Obama Legacy is Written
Prior to the 2014 midterm election, President Barack Obama issued a
fundraising appeal which branded Republicans as the party of billionaires: "If the Republicans win, we know who they’ll be fighting for. Once again, the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class."
Obama then attended a fundraiser at the home of aptly-named New York real
estate billionaire Rich Richman where admissions cost $32,400 — each.
For context, a Credit Suisse report on global wealth revealed that people
having a modest net worth of $3,650 rank in the top half of the world’s
wealthiest. Ironic, huh?
Obama’s fundraising may never end. Matthew Continent wrote: "Post-presidencies have become as competitive and grueling as presidencies themselves, requiring elaborate libraries and foundations, meaningful causes, books and speeches and appropriately timed social media indignation, all with the goal of remaining, even tangentially, in the media spotlight." Michael D. Shear and Gardiner Harris
plots-life-after-presidency.html?_r=0> reported the "methodical effort
taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first
lady, and a cadre of top aides map out a post-presidential infrastructure
and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion," nearly as
much as Obama fundraised for his 2012 campaign.
Continetti, trenchantly: "[C]onversations about Obama’s future are really
cues to celebrate his past. To cheer his accomplishments, list the ways he
has changed this country, explain his historical and geopolitical
importance, lament the obstacles he’s encountered from recalcitrant
conservatives, obstructionist Republicans, nativist, racist, sexist,
backward elements of the population, recount how he overcame them,.ponder
the work of social justice and transformation that must still be done,
affirm that history is, indeed, on the side of progress."
Pre-2014 midterm, Obama also said "You don’t like a particular policy or a
particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out.and win an
election." Obama observed that, while he was not on the midterm ballot,
every single one of his policies would be. Voters took note. In the 2014
midterm election, Republicans extended their House majority, captured the
Senate, and swept Democrats out of state legislatures across America.
In arguably the funniest post-election, reality-escaping comment offered
among dozens of amusing examples, the Washington Post reported: "Despite
saying repeatedly that his policies were on the ballot Tuesday, Obama
insisted Wednesday that the message of the election wasn’t a rejection of
those policies."
That mid-term repudiation aside, Obama wants to celebrate a legacy. But how?
Self-awareness is not Obama’s strong suit: America once encouraged robust
economic growth and stood with our allies abroad. Under Obama, those have
been replaced by class and cultural warfare, racial grievances, whiny
radical feminism, gender-neutral public restrooms, hyperactive senses of
entitlement, a health care debacle, a failed progressive economic agenda,
massive debt and disastrous foreign policies.
According to a CNN/ORC poll,Americans already view former President George W. Bush more favorably than they do Barack Obama.
That’s Obama’s legacy. Grubbing another billion bucks or more won’t reverse
the verdict rendered in America’s court of public opinion.
