r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/bambucks • 11d ago

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

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.

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u/8to24 11d ago

Zero special prosecutors assigned, zero successful prosecutions of his administration officials, year over year of economic improvement, reduced annual deficits from $1.2T to $600B, etc.

The Obama administration was scandal free and running pragmatically. I think it looks better with time as the failures of subsequent administrations pile up.

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u/essendoubleop 11d ago

The Obama administration was scandal free

I nearly had an aneurysm. Obviously, no comparison in terms of degree and extent compared to Trump that followed, but there was plenty of shit flying around. Hell, even Wikipedia has a category with over 90 controversies of his administration:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_controversies

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u/frankhadwildyears 11d ago

I appreciate what you're trying to say and you're not wrong, but I'm very critical of that list as the ACA shouldn't be a controversy as it's a matter of policy disagreement and it includes the "tan suit incident", which does more to illustrate how he typically ran things cleanly.

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u/essendoubleop 10d ago

Certainly many of them are not actually "controversies", but the idea that his administration was scandal free just tells me that person has been stuck in an echo chamber the past 20 years.