Jonathan Chait

Barack Obama has been criticized in so many ways for so many different things, it would be refreshing to see a forthright and unapologetic defense of his legacy just for the novelty factor alone. The audience here seems to be mainly disappointed liberals who have bought into some variant of "he started off well, but either got only half-measures done or didn't even try". Chait demolishes these criticisms one by one: over a staggering range of policy issues, Obama was not only pretty good at getting things done, but right up there in the pantheon of liberal heroes like FDR and LBJ. Seen in full context, Obama's accomplishments were tremendous, and unlikely to be fully reversed even by the most determined efforts of the current Trump cadre of reactionary Republicans. While one could have always hoped for more (Guantanamo Bay, etc), given the maddening institutional constraints of the United States political system, Obama made remarkable progress in health care, climate change, education, and seemingly dozens of other areas that looked permanently out of reach during the Clinton and Carter years. This is not a "neutral" work of scholarship but an argument; Chait is advocating for his point of view, but on the merits I think he's correct that Obama is underrated. A successful contrarian take must not only assemble uncontroversial truths to package them into a surprising conclusion, it must also make that conclusion seem obvious in hindsight, and by the end of this book the idea that Obama was in any way a disappointment seems laughable. By the standards of US Presidents (admittedly not always a very high one), Obama has very few peers in American history.… (mais)