre-existing conditions from enrolling in their insurance programs by making their coverage worse through a reduction in quality that affects all enrollees.  As Mr. Cannon points out, “The law promised to end discrimination against the sick without compromising quality,” but “the law is in fact reducing the quality of drug coverage in a way that affects all enrollees.”

In November of 2023, even Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) finally saw the light.  She teamed with Senator Mike Braun (R-Indiana) to write a letter to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department to complain that the largest U.S. health insurers are gaming the ObamaCare system to dodge a provision that is intended to cap profits.  Obamacare requires that insurance companies spend at least 80% of premiums on medical claims.  Obama’s HHS said, “Consumers will receive more value for their premium dollar.”  The ObamaCare rules prompted insurers to affiliate with pharmacy benefit managers, retail pharmacies, and healthcare providers to which insurers can now steer their patients without being subject to government price and profit controls.  “An insurance conglomerate can inflate medical payments to affiliates to comply with” the ObamaCare profit cap while enhancing its own profits.  This vertical integration (and associated rising costs) that Senators Warren and Braun caught on to twelve years after ObamaCare was instantiated is not the only example of consolidation in the healthcare industry.  ObamaCare has led to the financial struggles of independent physicians (because Medicaid and Medicare do not reimburse their costs), which has driven the increasingly common practice of private-equity firms acquiring physician practices.  And the costs just keep getting passed along to the patients.

Obamacare mandated electronic health records.  The sales pitch for this mandate was that electronic health records were going to improve the quality and efficiency of care. The outcome was a reduction of efficiency, a surge in financial costs, a burdensome amount of time to comply, and an overload of administrative hassles.  These outcomes have pushed more doctors — really good doctors — to quit or retire early.  And now, our nation has a shortage of physicians.  How many will suffer — or lose their healthcare battle — because of a record keeping burden imposed by ObamaCare?

The following chart (found in this linked article) shows the life expectancy compared to the per capita health care spending from 1980 to 2022 for the United States and “comparable” countries.  The upward trend of life expectancy in the U.S. from 1980 to 2010 was pretty consistent.  The start of ObamaCare (2010) coincided with a distinct halt in the upward trend of life expectancy, despite drastic increases in health care spending per capita.

There are certainly a lot of questions that arise when examining the data trends and the decline in the life expectancy of Americans.  One question worth consideration:  How did the depletion of the health care system, the increased health care costs, and the declining quality of health care impact Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic?  If the overall quality of the healthcare system had been better, would Americans have seen a less severe decline in life expectancy during the pandemic (more in line with the Comparable Country Average)?  And would Americans have experienced a quicker recovery from the dip in life expectancy, as was the case with the Comparable Countries?

The bottom line is that the trend of Americans living longer has ceased, the average cost of health care per person increased from ~$8k in 2010 to over $12.5k in 2022, Americans are dying younger than people in other wealthy countries while paying nearly twice as much.  The health care emphasis in the U.S. is on treatment of the sick rather than promoting health and preventing disease.  To quote Dr. Asaf Bitton, “We have a wonderful sick care system that takes care of very sick people, but a very inadequate health care system.”  This was true prior to the Obama presidency, but ObamaCare has exacerbated this.  Obama’s promise to make it a “right” to better quality, more affordable health care was never fulfilled by the Affordable Care Act.  Besides, the promise itself missed the mark.  The “right thing to do” is to improve the health of the U.S. population. ObamaCare just made it possible for more people to access a system that is killing them at a younger age than every other developed country.  Per a 2022 Forbes article, Obamacare was improperly designed to reform insurance, for which the price is literally and figuratively paid by the patients, rather than empowering patients “to take ownership of their care” or to “allow consumers to make fully informed choices about the care they select.”

We are to understand that providing health care to all Americans is the right thing to do.  Ultimately, the real “success” of ObamaCare is that it made Obama supporters feel good about themselves because of the rightness of making health care available to everyone.  The promise to provide quality health insurance coverage for all was never fulfilled because ObamaCare incentivizes poor coverage.  The following statement from the previously mentioned Forbes article sums it up: “What we have is a deteriorating system that is failing Americans on all of its main dimensions:  quality, affordability, and accessibility.”

