The Obama Legacy — Coolness and Cruelty
How unreal it would be to be Barrack Hussein Obama for a day — even for sixty minutes — not least because he is in fact the first African American president nor so for the fact that he is a walking exudation of bravado and charm. I’ve searched for a more dignifying adjective to depict the man, well dear reader forgive me, as the “formal” will not suffice to explicate his finesse, it is for this reason I shall call Obama “cool”. Yes, cool as the middle-aged dad that bumps contemporary hiphop and has Kendrick Lamar for a favorite rapper, cool as the dad that can swing a golf club and still put on some kicks for basketball — that is exactly who Obama is to his two lovely daughters and to many of the young generation. In my rather young life, I am yet to witness a head of state with as much tact as Barack Obama and I dare wager that he’d make anybody’s top ten list of coolest heads of state of all time, except of course you’re an arbitrary detractor. Like a conductor of an orchestra he compels his audience to acquiesce to his whims. With a single vowel he can set the ambience blue to commemorate solemnity if the occasion dictates it. With a smirk he can elicit — even demand — laughter from his audience — young, middle-aged or old. We stayed awed as we watched Barack perfect the art of quipping, one would be forgiven to think he invented the art as we saw him put his political opponents to the sword on the podia. Time and again we saw the little known senator from Illinois fend off attacks first from his democratic primary contender, Hilary Clinton — who at the time seemed politically mystical in comparison — and then we watched him tear into John McCain, quip after quip, he triumphed as “the people’s politician” — if ever there was one. We saw him look the United States Congress right in the eye and withstand unprecedented partisan obstructionism. Upon becoming a — sorry, THE — political juggernaut himself, we were in for a sequel, this time with a different opponent, Mitt Romney. Obama hadn’t lost his touch, he was still the quipper we knew from freshman year. Gracious and eloquent in his interviews, jocular and witty in his White House Correspondents’ Dinners — yes we are aware, his jokes may have been written for him, but surely it takes some doing to deliver it in the way that he consistently did.
Obama was “The Man” so much so he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize just eleven days after taking office and of course, he eventually won it. The coolness was at this point was overwhelming, Obama had to cry out to the world saying he felt he didn’t deserve the award. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be in his shoes? Well, think again because his shoes come in humongous sizes. Obama, whom was probably under no illusions about the task ahead, still could not have fully grasped what was to come nor was there a clear enough harbinger to forebode him. In retrospect, one can read the signs as clearly as crystal, Obama’s nomination and subsequent clinching of the Nobel Peace Prize so early on in his presidency, while thrilling was only indicative of the weight the world had put on his shoulders. I am opined that the Norwegians — who oversee the Nobel Prizes — had awarded Obama not necessarily on merit — for there was little, asides the credence his political manifesto had provided when he first ran for President of The United States — but in hope that his message — and more importantly foreign policy — could unite the world. America had fallen from grace in the world, a Western Nation who had invaded a Muslim Nation on claims of possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, only to find none upon invasion. It was Obama’s job to clean up Bush’s mess. Who else to heal the wounds in the Middle East than a man who had spent a decent part of his childhood years in Indonesia — a nation where Islam is dominant — making him capable of appreciating Islamic sensibilities. Who else to liberate the people of color from social injustice than a man of color himself? Who else to build racial bridges than a man whose mother was indeed caucasian. Who else to be the Champion of Africa in the West than a son of Africa himself? Fully aware that he’s not your typical African-American whose African roots were lost on him as a result of his ancestors being whisked away from the motherland and deprived the chance to keep track of their seeds, we branded him as one of our own, pointing unwaveringly to his home, Kenya, as his father never naturalized to become “American”. We campaigned for him in Africa as though we’d actually get to cast our votes for him. We somehow in a cocktail of fantasy, folly and hope imagined that the progress of a son of Africa would translate (directly or indirectly) to progress for the continent. For the more sapient of us, they didn’t place on his shoulders such extremities of expectations, they hoped only that he would excel in his leadership role and prove that indeed a “Negro” could lead the world and not just do it but do it well… As Soyinka would put it in his book, Of Africa “the roosters did come home to roost” or as Michelle Obama, his elegant and ever graceful wife would put it, “we live in a house that was built by slaves”. It was victory for all, but drudgery for Obama. Life must have been kind to gift him such heights, but also so unkind to ask multiple lifetimes’ worth of expectations of him in a single presidency — this was in fact cruelty.
