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Ruth: Obama leaves with dignity, mixed record

 
President Barack Obama pauses while speaking Tuesday in the briefing room of the White House. [Associated Press]
President Barack Obama pauses while speaking Tuesday in the briefing room of the White House. [Associated Press]
Published Jan. 18, 2017

This nation has never had a perfect president. And it is safe to say in the near future, that track record will hold pretty steady.

And no, Harrison Ford's President James Marshall in "Air Force One" doesn't count.

Friday marks the end of President Barack Obama's eight years in the White House. Let's get this out of the way right up front. I voted for him twice and would have happily voted for him a third time if I could have. Commence the teeth-gnashing. Have a nice time.

In the years to come historians will issue their verdict on the Obama presidency. It probably will be mixed. After all, Obama is handing off a resurgent economy to Trump. His efforts spared the auto industry and narrowly avoided a catastrophic depression.

Obama leaves office with unemployment down, nearly 80 straight months of positive job growth, a rise in wages and declining illegal immigration numbers.

And Obama has demonstrated that the absolutely worst — and short-lived — job title in the world has to be: "the number two Al-Qaida leader." Not only is Osama bin Laden dead, but so are thousands of various terrorists, militants and other evil-doers dispatched on his watch. The horribly flawed, Republican-inspired Affordable Care Act still provided 20 million Americans health care they might not have been able to otherwise access. If Obama was a Republican, they'd be renaming Ronald Reagan National Airport after him.

How's that teeth-gnashing going so far?

Failures? Sure. The Syrian "Red Line" (or lack thereof) will mar Obama's tenure. His inability to pass even modest gun control measures, especially after the massacre of 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School has to be particularly frustrating. He ended the space shuttle program without replacing it, forcing American astronauts to use a glorified Russian Uber ride to reach the International Space Station. And in this anti-science/anti-rationality era we live in, Obama's inability to make progress on climate change initiatives remains vexing.

But if the election of Obama disproved anything it was that his ascendency into the Oval Office marked the beginning of some sort of Pollyannaish post-racial period for the country. It didn't, at least if my toxic email and vile letters over the past eight years are any indication.

From a cumbaya standpoint, the imagery of America's first black president taking the oath of office was an inspirational moment for the land. It also stirred the worst elements of society gobsmacked to see a black man and his family living in the White House. Moving on up, indeed.

Let's all stipulate not every criticism of Obama is grounded in bigotry. But a lot of it was. No sooner had Obama been elected did the nation see a precipitous rise in hate groups. Gun sales sky-rocketed and conspiracy theories bloomed unabated the new president was bent on turning the country over to the United Nations, or worse yet to the NAACP.

Across talk radio and certainly into my mailbox came suggestions Obama was an illegitimate president because he was born in Kenya, or Indonesia, or Mars, an accusation gleefully fueled by the father of all birthers, none other than Donald J. Trump.

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Obama was a Muslim. Believe it. So was Michelle. The president refused to wear an American flag lapel pin, refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He wore a ring engraved with Koranic verses. There was a Islamic prayer rug, right there, in the Oval Office. No one remembers ever seeing him at Harvard Law School. Obama is the son of Malcolm X, which is ridiculous since everyone knows he is the offspring of Frank Davis. Can't these poltroons get their conspiracy theories straight?

Insane? Bizarre? Yes and yes. But large swaths of the American people believed it and much more for the past eight years.

Through it all, the racism, the hatred, the willful lies, Obama remained (at least outwardly) a model of presidential comportment. Not even a single whiney tweet.

Mistakes. Shortcomings. Errors of judgment. There were plenty of them, It's the presidency after all, which does not come with the gift of omniscience.

That Barack Obama made history as the first black man to be president will be forever noteworthy. That he left the office with his dignity still intact, despite the smears and fake news swirling about him, may be an even greater legacy.