As is typical of Obama’s presidency, he aimed to do what is “right” for Americans, but the outcome is an interruption of the trend of increasing life span that has coincided with ever-growing healthcare costs and a shortage of physicians — and Americans are paying with the wallet, their health, their quality of life, their life span, and their lives.  Obama’s policies continue to cost Americans more than ever before, but at least they are not living longer!

Jinxing Journalists

Among his first days in office, President Obama claimed that “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”  In conflict with this claim is his legacy as it pertains to a free press.  His administration set a new standard for prosecuting whistleblowers and journalists.  The Obama administration charged more whistleblowers (eight) under the Espionage Act than all other presidential administrations combined.

A notable instance of violating the First Amendment rights of journalists was a couple dozen reporters who were arrested or detained while covering the conditions in Ferguson, Missouri in the days and weeks following the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old by a Ferguson police officer.  Obama later stood up for those journalists, but observers found it disingenuous given that he was demanding another journalist comply with requests to reveal a source, which according to court documents described “a failed attempt by the CIA to have a former Russian scientist provide flawed nuclear weapons blueprints to Iran.”  That journalist was James Risen, a New York Times reporter at the time, who was subpoenaed in 2015 to testify in a trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent facing 10 felony charges for allegedly leaking confidential information to Risen.  Prior to appearing before the court, Risen was threatened with jail time.  Still, he refused to divulge any details about his sources.  In an interview published the same week that many of those reporters were being arrested in Ferguson, Risen said “A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin. They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

Closely related to this conversation, because of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, is the fact that Obama’s administration is famously the least secure as far as protecting sensitive information.  Manning leaked massive volumes of classified information to WikiLeaks and was eventually sentenced to 35 years in prison after being tortured during pre-trial imprisonment.  But we should all rest in comfort because Obama does the right thing.  Like trying to keep secret the video that Manning revealed of U.S. Apache helicopters murdering unarmed civilians and two journalists.  Obama does the “right thing” and people die.

Reporters Without Borders maintains a “press freedom index” that assesses a country’s press freedom records each year.  From 2009, when Obama took office, to 2015, the United States dropped 29 spots on the index.  The U.S. Director of Reporters Without Borders said, “National security protection is threatening freedom of information in the U.S.”  She added “We have seen the continuation of the war against whistleblowers that the U.S. has launched since President Obama took office in 2009.”

Climate Criticism

Obama has been labeled the “first climate president.”  However, he barely mentioned climate change during his two election campaigns.  It was not until well into his second term that climate change suddenly became the greatest threat the world faces.  Climate policy was lower priority during Obama’s first term than health care policy.  The climate policies that Obama did pursue lacked thought about how easily they could be undone.

Obama entered office in 2009 having inherited an important but unfinished responsibility from the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A 2007 Supreme Court ruling confirmed that carbon dioxide (CO2) qualifies as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.  The EPA was left to reconsider its position on regulating power plants and handled that by running out the clock of Bush’s presidency.  Thus, the decision was left to Obama’s EPA, which sat on the issue for nearly two years.  The Obama EPA reached a settlement agreement to propose new rules for power plants by July 2011 and finalize rules by May 2012, well into the 4^th year of Obama’s first term.  They did propose standards for new power plants in March 2012 (eight months late) but did not propose any standards for existing plants, which were actively polluting.  But it was an election year, so after a little push back from the coal industry, the EPA pulled the proposed rules and did not come up with anything new for 18 months.  The Clean Power Plan proposed regulations for existing plants in June 2014, although the EPA did not complete these standards until 2015.  In 2019, the Trump EPA killed the Clean Power Plan on the basis that low- and middle-income Americans would bear the burden of paying for it.  It was replaced by the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which was less restrictive on emissions but also avoided ballooning energy costs for the average American.

Obama supporters like to give his administration credit for mandating lower vehicle emissions.  And he did… only after the auto industry had already announced that it would only build vehicles compliant with California’s more stringent regulations.  So, the mission that Obama accomplished was a mission that had already been accomplished for him.