There is a tale of Emperor Marcus Aurelius of Rome… however apocryphal it holds a lesson for president Obama and it goes thus;
Marcus Aurelius had a servant whose only job was to walk with him when he passed through the city squares and whisper in his ears “you’re only a man” whenever the people crooned praises for Aurelius.
It is presumed Aurelius did this to keep his feet on the ground and not get his head in the clouds. Obama had no such fortune of the services of such an aide — at least none that we are publicly aware of — and if ever he did, it is clear that Obama paid this aide little mind. Obama entered his first term with pomp and euphoria to do some good in the world, while we cannot fault his “intent” for good deeds, he let the excitement and expectation cloud judgement in key moments of his presidency. His optimism, idealism, perhaps also inexperience wounded his abilities to manage public expectations. Obama was seemingly obsessed with deadlines even when the public demanded none of him and failed to appreciate the fact that politics and realities wouldn’t always make deadlines tenable. The argument can be made in his favor that the lack of a timeline makes objectives less of exactly that, objectives, as a goal must be time oriented, but not withstanding expectations must be managed relative to the feasibility of delivery. And so Obama set deadline after deadline and so too he failed to meet some highly publicized deadlines. First it was the human rights stench of America, Guantanamo Bay, scheduled by Obama for closure in 2010, still very much opened today even after his presidency. The total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan supposedly scheduled for 2016 is now but the stuff of fantasy.
At the curtain call of his presidency, all those that placed their hopes not just on his first term but also his second, came to take stock and they came with a lot of questions only to seemingly find fewer answers. Obama has a stellar report as far as the economy and job creation goes, even more remarkable when you recall that his first major test in office was to confront the Global Economic Meltdown. His Affordable Health Care initiative is applaudable regardless of the imperfections that plague it… The Presidency is without question the most thankless job in the world and a president is usually remembered more for his errs than his triumphs but in Obama’s case, his errs are rather overly amplified by detractors. Racial tensions escalated during his presidency, when he was charged by the people of color to tone it down. It is not that he didn’t acknowledge this plight nor did he fail to diplomatically express outrage in times of outcries, it is that people of color did not and could not directly feel progress despite his rhetoric. People of color did not just feel stagnation but even deterioration, regardless of where the stats begged to differ. One explanation for this, is the explosion of social media under Barack Obama’s presidency. Whether or not the situation actually deteriorated or social media just shone the floodlights on what was always present but hitherto largely obscure, the fact remains that either case didn’t help Obama.
For this cruelty upon them, they held Obama somewhat culpable. Gun violence also pervaded his presidency, again social media was of no help in this regard. As Obama did little — or better still, was unable — to significantly ease racial tensions despite appointing a person of color, Loretta Lynch as the head of the Department of Justice, he was left to speeches carefully skewed by data and statistics, cushioned with diplomacy to avoid accusations of bias for his skin pigmentation. Obama could have well claimed to be the one on the receiving end of cruelty with one hand shackled to a rock by the federal structure of the United States, neither criminal justice reform nor improved race relations could be ‘significantly’ achieved — at least not unilaterally. His other hand paralyzed by obstructionism from a Republican dominated Congress, he was unable to improve gun laws and regulations to mitigate gun violence that plagued his presidency severely. Obama’s tipping point was when gun violence and race relations became acquainted with one another in the city of Charleston while rounds went off from the gun of a black pigment hating wielder, whose own skin was pale. Obama broke into tears while singing the solemn “Amazing Grace” in the memorial service for the victims of this incident. At this point, the public grudge on Obama was a sense of inaction (until now) from his administration. One might say that any push for gun regulation in a Republican dominated Congress was always sure to meet a dead end and as such Obama decided not to take any action that would damage whatever political momentum he mustered in Congress. The aftermath was a push by Obama for legislation for gun regulation in Congress, as expected it met a dead end. It was followed up by executive actions that could only achieve so much without straining the limits of its legality. Perhaps his most polarizing domestic action as president was declaring support for the LGBTQ community and effectively getting favorable Supreme Court rulings for the cause. A proposition his African brothers weren’t buying during his official visit to the motherland. A move that undoubtedly angered those within the African-American community with a conservative outlook towards the LGBTQ community. “Why would a president who wouldn’t stick out his neck — at least not without the ultra-diplomatic tone — for people of color do so for the LGBTQ community?” Many are asking this question. For Obama and his Vice-President, Biden, no one should be dictated to about who and how to love as long as it doesn’t infringe on the right of others. There in lies the crux of the matter, the LGBTQ surge complicates certain otherwise mundanities like who uses what bathrooms and what is considered acceptable to teach kids at a formative and very malleable age. A successful progressive move or not? This remains to be seen and too soon to call.
