It is my fondest hope every president would go down in history as outstanding. Presidents become great by doing great things for America.
Unfortunately, history has not smiled on all. I’m sure President Barack Obama wants an illustrious legacy. He must remember, however, his legacy will not be written by the low-information voters who helped elect him, but by historians who will dissect his policies and the results they produced.
Let me be the fi rst to perform that dissection in the hopes things can change. President Obama had a unique opportunity to unite and heal our country as no other but has fallen tragically short in three important areas.
When he first took off ce, the glaring issue to be dealt with was the economy.
Every candidate campaigned on how they would turn it around, including the president, yet when he took offce he made health care his primary focus. He threw$800 billion of our money at it and delegated the stimulus implementation primarily to Joe Biden.
He promised the unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent and by mid-2012 it would be 5.6 percent. Unfortunately, unemployment exploded to 10.1 percent in 2009 and by July 2012 it had only retreated to 8.3 percent.
Today’s rate of 7.4 percent is still far above his promise for last year.
Even if you throw out his first two years in off ce, his unemployment rate is the worst average since Eisenhower, when these statistics were fi rst gathered. President Obama’s supporters will say thingswould have been much worse without his actions.
Of course, we don’t know that, do we? We only have his promises, his results and the huge gap between them.
Many Americans will agree Obama had a unique opportunity to unite this country, especially along racial lines. In his famous quote, “There is not a liberal America and conservative America … there is not a black America and a white America … there is the United States of America,” he suggested his desire was to bring America together.
Despite the rhetoric, America is more divided now than ever. First, the president passed his signature legislation without a single Republican vote in either house of Congress.
He called conservatives “the enemy” on Univision and told them they would have to “sit in the back seat” when it came to his legislative agenda. Does that sound like “reaching across the aisle” to you?
Even when it comes to racial harmony, our fi rstblack president has made no progress. He has inserted himself twice in racially charged events. The fi rst was in Cambridge, Mass., where he said the white policeman “acted stupidly,” and second was with Trayvon Martin, where he suggested Trayvon could have been him.
I could argue he shouldn’t have even gotten involved in either of these cases, but for sure he could have used more therapeutic language if he was striving for harmony.
An Associated Press poll shows 51 percent of Americans refl ect antiblack sentiments today versus 48 percent in 2008 when Obama was elected.
A Rasmussen poll found today blacks are thought to be even more racist than whites. Overall, 37 percent of Americans believe blacks are more prejudiced while only 15 percent believe whites are. Even among black respondents, 31 percent suggested blacks are more racially biased while 24 percent thought that of whites.
These are clear indications the country is more divided today in almost every way than when the president took off ce. I believe historians will say, “Promises made; promises not kept.”
Finally, the president clearly believes in a bigger government than I do, however, under his administration our trust in it has plummeted.
Whether it is “Fast and Furious” or Benghazi or the IRS or AP wiretaps or the NSA (wow, that was a mouthful), Americans’ trust in government is slumping. According to a Pew Research Center survey done in early 2013, our trust in the federal government is at an all-time low with three out of four Americans never or only occasionally trusting it.
While I hope none of these scandals can be traced to our president, he is the leader in Washington and in the country. He sets the tone, and unless things change, I don’t believe history will judge hisleadership kindly.
In addition to these three big issues (the economy, American unity and trust in government) the president is also having signifi cant problems with Obamacare and foreign policy. His ability to make advances in these two areas, however, rests on making progress in unity and trust.
There is still time. The president could stop demonizing the right and embrace a few conservative ideas such as the Keystone Pipeline or entitlement and tax reform. He could focus on America’s racial progress (he IS our fi rst black president) instead of clinging to the injustices of the past. He could hold people publicly accountable for poor judgment or illegal actions and restore some confidence in our government. If he would, I think history would reward him.
KEVIN CANFIELD, A SPRINGDALE RESIDENT, IS A PROCTER & GAMBLE RETIREE AND AUTHOR OF “MASTERING SALES.”
Opinion, Pages 13 on 09/01/2013