The most impactful domestic accomplishment of Obama’s actual climate policy was likely the Appliance and Equipment Standards Program.  This unheralded program enabled the Department of Energy to develop standards that reduce appliance electricity consumption.  A little bit at a time, as appliances are replaced over the years, these slightly more efficient replacements will slightly reduce CO2 emissions from the plants that power them.  That is, if the appliance manufacturing processes associated with making these more efficient appliances does not offset the environmental or energy efficiency benefits that they potentially provide.

Internationally, his administration succeeded in getting 197 nations to agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.  It was adopted on December 12, 2015, and enacted on November 4, 2016.  Trump withdrew as quickly as possible, though Obama’s negotiators built into the agreement a rule that three years must pass from the date of ratification before any country could submit notice that it planned to leave the agreement.  After that, the U.S. had to serve a 12-month notice period before being fully withdrawn from the agreement.  All of that time passed, and the U.S. was out by November 4, 2020.  President Biden re-entered the U.S. into the Paris agreement a few months later. However, by helping to negotiate to involve so many other nations, it seems Obama’s greatest climate success actually came beyond his own borders.

Seeing the “Light”

In hindsight, the “green” to which Obama’s green policies referred was the color of the money that was being funneled from taxpayers to the renewable/sustainable energy industries.  Those industries were almost completely propped up by U.S. government subsidies. 

One company that benefited from Obama policies was Solyndra. Obama once called Solyndra a “testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.”  Solyndra is now a famous black eye for the solar industry and the Obama administration.  Nobody should expect government spending to be efficient and it would be foolish to believe that every government investment into corporate America is going to pay off.  But the Obama administration (accused of cronyism in the case of Solyndra) had already provided nearly half of a $535 million loan from the government when Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

Abound Solar received a $400 million loan from Obama’s Department of Energy but filed for bankruptcy in 2011.  Employees of Abound Solar claimed that Obama’s Department of Energy also knew that their solar panels were defective prior to providing this enormous loan.  They pulled in about $70 million before the Department of Energy pulled the plug on their funding. 

The Crescent Dunes complex provides more insight into the brilliance behind shoveling taxpayer money onto a dumpster fire of “technological advancement”.  Obama’s Department of Energy loaned the company behind Crescent Dunes $737 million in 2011.  Using more than 10,000 mechanized mirrors each as large as a house, sunlight was to be focused by the Crescent Dunes complex onto a tower containing molten salt.  That salt was to be used to evaporate water to drive steam generators.  But it never worked well enough to turn any sort of profit and its technology was obsolete by the time the plant opened in 2015.  The company failed to pay the Energy Department $424.7 million before the Trump administration took them to court.

The examples go on and on.  And the outcome represents a gross mismanagement of tax dollars.

The Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) was introduced in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 during George W. Bush’s presidency.  It allowed those owning solar systems to receive tax credits of up to about 30% of the system cost, with a $2K cap.  The program was revitalized in 2008, at which point the $2K cap was removed for the residential ITC. The tax credit was set to step down in 2017 until Congress signed a $1.15 trillion spending bill that included provisions for extending the solar ITC.  Meanwhile, the mining of raw materials for and manufacturing of solar panels is now dominated by China.  So, all of those tax dollars being used to subsidize solar panels are being funneled to Chinese businesses. And the Obama administration did nothing to correct the hemorrhaging of U.S. tax dollars to our greatest economic and military rival.

How robust is solar?  Compared to the most reliable and clean energy source, nuclear power plants, it is not very reliable.  A typical nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt of electricity, according to energy.gov.  Because of the poor reliability of solar, you would need at least four 1-gigawatt solar farms to generate the same amount of electricity.  NUCLEAR IS MORE RELIABLE!!

Did you know that the cost per megawatt-hour of energy generated by nuclear power plants was $30.92 per megawatt-hour in 2022?  Meanwhile, solar is estimated to cost $32.78 per megawatt-hour.  NUCLEAR IS MORE AFFORDABLE!!!

