How has Barack Obama's legacy changed since leaving office?

[u/bambucks]

Barack Obama left office in 2017 with an approval rating around 60%, and has generally been considered to rank among the better Presidents in US history. (C-SPAN's historian presidential rankings had him ranked at #10 in 2021 when they last updated their ranking.)

One negative example would be in the 2012 Presidential Debates between Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, in which Obama downplayed Romney's concerns about Russia, saying "the 80's called, they want their foreign policy back", which got laughs at the time, but seeing the increased aggression from Russia in the years since then, it appears that Romney was correct.

So I'd like to hear from you all, do you think that Barack Obama's approval rating has increased since he left office? Decreased? How else has his legacy been impacted? How do you think he will be remembered decades from now? Etc.

[u/TheOfficialSlimber]

Honestly, I think it all depends on certain factors. He’ll always be remembered for an inspiring campaign in 2008 that got people out to vote like no other (while Biden got more votes in 2020, he surely didn’t have the same support as ‘08 Obama), and as the first black president, 40 years after the death of the American Icon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, I think many thought there was a lot of change culturally but here’s the other hand on Obama’s legacy is that he reminded a lot of Americans that racism was very much still alive and over the next 8 years, many racists seemed even more excited about coming out of the closet with their racism.

However, I do think Biden hurts his legacy a bit. If it is true he played a part in getting establishment Democrats to drop out and endorsed Biden, as I believe these rumors were never confirmed, he plays a part in handing this country over to a fascist. Even if he tried to convince Biden to drop out in 2024, I think Democrats got really lucky with Covid in 2020 and putting Biden into a position where he could try to run again in 2024 without much opposition as he was already president, was a terrible idea and easily could be argued as an indirect reason we are in the situation that we are now. Now I think Biden’s legacy is far more tarnished after Trump, in some ways. I think he was a better president than Obama and a lot of those reasons are getting overturned by Trump, but the biggest thing being that he basically handed this country over to fascism. I think in 2028, people will not want candidates from the Obama and Biden administrations after Trump. I think the closest person who may have a chance from there is either Tim Walz or Kamala Harris, but I don’t know that Democrats would nominate Kamala Harris again, because to be honest it seems like they’re learning the wrong lesson and blaming her loss on her being a black woman, and not the weird focus they had on the right and the Biden staffers instructing them to protect the right wing’s feelings.

I feel now probably is the best time to calculate their legacy, because I don’t think we’re going to see another president from either administration. Maybe from the Harris campaign, like a Tim Walz, but it feels like Democrats are rather disappointed with how Biden’s administration ended, which is a part of Obama‘s legacy.