Healthcare good, foreign policy less so… still he related to ordinary people

A FEW days ago, President Obama gave his farewell address in Chicago. In it he both reiterated some of his main accomplishments but also offered a warning about the threats he sees facing American democracy.

Imploring his supporters to get more involved in politics, Mr Obama warned “democracy is threatened when we take it for granted”.

Some would argue that, given the almost impossibly high expectations facing Mr Obama when he first became President, it would have been impossible for him to live up to them. As with many presidents, he had notable achievements in some areas but fell short in others.

Domestically, his most notable achievement by far was the passage into law of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare”. The law helped 20 million Americans get health insurance. The creation of some form of a national healthcare system had been the goal of Democratic presidents for nearly a century.

Although the ACA is not perfect, it has helped to bring many more people into national insurance pools, thereby helping to make healthcare affordable to millions who could not afford it before. The future of the ACA, though, is now in doubt. Mr Trump and Republicans, now fully in control of Congress, have already made the first steps to repeal the law.

In foreign affairs, Mr Obama entered office determined to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US formally ended combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, and in Iraq in 2011. Yet American mismanagement of both wars has led to ongoing involvement in both countries, notably with US bombing campaigns against the so-called Islamic State.

In Afghanistan and elsewhere, Mr Obama’s expansion of the American drone campaign of targeted assassinations has been criticised for blurring the distinctions between wartime and peacetime, and has opened the door to being expanded even further by future presidents who may even be less restrained than Obama in this regard.

The 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran was a major accomplishment and helped to bring down tensions with an issue that just a few years ago many thought may lead to American airstrikes against Iran.

Mr Obama was often criticised for being too aloof and too far removed from the glad-handing expected of politicians. It is true that his relationship with Congress often wasn’t warm, and that this probably hurt some of his legislative priorities. However, he usually showed a keen ability to relate with regular people. Particularly during tense times or after tragedy, Mr Obama showed levels of compassion rarely seen in presidents in office.

During his 2008 campaign, he made a speech on the complexities of race in America where he acknowledged hearing his white grandmother (who helped raise him) utter racial and ethnic stereotypes, but that he could not disown her, as she was very much a part of his life. Dr Solomon is a lecturer in international relations at Glasgow University.