A new nuclear reactor in the U.S. is estimated to cost between $3K and $6.2K per kilowatt.  Heavily subsidized residential solar panel installation gets you to around $2.9K per kilowatt (but you need four times the solar panels to be as efficient as nuclear, which brings you to $11.6K).  If the market, rather than government tax credits/subsidies/loans, had driven the rise of solar and wind energy, the green energy sector would consist of one dominant technology:  nuclear.  Just imagine where we would be today if Obama had decided to invest in reliable, affordable, and proven technology — nuclear reactors — to meet the goals of reducing the nation’s carbon footprint.  Imagine if we had subsidized a truly clean, efficient, cheap, and proven energy source.  The U.S. inclusion in the Paris climate agreement of 2015 would be a non-issue for voters, because the U.S. would have accomplished ALL OF ITS GOALS!!  But the Obama administration bet on the wrong horse.  He was certain that he was “doing what was right,” but it cost the taxpayers billions, maybe more over the long haul — maybe the future of the earth.

All of these concerns have not yet touched on perhaps the biggest issue with solar:  disposal of solar panels.  While the Obama administration was touting the idea of solar and enticing people to invest in solar, they utterly failed to plan for the disposal of the hazardous materials that are essential to their operation.  Obama-era solar panels are already reaching the end of their lives and the waste management of decommissioned solar cells will be overwhelming in years to come.  By 2050, it is projected that 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their lives, and 6 million metric tons will be generated annually at that point.  Only about 10% of solar panels in the U.S. are recycled.  The cost of recycling, which is about ten times the revenue for recycling a solar panel, is expected to increase the cost of solar panels, in spite of the generous subsidies (which cannot last forever).

Power demands in the U.S. are only increasing.  Solar cannot keep up with current demands, much less future demands.  It simply falls short of meeting the world’s current or future needs.

The idea of harnessing the power of the sun to generate the electricity we need is a beautiful concept.  The idea is not what seems to be the problem.  Implementation is a problem.  Honesty is a problem.  Did you know that solar panels are three times more carbon-intensive than claims from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?  Why would the IPCC be dishonest about this?  The more one digs into the truth about solar energy, the easier it is to see that it has been massively oversold.  Yet, even today, the Biden administration continues the Obama tradition of subsidizing solar and the public refuses to accept the truth — or refuses to be open minded enough to hear the truth.

The idea behind solar panels is a good one.  And it needs more research and advancement.  Especially during the Obama era, the technology was not ready for deployment on the scale that solar advocates dreamt of.  So, was it really a good thing to invest taxpayer money into?

From T.S. Eliot’s play, “The Cocktail Party,” came the quote: “Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.  They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.  Or they do not see it, or they justify it.  Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

EV Errors and Battery Busts

The Obama administration exemplified its propensity for purging American tax dollars in the Electric Vehicle (EV) and Battery markets.  The story is a reflection of the hemorrhaging of money seen in the solar market.  So, let’s jump into it with Fisker Automotive, a Finnish electric car manufacturer that the U.S. Department of Energy granted a $529 million loan but had to cut it off at $193 million for failure to reach its planned milestones.  Their battery supplier was A123 Systems, which supplied defective batteries, also declared bankruptcy — but not before blowing $132 million of taxpayer money!  A Chinese business ended up buying A123 for ~$250 million, but taxpayers did not benefit from that transaction.  This was the second major U.S. battery company backed by Obama’s Department of Energy funding that ended up being purchased by a foreign interest.  Ener1 received $118.5 million and was acquired in bankruptcy by Russian interests.  Obama invested our tax dollars into these companies and now they are no longer owned by Americans.  Our elected officials owe us more than this kind of irresponsible decision-making.

Wind Energy and Blowing Hot Air

Summary from Obamawhitehouse.archives.gov: “Wind energy continues to be one of America’s best choices for low-cost, zero-pollution renewable energy – and it is one of our strongest tools to combat climate change.”

In 2009, Obama said in speech, “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy.  The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.  We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy.”

Emphasis added.  You know, because bogus claims by a president should be emphasized.  We here at Meet Me in the Middle actually care about the environment and have little tolerance for the lies and agendas of politicians.  We are not fans of pollution.  But we are fans of truth!  As is the case with all of his other mistakes, we are willing to give our most eloquent leader the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he did actually believe that wind was an answer to “dirty” energy without taking the time to understand the technology.  The truth is it takes a lot more than “feeling good” about wind energy to make it make sense.

