EDIT: MR TRUMP’S WAY

If everything had gone according to plan, these would be valedictory days for former President Barack Obama. With the economy humming if not roaring and his approval ratings higher than they were through most of his time in office, Mr Obama expected to take a victory lap, map out his memoir and hand the reins to a like-minded successor to build on his accomplishments.

But everything did not go according to plan, and instead he finds himself bequeathing his record to Donald J Trump, a man he disdains, who was elected in large part on a promise to take a sledgehammer to anything with Mr Obama’s name on it. Mr Obama is left trying to explain the debacle, salvage what he can from the wreckage and make his case to history that his was still a transformative presidency.

In his corner will be Jonathan Chait of New York magazine and one of the country’s leading progressive voices, who has come to Mr Obama’s defence with Audacity, a timely, trenchant and relentlessly argued book presenting the 44th president in terms that he himself would approve. Not only did Mr Obama change America for the better, Mr Chait writes, he also cemented a new policy infrastructure that will resist Mr Trump’s efforts to tear it down.

To be sure, this was a book written largely before the November election with the evident expectation that Hillary Clinton would be preparing to move into the Oval Office, and it cannot help reading that way. After Mr Trump shocked the world with his improbable Electoral College victory, Mr Chait tweaked the text to address the upheaval in American politics. But he did not change his fundamental conclusion or buy into the notion that Ms Clinton’s defeat represented a harsh verdict on Mr Obama.

“She lost despite, not because of, her association with the popular sitting president,” Mr Chait writes. Republicans nurtured the opposite conclusion to justify a demolition of Mr Obama’s new foundation. “The myth of repudiation had a clear purpose: to make it appear both fair and inevitable that the conquering Republican government would destroy Obama’s legacy.”

But, he adds, “the fatalistic conclusion that Trump can erase Obama’s achievements is overstated — perhaps even completely false.” Mr Chait’s point is that “good ideas advance in fits and stops” and that Mr Obama’s presidency “represented one of those great bursts” that will not simply be erased despite momentary setbacks.

Whether that is the case remains to be seen. Certainly in facing the judgment of history, much of the record that Mr Obama will point to is beyond any Republican effort to reverse. He helped pull the country back from the brink of the economic abyss, saved the auto industry, ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and broke the ultimate racial barrier.

Yet despite Mr Chait’s confidence in the durability of Mr Obama’s legacy, other elements of his agenda appear to be in jeopardy. Mr Obama’s health care programme, efforts to ease immigration rules, crackdowns on emissions by coalfired plants, regulations on Wall Street, labour rules intended to improve worker conditions and a free-trade pact with Asia all seem unlikely to survive, at least in the form he prefers. The fates of his nuclear agreement with Iran and his diplomatic opening to Cuba are at least in question, although Mr Trump may ultimately find it harder than he thinks to unravel either.

It could well be that Mr Trump unintentionally helps his predecessor’s case for history as a point of contrast — that whatever Mr Obama’s leadership flaws, his calm, no-drama performance will look better in hindsight to many Americans. At the same time, it raises the question that if Mr Obama was so successful, why do so many Americans feel so dissatisfied and left behind? How could an America that twice chose Barack Obama decide to replace him with Donald Trump?

While Mr Chait agrees that “Obama has not done the job perfectly,” he echoes Michael Grunwald in The New New Deal by making the case that his programmes will have long-lasting if often overlooked impact. Mr Obama’s fiscal stimulus package, for instance, was “a gigantic success,” not only by helping stanch job losses but also by investing in the future in the form of renewable energy, transportation infrastructure and scientific research.

Likewise, Mr Obama’s health care programme covered 20 million more Americans while also producing an “economic miracle,” Mr Chait says, in slowing the rise of medical costs even though premiums for some continued to rise sharply. Mr Obama’s green energy revolution, he adds, has already brought down climate change emissions and “changed the economic calculus irreversibly.” While Mr Obama’s foreign policy may not have transformed the world, Mr Chait concludes, he made incremental progress and avoided catastrophic mistakes. Mr Chait’s argument probably will not persuade many on the right, who still see a president who expanded the size and reach of government at home while undercutting American authority abroad. But it may encourage those on the left and in the middle to come around again to a president they once believed in. How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail Jonathan Chait Custom House 240 pages; $27.99