Obama says goodbye to nation

He looks back on presidency as time of great progress

It was little more than eight years ago and 3 miles away that Barack Obama embraced the promise of his presidency, addressing a jubilant crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park at a victory celebration on election night 2008.

A political lifetime later, before a sea of supporters at McCormick Place on Tuesday, Obama delivered what is likely to be his final formal address to the nation. His hair was grayer, his tone more somber. Since election night 2016, his message has been aimed at rallying downcast supporters and defending a legacy that his successor has vowed to dismantle.

In his speech, he recited a litany of his proudest achievements, among them the economic recovery from the Great Recession, the diplomatic outreach to Cuba, the nuclear accord with Iran, the death of Osama bin Laden, extension of health care coverage to another 20 million people and more.

“That’s what we did,” he said to cheers. “That’s what you did. You were the change. Because of you, by almost every measure, America is a stronger, better place than it was when we

started.”

Though Obama is finishing his term with a healthy approval rating — ahead of Donald Trump’s standing by double digits in a Quinnipiac University Poll released Tuesday — the election of a political nemesis as his successor poses grave risks to what he leaves behind on everything from health care to climate change.

The situation includes this ironic twist: Trump initially built a political following by questioning Obama’s birthplace and the legitimacy of his presidency. As he prepares to turn over the White House to Trump, Obama finds himself defending the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency, insisting to skeptics that the election of this new commander in chief doesn’t represent an apocalypse that threatens American democracy.

He quieted boos from the audience when he noted that a new administration would take over in 10 days, lauding “the peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected president to the next.”

When the crowd chanted, “Four more years!” to drown out a protester, he said with a smile, “I can’t do that.”

Obama spoke amid a new and potentially explosive controversy involving Trump. CNN first reported, and USA TODAY and other news outlets confirmed, that Obama and Trump were given classified documents last week that included allegations from Russian operatives who claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Trump. The president- elect denounced the report in a tweet, deriding it as “# fakenews.”

Obama’s decision to deliver a farewell address, and the unprecedented venue he chose for it, are part of his effort to make the case for his legacy and rally his reeling party. He is all too aware of the impact Hillary Clinton’s defeat in November is likely to have on his legacy, one reason he and Michelle Obama campaigned so fiercely on her behalf.

Obama will be succeeded by a president elected with a promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, reject the Pacific trade deal, withdraw from the global climate change agreement, undo the Iran nuclear deal and reverse his executive orders on immigration.

Consider the comments by a senior Trump adviser in an interview with USA TODAY Monday about Obama’s farewell address. “It’s a great idea for him to do this,” Kellyanne Conway said, “because he knows that a great deal of what he did is not going to survive this next presidency, or maybe even this next month, in some cases.”