President Obama said in his January 12, 2016, State of the Union address that “wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power.”  Nationwide averages show that coal and gas were cheaper at the time.  Every president is responsible for some salesmanship, so we need not dwell on this lie.  It is true that onshore wind energy and solar (crystalline silicon photovoltaics) benefited from cheaper tech and lower finance costs (thanks largely to the tax credit).

Did you know that wind turbines emit a powerful greenhouse gas called sulfur hexafluoride, or SF6?  Did you know that SF6 is a chemical identified as THE STRONGEST GREENHOUSE GAS IN THE WORLD?  Wait, Obama didn’t mention that (probably because wind energy is “the right thing”)?  As a greenhouse gas, SF6 is 15,000 times more potent than CO2.  It is banned by many manufacturing sectors but permitted in wind turbines.  This chemical is present in wind turbines around the world, continuously leaking out into the atmosphere.  SF6 has over 23,000 times the global warming potential over a 100-year timescale than carbon dioxide.  Fortunately for the companies that produce the wind turbines, they are not responsible for leaking SF6 or for recycling their own products and thus are not responsible for the handling the SF6 of decommissioned hardware.  So, if SF6 helps in their product performance, they have no deterrent to using this harmful substance.  And use it they do!  It is so plain to see that this “green” initiative pulled the wool over the eyes of Americans.  It is time to wake up to the fact that wind turbines are flawed and are not the solution that was promised.

Obama’s administration also emphasized offshore wind turbines.  In an article on climatecentral.org, it is reported that “The Obama administration envisions offshore wind happening in a big way off of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, off the shores of Hawaii and in the Great Lakes in the coming years.”  That was in 2016.  Offshore wind projects have been linked to rising whale deaths, with affected species including humpbacks, minke whales, and the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 38 North Atlantic right whale deaths have been confirmed since 2017 — that is more than 10% of the current right whale population.  Researchers estimate that there are fewer than 70 reproducing females.  Studies show “strong correlation” between whale deaths and offshore wind industry activity.  But wind energy advocates keep justifying offshore wind turbines for their perceived benefits.

But… Wind energy is the right thing to do!   Never mind that wind is killing off endangered species and releasing the WORST EVER greenhouse gas.  Obama’s policies propped up this industry but lacked the forward thinking needed to do the “right” things the right way.  “Zero-pollution” is what his website still says today.  He was wrong when he began promoting wind energy.  He is still wrong today.

Post-Racial America

Did we mention that President Obama is a black man?  No? Well that is because around here we adhere to MLK, Jr.’s dream of judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.  Or how about not judging people at all?  We don’t really care about the color of skin, except in the context of the role it plays in American culture.  We want everyone to live a happy fulfilling life.  But racial discrimination is a thing that affects our nation.  What did Obama do to help bring the different races of our melting pot together?  Obama’s race does matter to some, and some believe a black man should have done more for black people.

An interviewer asked President Obama in July 2011, “Do you think you have any special responsibility to look out for the interests of African Americans?”  Obama responded “I have a special responsibility to look out for the interests of every American.  That’s my job as president of the United States, and I wake up every morning trying to promote the kinds of policies that are going to make the biggest difference for the most number of people so that they can live out their American Dream.”  Nothing he said was untrue, but this response disappointed black Americans.

In the early months of his presidency, Melody Barnes, a black woman who served as Obama’s domestic policy advisor, said of a crowd cheering for his success, “I remember thinking, ‘They are going to hate us one day.’  I knew that we couldn’t do everything that people wanted to meet those expectations.”

Gene Demby made a prediction (January 20, 2017) about what Obama will mean to Americans and race going forward: “He will probably travel a similar trajectory to once-polarizing black figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali, both of whom became more beloved, particularly by white Americans, as the details of their battles against justice receded from memory. (Like them, Obama will then be held up as both an example of black excellence — and when useful, invoked as a cudgel.) And in the retelling of the last eight years, we will impose upon him a simplicity that was never even close to true.”

