Posted on 01/21/2013 5:48:44 AM PST by Iron Munro
Edited on 01/21/2013 7:51:52 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The "legacy thing" may be harder than Barack Obama imagines. Beginning his second term, Obama has a focused, though unstated, agenda: to achieve presidential greatness in the eyes of historians and Americans. In this, he will almost certainly fail. He is already a historic president as the first African-American to be elected, but there is a chasm between being historic and being great.
Presidents are ultimately judged not by their total record, or by their ability to enact their agendas, or by their popularity. They are judged by whether they get a few very big decisions right or wrong. Lyndon Johnson is mostly remembered for failure in Vietnam; it overshadows the passage of two landmark civil rights bills and approval of Medicare and Medicaid. Richard Nixon is not celebrated for creating the Environmental Protection Agency, expanding food stamps or opening talks with China; Watergate dwarfs all.
These appraisals are made while a president is in office and, more definitively, after he's left. Does a president's performance stand the test of time based on what happens later? Did his policies advance or retard the nation's well-being? Were they wise or simply expedient? Depending on the answers, much else can be forgiven or forgotten, as Robert Merry shows in his engaging book Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.
Consider Harry Truman. For his last year in office, he was deeply unpopular. His approval rating hit a low of 22 percent. The Korean War frustrated Americans; the White House was accused of cronyism. Yet, historians rank him in the top 10 presidents. Merry relates Truman's reaction to the Soviets' 1948 overland blockade of Berlin "to starve out the city and bring it under the Soviet yoke." His top advisers concluded that U.S. withdrawal was inevitable.
Excerpt, read more at tampabay.com
That said I actually believe that the worst sort of leftist partisans will write our history, as has been the case since at least 1960. I fully expect a national holiday celebrating BO's birthday and to see a BO memorial on the National Mall in my lifetime.
Has the TBT just realized that? Well, it shows they are thinking, unlike the rest of the media.
He is already a historic president as the WORST EVER POS to be elected.
“The Obama Presidency will be defined by the smallness of the man”
Well that and then being a Muzzie lovin Commie who at some point will be shown not even to be a legal US citizen and not eligible to even be President.
Let’s see if I can find something generous to say about this phony, Kenyan fatuous asshat:
Who the hell does Barack Obama, this morally preening, arrogant hypocrite, think he is? His vacuous, demagogic shtick about helping the ‘people’ fight ‘the powerful’ is getting so old from his lips, and already was so hackneyed even before he expropriated it, that it’s a miracle that even he himself can say it anymore without getting nauseated by his own oleaginous triteness.
This love affair he has with homosexuals and other assorted sex types is unholy. It’s as though he has a personal axe to grind in this war waged by homos to get accepted as ‘normal’ human beings. Methinks he speaks from experience. It’s a complete puzzle to me how this cupcake fathered two daughters.
The Obama Presidency will be defined as small mind creates big problems.
The Obama Presidency , 24 years of NOTHING !!!
Umm, he won’t even be a ‘good’ president.
Worcestershire.
Unfortunately most of the books over the next few decades will be written by liberal historians, who applaud his two major achievements in his first term—massively increasing federal spending and getting Obamacare passed. His main goal in his second term (besides continuing what he has been doing) is to destroy the Republican Party. If he succeeds in that, the liberal hosannas will be deafening. It could be a couple of generations before an objective analysis is possible because the historians of the near future (those not old enough to be professional historians now) will have been indoctrinated by liberal pro-Obama teachers while in school.
Robert Samuelson:
“Obama Is Unlikely To Become One Of The Great Presidents…”
Gee, Bob, ya think ???
the 1st shuck and jive marxist punk to be president.
The all-time worst president, and he’ll continue to break his own record.
“Obama Is Unlikely To Become One Of The Great Presidents”
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I am trying to come up with a statement comparable to that one and I think of things like Mickey Rooney was probably not the world’s tallest man. A field mouse is unlikely to weigh more than an elephant. Bernie Madoff would probably not be a good man to trust with your cash. Chris Matthews is probably not the world’s greatest genius. Joe Biden is probably not our finest ever vice president.
Where is Captain Obvious?
“Obama is great... a great failure at everything he touches except getting elected.”
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I am tempted to agree but actually you are in error. To call him a failure assumes that he actually wanted to be a great president, that is completely wrong. His intention all along was to serve as the instrument by which the left wing Muslim activists could seize control of the USA and destroy the greatest country ever known to have existed. At that he has been anything BUT a great failure, he is succeeding on a monumental scale.
The truly huge failure is and has been the failure of the natural born citizens of America, of which I am one, to live up to the standard set for us by our ancestors. At that we have failed on an epic scale.
“The Obama Presidency will be defined by the smallness of the man.”
And, the corruption of his administration!
When all is said and done, he will mirror the rise and fall from power, in people's minds, of either the Third Reich or Milli Vanilli.
I use those two examples depending on whether you're an American with a brain, or a member of the "fatally hip" crowd.
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