Why Barack Obama Is One of the Greatest Presidents Ever

One of my friends on Facebook recently posted a link to this article from GQ Magazine titled “Why Obama Will Go Down as One of the Greatest Presidents”. Coming from GQ, I know you’re probably thinking this article must be a well-researched critical analysis of President Obama’s legacy. After all, GQ is who you think of when you’re looking for something scholarly to read, am I right? But when I read the article, I was disappointed to find that the author dropped the ball on this important work and failed to offer any substantive support for the title. Unbelievably, the article turned out to be just a cheer-leading fluff piece.

Wait, what? GQ publishing shallow, superficial content? I know, it’s hard to believe so I’ve put a link to the article below so you can check it out for yourself. But since GQ dropped the ball on this one, I felt it my civic duty to step up and lend a hand. After all, there is so much that can be said about President Obama’s legacy. So here it is, in my humble opinion, just some of the reasons Barack Obama is one of the greatest American presidents ever.

Navigating Bush-Cheney’s America

By the time of the 2008 presidential election season, Americans seemed to have had enough of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and that administration’s exploitation of the 9/11 attacks to justify endless and expanding war, domestic spying, and the creation of the imperial presidency.  Bush was heavily criticized for not only launching the Iraq War and the apparent lies used to justify it, but also for side-stepping U.S. and international and laws governing war and civil liberties through the creation of things like “preemptive military strikes” (previously known as “acts of war”) “enhanced interrogation techniques” (previously known as “torture”) and “indefinite detention” of “enemy combatants” (previously known as “unconstitutionally detaining persons indefinitely without charge and denying them due process”). Bush was also criticized for his massive, warrantless NSA wiretapping program (eventually deemed illegal), as well as domestic policies which seemed to favor big corporations and the wealthy. But then came a man who spoke of change and hope for a better America. That man was Barack Hussein Obama.

Change We Can Believe In

In the 2008 election season, then first-term U.S. Senator Barack Obama ran for president on basically an anti-Bush-Cheney platform that promised to close Guantanamo Bay, end the Iraq War, create more government transparency, and invest in the rebuilding of America. “Change we can believe in” was Obama’s campaign slogan and people took it to mean change from the kind of Bush-Cheney policies mentioned above. Policies under which America’s reputation was turning from the global champion of freedom and the land of opportunity to global bully and evil empire. This message of change resonated with a war-weary American public that increasingly felt their government was only serving the interests of a small elite that seemed to be out to get them. This message of change swept Barack Obama into the Oval Office in the 2008 election, signaling not only rejection of the Bush-Cheney years but the start of a new chapter in the American experience.

Change, Indeed

As America moves into the ending months of the Obama presidency, one thing is clear. President Obama has brought change to America. Despite the fact that President Obama seems to share the same penchant for issuing executive orders as George W. Bush, Guantanamo Bay is still “indefinitely detaining” Bush-era “enemy combatants” without an opportunity to face their accusers or even being informed of their alleged crimes. The Obama administration has taken to force-feeding these indefinite detainees (yes that’s still going on) so they cannot go on hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention. The U.N. Human Rights Commission regards this practice of force-feeding as torture.

Indeed , change has come to America. We’ve changed from a from a country that championed human rights and freedom to one that makes a practice of abusing human rights and denying freedom. But that’s just scratching the surface of the kind of change Obama has brought to America. Instead of ending the wars overseas, as he led everyone to believe he would do, Obama and his administration have perpetuated and expanded the open-ended state of war that Bush-Cheney started. Where Bush only managed to start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama has taken things to a whole new level by fomenting a crisis in Ukraine and and baiting the sleeping Russian bear, launching an unprovoked and unjustified war against Libya, and creating and funding a new Middle Eastern/Islamic boogieman known as “ISIS”.

ISIS is of particular note as the group has proven a valuable pretext for the Obama Administration’s previously failed efforts at selling the American people on war in Syria. It has also proven an embarrassment to Obama and the United States with Russia’s exposure of Obama and regional U.S. allies for creating and supporting ISIS. Despite such flagrant violations of international law, the U.S. Constitution and fundamental morality, Obama’s supporters and once vocal critics of Bush, remain unwavering in their support and idolatry of our nation’s first black president. And that may be the most important change of all.

Change You Can Believe In

I could go on and on because there’s so much more that Obama has achieved in terms of making America more authoritarian, imperialistic and beholden to a small group of elites, like his drone strike program, his record-breaking prosecution of government whistle-blowers, his unwavering commitment to the TPP, and his failure to hold any of the Wall Street fraudsters that brought about the global economic meltdown of 2008 accountable. But I think the most significant thing that President Obama has achieved, the real change he has brought to America, has been his ability to get the people who protested Bush-Cheney’s war-mongering, authoritarianism and elitism and convert them into cheer-leaders for the very authoritarianism and war-mongering policies they protested just a few years ago. Now that’s what makes a great president, right? That’s change you can believe in.

Well it is, at least, if you’re the kind of person that believes people are sheep to be manipulated, exploited and sacrificed to serve and protect a sociopathic small group of elites. But if you believe that all people around the world should be allowed to live in peace and do as they wish so long as they don’t harm anyone else, then maybe that’s not your kind of change. And maybe Barack Obama isn’t going to rank so high on your list of American presidents.

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Resource Links:

• Obama photo via Bigstock Photo.
• GQ article “Why Obama Will Go Down as One of the Greatest Presidents“.