These quotes were selected to give a sampling of the Obama philosophy, the expectations that set him up to disappoint, and the anticipated watering down of his presidency.  He was never going to win the battle against racial discrimination.  And it was never going to change how history ultimately remembers him.  But what did he actually do when young black men were losing their lives at the hands of law enforcement?  What did he actually do when more and more protests, uprisings and riots took place?  Very little.

In his 2016 speech at Howard University, he acknowledged that his election did not “create a post-racial society.”  He warned that his audience would have to deal with “ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness.”  However, he did not discuss the opportunities that he failed to seize that could have reduced ignorance, hatred, racism, and foolishness.  And there were opportunities aplenty.

President Obama had an opportunity to promote unity.  That could have been the legacy that drowned out all the death resulting from his military mistakes.  That could have overshadowed the massive growth of the national debt incurred during his presidency.  That could have outweighed all the stupid subsidies for wind turbines.  He had the opportunity to bring the nation together like never before.  And he just did… nothing.  What could he have done?  Lead. Instead, he disappointed.

Democrat Damage

Another failure of Obama was the weakening of his own political party.  He was inaugurated with a Democrat majority in the House and Senate.  He exited office with Donald Trump as the president-elect and a Republican majority in the House and Senate.  His leadership and his inability to compromise debilitated the Democrats and exposed them to attacks from a political outsider.  And, for Donald Trump, the plunder of those attacks was nothing less than the White House.

Four years later, Obama’s VP won the presidency, beating Trump.  Imagine if Obama had supported Biden in a 2016 run.  As close as that election was between Trump and Hilary Clinton, Biden likely could have easily navigated that election.  Biden was seen as more moderate, which means he likely would have pulled a considerable number of votes away from Trump.  And as Obama’s VP, he would not have to work hard to win the votes of Obama supporters.  If Obama backed a winning run by Biden, Trump’s political clout would have been gone, likely forever.  But Obama did not back Biden.  He backed Clinton.  And here we are in 2024 with another possible Trump presidency on the horizon.

Much, Much Further in the Hole

It seems like all presidents inherit some crises from their predecessors.  This was as true for Obama as for just about any other president in history.  And growing federal spending was one of the issues that Obama called out while campaigning: “George Bush’s policies have taken us from a projected $5.6 trillion surplus at the end of the Clinton administration to massive deficits and nearly $4 trillion in new debt today.  We were promised a fiscal conservative. Instead, we got the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history.”  Scathing words from Mr. Obama, the candidate.  Let’s take a look at how Mr. Obama, the president, and his administration did…

Obama defenders have said all along that it was necessary to use massive amounts of government spending to keep the 2008 economic crash from devolving into an actual depression.  Billions of dollars were spent to bailout financial institutions.  For the sake of argument, let us assume that this was the right and best thing to do.  The extent of the economic boost that Obama and the Democrats promised would result from the trillions of dollars in additional expenditures was not really ever realized.  All told, the Obama administration added nearly $10 trillion to the already enormous national debt.

From Justin Haskins (12/28/16): “Despite the trillions of dollars in government spending pumped into the economy every year under Obama, America has never once enjoyed an annual GDP growth rate at 3 percent or higher, making Obama the least successful president—at least when it comes to economics—in modern history.” Mr. Haskins also points out the following:

• The Feb. 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included an $830 billion “stimulus package” that promised to keep unemployment below 8%.  Unemployment exceeded 9% by April 2009, a mark above which it remained until October 2011 before falling — largely as a result of millions of workers dropping out of the labor force.

• Enrollment in food stamps rose by more than 15 million during the Obama presidency.

• The home ownership rate reached its lowest level since 1995.

• The employment-population ratio remained below 60% under Obama, the lowest since 1985. That tells us that the percentage of Americans not working was the highest in 30+ years.

• From 2008 through 2016, job growth (less than 7 million jobs) fell well short of population growth (20 million) while the size of the working-age population has outpaced job growth.

• President Obama, by the standards of 2008 candidate Obama, left office as the most fiscally irresponsible president ever.

