Barack Hussein Obama II made history as the first African-American elected to the Presidency.
Given the fact that five of the first seven presidents had owned slaves,
this in itself was a momentous event. His victory over Senator John McCain, following a contentious
primary battle with former first lady Hillary Clinton, had given many the hopes that he would
be able to heal the racial and political divisions that had arisen over the previous half century.
Sadly, this was not to be, for the political climate in the country
had become so polarized, so toxic, that no chance of social healing remained possible.
Born to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, young Obama grew up in Hawaii
as well as Indonesia, where his mother had gone to study after her divorce from Obama’s father.
She remarried an Indonesian man whom she later divorced, and Obama returned to Hawaii to live
with his maternal grandparents. He attended Harvard Law School,
became the first African-American president of the Law Review, and then moved to Chicago,
where he became a community organizer, eventually entering politics as a State Legislator.
Obama burst onto the national scene with a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic
Convention that stressed the unity of the American people. When 2008 came around,
he ran successful primary and presidential campaigns, and was elected president during the
worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. His handling of the Great Recession was astute,
if perhaps too cautious, and built upon the Bush bailout. Buoyed by the Democratic majorities in
the House and Senate, he was able to pass such legislation as the Recovery Act, which
was designed to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and put Americans back to work.
His signature accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” While not
the single payer healthcare system of Canada or other industrialized nations, it was a substantial
achievement that no other president has been able to accomplish in nearly a century of effort.
Unfortunately for Obama, on Obama’s Inauguration Day, top GOP Congressional leaders assembled
and decided to oppose every piece of Obama’s legislation and make him a one-term president.
This obstructionism became a nihilistic war against Obama,
who was attacked as being an inauthentic American, a Muslim, and other spurious charges.
Despite his achievements, such as saving the Detroit auto industry, negotiating a successful
breakthrough with Iran regarding their nuclear program, advancing the cause of gay rights in
America, and his attempts at controlling the disastrous effects of climate change, Obama was
unable to become the transformational president America needed. This was in part due to the
ideological prejudice he encountered from the GOP, but also likely a symptom of a bigger problem,
whereby corporate overreach in the political system has gone past the point of no return.
Nevertheless, the scorched earth policy of the GOP produced a paralysis. It was
a remarkably successful tactic that the GOP had perfected, whereby Democrats were blocked
from enacting change and then criticized for being unable to make any changes.
Soon, a dissatisfaction with Obama’s centrist policies
took place among the left as his attempts at finding common ground with the GOP failed,
and he was criticized for not doing more to prevent another financial crisis
by reinstating Glass-Steagall. He responded by saying that the Dodd-Frank Act was enough,
which did not persuade many. Though he kept his campaign promise to disengage from Iraq,
he continued the controversial American presence in Afghanistan, trying to rebuild the battered
nation after thirty years of civil war and occupation by the fundamentalist Taliban,
which continued to battle the remaining American forces. The left also heavily criticized him for
his air war against a new Islamic threat, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,
better known as ISIS, which had sprung up in Iraq after the American invasion. ISIS was comprised
of remnants of the disbanded Baʼath Party and Revolutionary Guards. Knowing the American public
wouldn’t support American troops returning to the region, Obama launched a vigorous drone policy,
killing al-Qaeda militants in Yemen and Iraq and attacking ISIS troops that were waging
a genocidal war of ethnic cleansing against the Kurds, as well as beheading Western journalists.
Republicans meanwhile accused Obama of feckless ambivalence
as he refused to intervene in the Syrian Civil War on the side of the brutal Baʼathist Assad regime.
Assad initiated the war in 2011, when peaceful protests against corrupt authoritarian governments
across the Arab world arrived in Syria. These protests failed to achieve democratic reforms,
and were brutally crushed. The protests soon escalated into open warfare against the regime.
Complicating the issue was the infiltration of the rebels by al-Qaeda and ISIS operatives such as
the al-Nusra Front. When rumors of Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people surfaced,
Obama warned Assad that using them would be “crossing a red line.” Yet when evidence
surfaced that Assad had ignored Obama’s warning, Obama took no action and was heavily criticized
by both leftists who supported the rebels and the GOP, who claimed he looked weak and indecisive.
The left continued to assail Obama for his ongoing drone policy,
pointing to the drone assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011,
an American citizen who had joined al-Qaeda. Two weeks later, al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son,
an American citizen, was also killed by a CIA-led drone strike in Yemen. The Justice Department
justified these strikes as lawful acts of war. Some civil liberties advocates have described
the incident as “an extrajudicial execution” that breached al-Awlaki’s right to due process.
Despite his great gifts as an orator, Obama failed to communicate his accomplishments to the country,
and he lacked certain political skills that might have prevented some disastrous losses in Congress.
Obama’s perceived failures early in his term resulted in a 2010 GOP sweep of both Houses
in Congress, and in state capitols, where some of the most sophisticated gerrymandering in American
history then took place, creating artificial GOP districts that were in actuality, heavily
Democratic. Obama failed to significantly reverse the economic disparity that had begun under the
Reagan-Bush-Clinton eras, though not for lack of trying. His 2013 state of the union address called
for a raise in the minimum wage, and although he could not get this passed, many states took
up his call, and 18 states did increase their minimum wages. However, the increased outsourcing
of American jobs continued during his tenure, as did the disappearance of the middle class.
Though Obama continued deporting large numbers of unauthorized immigrants,
many displaced workers perceived him as being too soft on the issue, and the
influx of Hispanics entering the country without papers was perceived to be driving down wages,
driving up housing prices, and breaking unions, while the low level of immigrant assimilation
had created an enormous resentment among the white working class. Republicans would exploit this
resentment. It was during this time that unions began losing their clout; the free-market became
the god that was to be worshipped above all while the American government itself became an evil,
a sentiment not without a firm basis, but certainly an oversimplified version of reality.
As this series has demonstrated, there has always been a tremendous gulf between the glorious ideals
of the United States: self-government by enlightened patriots with the nation’s
best interests at heart and a commitment to the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence
that “all men are created equal”, and the brutal realities of American history:
racism, slavery, genocide, and imperialism; a history of economic warfare between the upper
classes and the working people. But as the Founding Fathers knew, “the price of freedom
is eternal vigilance.” And those liberties they fought for must never be taken for granted.
The corruption in America’s political, social, and economic spheres has taken a deep hold in
virtually every fabric of American life, and will be extremely difficult to root out. This
has led to the disillusion in the political system that is so often expressed, and a growing sense
that disunion may be the only alternative, that self-destructive act that has haunted presidents
ever since Washington. We live in historic times, and whether America can survive these
challenges remains to be seen, but perhaps we can find our answers in the study of history,
for what’s past is prologue. As the old proverb says, as long as there is life, there is hope.