Again, some cruelty to Obama, upon attaining the highest office in America — and arguably, (perhaps even inarguably) the world — even he was not safe from scrutiny for the color of his skin. Behold, the birther movement, that questioned the status of his citizenship and the veracity of his birth claims even as president of the world’s leading superpower. Thus; no one knows better and firsthand the consequence of race relations. Still there’s little room for him to moan about his individual predicament, when the collective predicament is in question. This anecdote is not meant to serve as a robust defense to what is seen by many to be a failure in improving race relations, it is simply just a suggestion that a dearth of action, does not always coincide with a dearth of intent and goodwill.
As far as foreign policy goes, is it not comical that Obama’s self acknowledged biggest foreign policy debacle is in Africa, the continent that held so much hopes for a presidency that wasn’t ours to hope on in the first place. Libya is Obama’s very own Iraq. How did a president with so much promise recreate the monster he had so vowed to terminate? First, let us explore The Obama Doctrine Obama’s very own foreign policy formula. If Theodore Roosevelt’s — a Nobel Peace Prize winner himself — foreign policy approach followed the creed of “speak softly but hold a big stick” Barack Obama’s in his own words would be “…just because you have a hammer, doesn’t mean every problem is a nail” Both doctrines not being too dissimilar but Roosevelt’s seemingly more resolute, evinced in his willingness to use force upon failure to make headway with his speak softly approach — a slight shift from gunboat diplomacy. Obama reveals in Jefferey Goldberg’s exposé in the Atlantic, that he categorizes threats as existential and non-existential threats to the United States — the homeland in this case. For existential threats, he is willing to use all measures of force available to him, but for non-existential threats he is willing to use a “light footprint” approach. Thus far “light footprint” in Obama’s foreign policy lingo has meant an obscure number of service boots on the ground, primarily for training and advisory purposes of proxy forces without American insignia while American drones grow as accurate as Obama’s political jibes for targeting enemy forces and upper echelon. All the while, being mindful of staying on the right side of history and its verdicts on political motives. As Obama puts it, we have “history” — referring to America’s misdeeds of the past. Since the incident of self immolation in Tunisia that sparked the Arab Spring, which spelt the end for repressive regimes in Arab states, the little flame of hope for the Middle-East and North Africa has spiraled out of control to become a lethal conflagration. The U.S. under Obama’s leadership sought to secure its interests and perpetuate democracy — or more bluntly put, establish subservient states — in North Africa and the Middle-East by employing the Obama Doctrine in key states in the region. Massive air bombardment to allow proxy forces — funded and armed by American Central Intelligence Agency — to advance against heads of states branded as “dictators” with no U.S. boots on the ground in direct combat. Gaddafi would become the first major victim of the Obama Doctrine but also the first lesson of this doctrine. As lofty a doctrine as it was, it made little calculations for the aftermath of American interventionism. Who cleans up the mess after the hornet’s nest has been stirred? Obama in foresight undertook a multilateral intervention in Libya with his NATO allies, hoping that other nations would partake in the clean up operation after the intervention campaign.He was wrong, he left Libya a failed state, swarming with heavy artillery largely provided by America and its NATO allies. No semblance of law and order, surely the Benghazi attacks on American diplomatic and intelligence personnel underscores the failure of the Obama Doctrine here. ISIS and a handful of terrorist organizations and sects gained footholds and held on to whatever territory in Libya it could muster, making Libya for the foreseeable future somewhat ungovernable — at least optimally so. Only after much chagrin has the new U.N-backed government been able to return to Tripoli, even then, it still faces strong and militarized political oppositions from interest groups.