Obama spent more tax dollars than ALL 43 of the presidents who came before him, combined.  Unfortunately, one cannot spend their way out of economic decline.  That is a strategy for a weakened economy and for weakening the global status of your nation’s currency.

President Obama had an opportunity in 2011 to work with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) to “avert a catastrophic debt default.”  The deal was known as The Grand Bargain.  On July 17, 2011, President Obama presented a debt-reduction number to House Republican leaders for which they believed they could get support.  A bill was drafted by midnight that night and Boehner aligned Republicans in preparation to vote.  A few days later, the bill was dead with each side blaming the other.  As Sarah Ferris wrote (Feb. 10, 2016), “nearly everyone agrees that the collapse of the grand bargain squandered a historic chance at budget reforms and created a lasting bitterness between Obama and the GOP that made future deal-making nearly impossible.”  A week later, Obama presented a new deficit-reduction figure that was about $400 billion more than The Grand Bargain agreement.  Distrust between Obama and the Republicans was further cemented after Obama created an unprecedented “supercommittee” to create a budget agreement but failed to do so.  This failure triggered sequestration.  This failure also deepened the wedge between Obama and the Republicans.

With $10 trillion in additional national debt during the Obama administration, it makes one think… what if that money had been allocated in a way that made America safer.  What if, for example, $1 trillion of that went to paying for armed security guards at each public school in the nation?  With that kind of money, we could provide each school in America with a security guard with a salary of $100,000 per year.  For 77 years.  Obama said the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school was “the worst day of my presidency.”  Imagine if his agenda involved protecting American children rather than flushing money away on dozens of failed “clean” energy companies.

All American presidents contribute to the state of affairs that their successors subsequently pass on to their successors. Obama inherited an economic mess.  His inability to negotiate, a mark of a terrible politician, squandered historic opportunities to improve things in the long run.  Long term improvement could have been his legacy.  Instead, his is a legacy of unprecedented debt that will undoubtedly catch up with the American people, eventually.

Final Remarks

In many ways, President Obama was inspirational.  We want to believe that he is patriotic.  He delivered speeches with passion.  He was not subject to his predecessor’s public appearance goofs.  He was not an agitator like his successor.  He was so very close to what we needed.  Except he just was not a good president. Obama came into office offering hope and change.  America got the “change” part — though a weaker nation is probably not what they “hoped” for.

Obama offered the promise to be a post-partisan president.  That is a lofty goal that would take an immense amount of work — and during his first term he did not have to put in the work because his party was in control of Congress.  When his party lost the House, it was evident that he was not up to the task of compromise.  His recent past of being “as uncompromising as possible” caught up with him.  He had failed to forge and nurture bipartisan relationships to such an extent during his first term that he was no longer able to reach across the aisle.  He personally drove the wedge of division between the parties, pushing them as far apart as they have ever been.  Obama left office with a more divided America than we knew in decades.  It was HIS leadership that ushered in the Trump era of politics.

This article was very difficult to compile because every topic ended up being so interwoven with others.  And there were so many bad policies that Obama so confidently implemented.  In light of such widespread failure, one has to question whether this was just gross incompetence or a calculated strategy to weaken the U.S. and destabilize the globe.  It is certainly possible that he really intended to “do the right thing” and that he is a good person.  For the sake of argument, let us take that stance.  Obama is a good person trying to do good things!  The simple truth is that his presidency made the world a worse place.

Chief Speechwriter Cody Keenan on Obama encouraging his team on the morning after Trump was elected to succeed him:  Obama was “going around saying ‘Don’t hang your head, we did the best we could.’”  And he probably believed that sentiment — “we did the best we could.”  But that belief was based on sentimentality, not measurable results.  The measurable results tell a different story:  poor climate policy, misplaced funding of renewable energy technologies, wasteful spending, healthcare that is less affordable and lower quality, and national debt that grew more under Obama’s watch than all other presidents combined.

We will conclude with this 1976 quote from Kristen Stendahl: “Real evil in this world consists in evil being done for good, for humanity, for freedom, for ideology, or for any of the other pseudo-gods of human life.”

Real evil, indeed.