Since leaving the White House, the Obamas have taken holidays in Palm Springs, the Caribbean and Hawaii. They are still decompressing after an intense period that dates back to Barack Obama’s 2004 convention speech. According to his former senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, “he is enjoying a lower profile where he can relax, reflect and enjoy his family and friends.”
Obama is still young and he left office held in high esteem. He has expressed his desire to remain active in civic life, but he is still keeping a low profile. However, his whereabouts have been obsessively scrutinized and, for many, it is not too soon to judge the former US president.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael D’Antonio tackles Obama’s legacy in “A Consequential President: The Legacy of Barack Obama.” This book is a step toward developing a fuller appreciation of President Obama’s legacy.
Obama took the oath of office before a crowd of more than 1.8 million people, which was, by some estimates, the largest ever such crowd gathered in Washington. During his inaugural address, he underlined the three major challenges facing the country, namely the deepest economic recession since 1929, terrorism and climate change.
The recession remained the most important problem Obama faced during his presidency and he could not wait to put an end to it. Millions of people had lost their jobs. The value of real estate was going down and, during the course of 2008, some 860,000 homeowners received foreclosure notices. Bill Clinton famously remarked during the 1992 presidential election that the primary concern is “the economy, stupid” and the economy remained the highest priority for Obama throughout his presidency.
When Obama signed the Recovery Act, he said that it was “the beginning of the end” of the recession. This bill was the most expensive and most radical economic program ever implemented by Washington. Beside tax breaks for businesses and individuals, about $500 billion would be allocated for food stamps, unemployment benefits, lunches for poor schoolchildren and for an exhaustive list of projects that would revive the economy and invest in lasting public works.
Obama also rescued America’s three biggest auto companies — Chrysler, General Motors and Ford — from the brink of disaster. Their CEOs had, according to the book, traveled to Washington by private jet to ask for a $25 billion taxpayer bailout. “The carmakers were in deep trouble caused, in part, by their own blunders,” D’Antonio wrote. “They had failed to offer models that would sustain market share and profit over the long term,” he added. In short, these companies had created, engineered and produced failed models.
On March 30, when president Obama addressed the car industry’s crisis, he said: “We cannot, and must not and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish. This industry is like no other, it’s an emblem of the American spirit (and) a once and future symbol of America’s success. It’s a pillar of our economy that has held up the dreams of millions of our people.” He added: “We cannot continue to excuse poor decisions. We cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars. These companies and this industry must ultimately stand on their own and not as wards of the state.”
The Economist had initially criticized Obama’s rescue plan and argued that “General Motors deserved extinction.” One year later, in August 2010, the editors admitted they had been wrong: “An apology is due to Barack Obama — his takeover of General Motors could have gone horribly wrong, but it has not.”
Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian and author of bestselling biographies, wrote that “in the near-term, Obama brought stability to the economy, to the job market, to the housing market, to the auto industry and to the banks. That’s what he’s handing over, an economy that is in far better form than it was when he took over.”
Obama’s health care reforms, another great achievement, put an end to the soaring cost of medical care and to the inadequate treatment that threatened the health and well-being of millions of Americans.
Before the Affordable Care Act, people diagnosed with cancer who had no health insurance were treated with the help of charities and by incurring crushing debts. But this act, which has been nicknamed “Obamacare,” ensured Americans had access to cutting-edge treatment at a reasonable cost.
On the day Obama signed the bill, he announced that it was not a “radical reform,” rather a “major reform” that would show that “we are still a people capable of doing big things.”
Obama was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and because the committee recognized that “only very rarely has a person, to the same extent as Obama, captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”
Despite this, his inability to act in Syria created a political, human and moral disaster. During an interview, Obama acknowledged that Syria was the issue that haunted him the most. Syria represents Obama’s biggest foreign policy failure.
However, Obama’s legacy rests on many other aspects of his time as president and his rise to the post.
“The single undeniable aspect of Obama’s legacy is that he demonstrated that a black man can become president of the United States. This accomplishment will inform the first line in his obituary and will earn him assured mention in every American history textbook written from now to eternity,” said H.W. Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas.