So it is rather clear why Obama became reluctant to sufficiently arm the Free Syrian Army in their fight against Assad-loyal forces, he learnt from Libya experience and was wary of flooding the Syrian State with heavy artillery that would persist in the aftermath of its civil war. The “aftermath” we speak of here, has been a long time coming as the conflict became protracted. The lightweight arms handed to the Free Syrian Army could do little in the face of Russian intervention as an Assad ally. The fall and total defeat of the rebel stronghold of Aleppo is now but a matter of time, unless Obama drastically reviews his policy regarding how he arms the rebels — which is now beyond unlikely to happen. Let’s take a moment here to appreciate Obama’s catch-22, he’s damned if he arms rebel forces maximally and also damned if he doesn’t arm them sufficiently, boy it is as cruel as it is cool to be Barack Obama. Obama is somewhat of a pragmatic defeatist as seen in Crimea. Asides from the obvious and deliberate avoidance of direct confrontation with Russia, he is never willing to invest so much economic and military weight in conflicts that do not offer commensurate rewards to American interest. That is to say, that Obama does not consider a regime change in Syria, a sufficient reason to invest more — surely no more than he has already done — American dollars or even American artillery in the Syrian conflict. The end does not justify the political or economic costs for Obama. The flip side of this seemingly sagacious policy is that in both cases — Crimea and Syria — where Obama yielded to pragmatic defeatism, Russia was the counterforce. Many detractors would hold Obama accountable for what appears to be a resurgence of Russia in the geopolitical scheme of things. Another set of detractors of his Syrian policy, would question the wisdom in showing vocal and fringe support for Rebels in Syria if he wasn’t willing to go all the way in. Arguing that the mere apparition of American support emboldened the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups to commence a civil war against the Assad regime — as they expected a Libyan styled Intervention. Stating that if Obama had shown resolute disinterest in the conflict from the jump, then perhaps there’d have been no civil war that has now left many slaughtered and displaced nor an enabling environment for terrorist groups such as Al Nusra and ISIS to fester and further complicate the dynamics of Syria. Though Obama has all but failed in supporting the rebels in Syria, his Doctrine however has seen some success against terror groups — chiefly ISIS — in the very same region. Drone strikes and all sorts of air bombardment, advisory and training support to proxy forces, with only Special Forces as the American boots on the ground not engaged in all out combat but night raids to eliminate upper echelon members of terror groups’ hierarchy as well as other objectives such as gathering intelligence. Obama is walking on eggshells not to repeat the errs of his predecessor who put thousands of troops in combat in Iraq. Commendable as this doctrine may be in the fight against ISIS, many critics of Obama’s foreign policy would chalk-up the rise of ISIS, — the terrorist organization President Obama once infamously branded “ a JV team…” — to one of his administration’s earliest foreign policy mistakes, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. American troops were first welcomed in Iraq as liberators against the repressive regime of Saddam, but after ousting Saddam and his Ba’ath party, there was nothing left of Iraq or its political institutions to keep the order. In fact American troops were the only source of sanity to Iraqi civil society and it stands to reason that the withdrawal of American forces gave way to the unchecked rise of ISIS in Iraq which eventually spread to Syria. Obama was seemingly eager to deliver on his campaign promises of bringing the troops back home and could argue that he didn’t get the requisite legal clearance from the presiding Iraqi government of the time, to keep his troops there for a protracted period. In politics, a man with a single and successfully executed agendum is often deemed more praiseworthy than one with seventy excuses… that error remains Obama’s burden. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner inherited two major wars from his predecessor, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. The mission in Iraq was done and dusted and so he pulled out rather hastily, but for Afghanistan, Obama made an exception to his doctrine. For him it was the “good war” and we could hear it in his rhetoric at the time. Neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban, were existential threats to the United States, so why did Obama stay invested? Perhaps it was easier to perpetuate now that they were already in the war? Or was the war easier to sell despite the Iraq debacle, because Al Qaeda — whose de facto dwelling place was Afghanistan — was responsible for 9/11 or was it some rather well cloaked ulterior motive? Regardless Obama soon discovered that he had overstretched his resources in Afghanistan and quickly reassessed the war and reverted to his doctrine; the threat terrorism posed to the U.S. in Afghanistan was not “existential” nor were the rewards of the war commensurate — at least in Obama’s eyes — to the military, economic and even political expenditure. Experts say Obama’s grave mistake like in Iraq was pulling out too early. As well as a hesitation to expand his military operations and personnel to combat full scale insurgency. There is now a resurgence of the Taliban since the departure of the U.S. and its allies from the region, progress has become undone. These developments have prompted Obama to renege on his decision to completely withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving behind some 5,500 troops not enough to decimate the Taliban, but just enough to keep the Afghan army hanging by a thread in the fight against them. The onus of the resolution of this conflict now lays with his successor — quite a low point in comparison to his lofty aspirations for the war upon the early days of warming the seat in the oval office, don’t you agree?
Obama has a messy foreign policy report card, but an objective observer would not let his failures entirely drown out his achievements that include but are not limited to; normalizing relations with Cuba, the Paris climate change agreement and perhaps his masterstroke in orchestrating the operation that pegged Osama. He’ll be remembered as the president who brought justice upon the source of a long lasting American bane from 9/11. Obama did indeed finish — at least in some respects — what Bush had only hoped to accomplish. Nonetheless, there’s still one rather controversial and grey area on that very report card, the gamble with Iran — for indeed it is a gamble. Sometimes the significance of a political action is never evinced in the moment and only so in retrospect. The nuclear deal with Iran which has earned him both applause and detraction is sure to only materialize its import a few years, perhaps even decades later. Much like the partakers of the Boston Tea Party being unaware that they were sparking what would eventually become the (successful) American Revolution, Obama could bear the honor of having stopped an unorthodox power from acquiring nuclear weapons or could have his entire presidency marred. This, in my opinion should characterize much of Obama’s presidency, many observers would be wise to let the man step out of office and catch a breather for a few years before we look upon his legacy once again with fresh eyes and broader contextualization. Set aside Obama’s deeds — as well as misdeeds — for a moment, and observe a much different threat to his legacy, his successor, Donald J. Trump. Obama’s biggest failure — at least as Champion of the liberals — may very well be his inability to successfully guide his preferred successor to the Oval office. As Obama’s popularity and political successes grew, that of his party plunged. He won two terms but lost the Democratic hold on Congress, oversaw the failings of the democratic party’s trifecta presidential bid as leader of the party. Perhaps a particularly painful loss, to lose to a candidate with the vastly unconventional antics of Donald J. Trump. How much of a threat Trump is to Obama’s legacy remains to be seen, judging off the mere fact that both men are from fundamentally variant political parties and not even considering their individual ideological differences, we can be sure that Donald Trump’s presidency will not — by even a long shot — be a continuation of Obama’s. However, international agreements and treaties do not easily become undone, so too domestic policies of grave consequence. The next couple of years should make for an interesting watch.
For us in Africa, we’d have to be content with the graceful way in which one of our own conducted himself, applaud his successes and accept his limitations, for in the words of Barack Obama himself, every president does indeed have his limitations. Knowing better now, than to have expected anything out of the ordinary, than the usual aid Africa enjoyed from America irrespective of the skin pigmentation of its leader. To all peoples of the world who bore a stake in his presidency, it appears we are in a greater need for the words of Aurelius’ servant than Obama, as he is truly only a man. A man who can only set the compass in the right direction, but surely cannot deliver in a single presidency on the cruelly monumental expectations of all peoples and undo centuries of aggregated misdeeds. Once again, in the words of the man himself, “progress is a slow process”.
