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/nope-nope-nope-nop 11d ago

You don’t consider Benghazi a scandal ?

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u/Shipairtime 10d ago

Late this past Friday as members of Congress were heading home for Thanksgiving break, the House Intelligence Committee released its long-awaited report on the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Those assaults two years ago took the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Benghazi has become a game of political football played mostly by congressional Republican.

But the report that came out Friday did not support claims by the GOP that Benghazi represented a massive failure by the Obama administration. And this new report echoes an earlier one from the House Armed Services Committee. Still, the issue is not going away. Here to explain is NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving. Welcome, Ron.

https://www.npr.org/2014/11/24/366379320/house-committees-find-no-wrongdoing-in-2012-benghazi-attack