Obama will also be remembered for his grace and the lack of any personal scandals, according to the book. In the long term, historians will take over from journalists and analyze his time in office. However, there is still a lot we cannot know until time passes.
Book Review: The legacy of a president
Book Review: The legacy of a president
What We Are Reading Today: Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read
In “Little Bosses Everywhere,” journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time.
“Little Bosses Everywhere” exposes the deceptions of direct-selling companies that make their profit not off customers but off their own sales force.
The book lays out an almost prosecutorial case against many multilevel marketing schemes, explaining why regulators need to take the industry seriously, and the larger story it tells about whom the economy has set up to fail.
The book “reads like a thriller as it investigates the birth and growth of this shadowy and sprawling industry that polished up door-to-door sales with a new veneer of all-American entrepreneurialism,” said a review in The New York Times.
The book primarily focuses on a broader analysis of pyramid schemes and their history.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘King Leopold’s Ghostwriter’
Author: Andrew Fitzmaurice
Eminent jurist, Oxford professor, advocate to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Travers Twiss (1809–1897) was a model establishment figure in Victorian Britain, and a close collaborator of Prince Metternich, the architect of the Concert of Europe.
Yet Twiss’s life was defined by two events that threatened to undermine the order that he had so stoutly defended: a notorious social scandal and the creation of the Congo Free State.
In “King Leopold’s Ghostwriter,” Andrew Fitzmaurice tells the incredible story of a man who, driven by personal events that transformed him from a reactionary to a reformer, rewrote and liberalized international law—yet did so in service of the most brutal regime of the colonial era.
In an elaborate deception, Twiss and Pharaïlde van Lynseele, a Belgian prostitute, sought to reinvent her as a woman of suitably noble birth to be his wife. Their subterfuge collapsed when another former client publicly denounced van Lynseele.
Book Review: ‘Oil Leaders’ by Dr. Ibrahim Al-Muhanna
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Muhanna’s book, “Oil Leaders: An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s Global Energy Policy,” offers a detailed narrative of the oil industry’s evolution from a Saudi perspective, drawing on the author’s four decades of experience.
Published in 2022, the book coincides with global energy crises triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Al-Muhanna relies on data from OPEC, the International Energy Agency and interviews to provide an anecdotal biography of key figures who shaped oil politics, targeting a broad audience including policymakers, researchers and industry professionals.
The book is divided into 11 chapters, beginning with the influential role of Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani, whose overconfidence and perceived indispensability are critically examined.
Subsequent chapters highlight other pivotal figures, such as Hisham Nazer, Yamani’s successor, and delve into events such as the 1991 Gulf War.
The narrative also covers Luis Giusti, of Venezuela’s PDVSA, whose disregard for OPEC quotas sparked tensions, and discusses OPEC’s struggles with production cuts and falling oil prices in the late 1990s, which led to economic crises in oil-exporting nations such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Al-Muhanna explores the political ramifications of oil price fluctuations, noting how high prices influenced US presidential elections and shaped diplomatic interactions, such as George W. Bush’s visit to Riyadh.
The book also examines the rise of Russia under Vladimir Putin, the privatization of Saudi Aramco as part of Vision 2030, and the roles of contemporary leaders such as Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and former US President Joe Biden in shaping global energy policy.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Africa’s Buildings’ by Itohan I. Osayimwse
Between the 19th century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States.
Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures.
“Africa’s Buildings” traces the history of the collection and distribution of African architectural fragments, documenting the brutality of the colonial regimes that looted Africa’s buildings.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Birds at Rest’ by Roger Pasquier
“Birds at Rest” is the first book to give a full picture of how birds rest, roost, and sleep, a vital part of their lives.
It features new science that can measure what is happening in a bird’s brain over the course of a night or when it has flown to another hemisphere, as well as still-valuable observations by legendary naturalists such as John James Audubon, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Theodore Roosevelt. Much of what they saw and what ornithologists are studying today can be observed and enjoyed by any birder.
