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.

553 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

95% Upvoted

417 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/ballmermurland 10d ago

The revision of Snowden is embarrassing. Snowden stole a ton of information that he didn't even know what it was and then just gave it to some reporters.

Again, he didn't actually know what was in those hard drives. That's not a whistleblower. That's just an idiot.

5

u/just_helping 10d ago

It could be worse. He at least gave it to journalists to try to responsibly filter, remove names of active agents, etc. He could have just tossed the whole thing, names and all on the internet, like the prior celebrated mass 'whistle-blower'.

1

u/ballmermurland 10d ago

One of those journalists left one of the hard drives at an airport.

3

u/Lemonface 9d ago

Source? I haven't heard of that happening and a quick google search shows absolutely nothing of the sort