How much will Obama’s being black matter in the end? In, say, 20 years, will it be a major or minor aspect of his presidency and, to the extent that it will matter, in what specific way will it matter most?
Yes, race mattered from beginning to end, and in 20 years historians and journalists—presuming there are some left—will be debating not whether but how it did. Perhaps it mattered most in electing him, when the margin of victory was turnout rates among African-American and young voters. But the hyperbole and the hysteria that routinely characterized opposition to Obama (not just from the birthers and the tea-party types) will require close (psycho)analysis. I’m not confident that historians and journalists will be up to that task.
Will future historians blame Obama for not getting more done in a climate of Republican obstructionism, or will he be given a pass for it? More generally, to what degree will his presidency be seen as “transformative” (the word he used to describe the Reagan administration)?
Obama came into office believing the U.S. is a center-right country. He governed on that assumption from beginning to end. Translation: He always thought he needed to compromise, split the difference, and so forth. He was wrong, and he’s still wrong. The coalition that elected him in 2008 was ready for the change he promised it. Because he governed without keeping that electoral coalition mobilized, his presidency will not be remembered as “transformative.”
In assessing Obama’s historical legacy, what do you believe will be the aspect of his presidency that is currently least understood or misunderstood? In other words, for better or worse, what single thing looks smallest now but will matter most to future historians?
What looks smallest now—almost petty, if you believe Maureen Dowd—is Obama’s inability to address Congress except as an orator from on high. Like Ms. Dowd, future historians will wonder why he couldn’t get off the pedestal and make some pragmatic deals. They will ascribe this failing to his personal character, but it’s an ideological problem.
Will future historians conclude that Obama weakened or strengthened the office of the president? Will the policies he enacted without congressional cooperation represent a strategic victory or a dangerous escalation of executive power?
How about both? Or neither? From the standpoint of future presidents, Obama’s expansion of executive powers will represent a handy device in negotiation with Congress (unless the Congress fights back with procedural obstructions grounded in constitutional precedent, not likely). From everywhere else unbound by the prerogatives of the White House, it will represent a dangerous enlargement of what the war criminals in the Bush administration called a “unitary executive.”
Assuming no dramatic shift in world events between now and 2016, which parts of Obama’s foreign-policy tenure will be judged most positively and which most poorly? Overall, how will his actions abroad be judged against his recent predecessors’?
The end of sanctioned torture is the best thing Obama has done in terms of foreign policy, for now. The “pivot” to Asia will figure largely in future accounts, but I think the most lasting legacy of this administration will be the “pivot” to Iran—away from Israel. Everything that has happened in the Middle East since 2001, including the unnecessary wars and “surges,” has magnified Iran’s importance from the standpoint of U.S. national interests and, to the same extent, diminished Israel’s significance.
Will the Obama years come to be seen as a major realignment in Democratic politics? As a historian, how would you predict the longevity of his coalition?
No, I don’t see a major realignment. He dismissed the coalition that elected him in 2009. Obamacare was a threat to Republicans as long as it appeared as a constituency-generating bureaucracy, but it has now lost that electoral salience, so there’s no way to predict the trajectory of the Democratic Party’s base, let alone its composition.
Will future historians concur with the administration’s own narrative of having saved the country from another Great Depression? Or will Obama’s economic legacy be seen as a lackluster performance or, worse, a failed attempt to reform the U.S. economy in any meaningful way?
Again, both, or neither. Obama’s administration did save us from another Great Depression, but the assumption throughout was that a “financial fix” was the key to everything else, so he kept Geithner, Summers, et al. in place as reassurance to the Wall Street crowd. We did need a quick “financial fix,” but the causes of the Great Recession run so much deeper than shadow banking and deregulation and moral hazard—I could go on—that to use the word “reform” in this context is laughable, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd notwithstanding.