Barack Obama
Barack Obama© Provided by 1945

Barack Obama: A Terrible President - We’re living in an age of stagnation and decline. It began around 2006 when the United States had to orchestrate a massive retreat from Iraq, a nation in which the United States chose to go to war with. By 2008, the nation’s economy nearly collapsed, and voters were looking for someone else to lead them. 

Americans wanted to elect an outsider. They wanted someone new and fresh. They chose the dynamic, youthful Barack Obama. 

Within two years of Obama’s election, though, people were having regrets.

You see, Barack Obama campaigned on promises of restoring hope and bringing change to Washington.

 

Yet, few people seemed to understand that Obama was himself a creature of the establishment. He had spent his career working up the ladder of Democratic Party politics, first in hyper-partisan Chicago and later, in the nation’s capital as a senator. 

Sure, he was opposed to the Iraq War and wanted to nationalize our healthcare system. 

But those were easy positions to take for a Democrat back then.

Obama wanted to be post-partisan. It’s a simple assertion to claim that Obama was faced with a highly partisan opposition party. Although, in Obama’s first two years in office, the Republicans had so little power that the Democrats were able to ram through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare”, without a single Republican vote in the Senate. 

It was after that action that many Americans came out and voted to give Republicans more power in the 2010 Midterms. The reason was not because the Republicans were blocking Obama. It was because, in the eyes of most Americans, Barack Obama had broken his promise to be bipartisan. 

He squandered an historic majority. 

Barack Obama Created Many of the Problems Today

During Obama’s presidency, the race-and-class warfare rhetoric that has ripped our country apart over the last decade began in earnest—at the urging of Obama. Even as he was bailing Wall Street out, Obama was playing both sides of the fence, and encouraging Left-wing activists and “community organizers” to rip this country apart. 

The Occupy Wall Street movement started during the Barack Obama years, not in reaction to Republican policies, but in response to Obama’s bailouts of Wall Street and his refusal to forgive student debt.

The division and rancor that defines our political culture today was exacerbated by former President Obama. It was Obama and his supporters who turned any legitimate opposition to his presidency into accusations of racism. It was Obama who routinely lied and engaged in bad faith arguments in public to manipulate the American people. 

Remember “if you want your doctor, you can keep him”? 

Related video: Barack Obama's Netflix Series Working: What We Do All Day (Dailymotion)

Or that time in 2016 when Obama insisted that there was no way that Donald Trump could get economic growth higher than what Obama had gotten it—only to be proven wrong within a few months of Trump’s presidency? 

Obama Leads from Behind

Then there was the retinue of foreign policy failures. 

Having campaigned as the anti-George W. Bush, the only Democrat who opposed the Iraq War from its outset, Obama vowed to not “do stupid ----” as president in foreign policy. He then proceeded to do just the opposite. 

From Afghanistan to Iran to Libya, the Obama foreign policy team destabilized an already unstable region and added to America’s woes there. 

Egypt was a hairsbreadth away from becoming the Iran of the Sunni Arab world before the Egyptian military overthrew the Obama-backed Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi. Washington pushed Israel away under Obama, creating the frostiest relations imaginable with the only liberal democracy in the region all while Obama tried to empower nuclear-arming Iran. 

Meanwhile, Obama pulled the United States out of its anti-ballistic missile shield development with Poland, made a generous New START Treaty with Russia which effectively gave Russia nuclear weapons supremacy over the US, and presided over the loss of Crimea to Russia. 

Obama then got America rolled big time by Russia in Syria. 

After it was believed embattled Syrian strongman, Bashar al-Assad attacked his own people with chemical weapons, Obama wanted to conduct a massive air war against Assad to force the regime to disarm its chemical WMDs. Ultimately, Obama didn’t bomb Syria and instead called on Syria’s allies in Russia to disarm them diplomatically. It turned out that Russia never actually did what it said it’d do. 

Surprise, surprise.

Then there was the whole precipitous pullout from Iraq followed on by the birth of ISIS—all of which could have been avoided had Obama managed his drawdown in Iraq more responsibly. And let us not forget the endless drone warfare program that Obama ran. 

This was how Obama managed to square the circle that was his campaign pledge to end the Bush era torture program. 

Obama Stops Torture but Embraces Mass Assassination

First, he signed an executive order closing the Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) prison where many suspected terrorists were being held indefinitely. 

Of course, the order was apparently non-binding, since the facility remains in use today. 

Second, knowing that terrorism could still harm the country—and his chances of reelection—Obama chose to simply assassinate any suspected terrorists rather than capture them and acquire critical intelligence from them. 

Nevertheless, the drone program has been far more damaging to America’s standing in the region than the torture program ever was. What’s more, it left a huge hole in intelligence collection because we basically killed the bad guys before finding out what they knew about potential plots against the homeland.

The End of an Error

Further, Obama had spent more US tax dollars than the previous 43 presidents combined. He blew a major hole in our national debt. Whatever excesses his two successors have engaged in, Obama completely abandoned any semblance of fiscal responsibility which, in turn, helped to set the stage for the current economic crisis we are entering. 

Obama’s presidency was a massive letdown. 

He helped to create many of the crises that we are having to deal with today. Plus, Obama paved the way for the current Biden Administration which, if you can believe it, is an even greater disaster than the Obama presidency ever was. 

When historians look back at this time in America’s history (if there’s anyone left in the future to study this time), they will identify Barack Obama’s presidency as the point in which the United States began its precipitous from the sole remaining superpower to a dying power.

A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

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