Outgoing

Last week, President Barack Obama gave his farewell speech to a group in Chicago.  It was also nationally televised.  I don’t know how many of you listened to that speech, but I did.  I found it almost spellbinding, highlighting as it did his gift of oratory and his gracious manner.  Nowhere in the speech did he say anything derogatory about the incoming President, but he did emphasize to ordinary people their responsibility to uphold democracy.  It was a fitting end to his eight years in office.  I hope it is not the end of his public service.

At the time of his inauguration in January 2009, I wrote a letter to the editor concerning his presidency.  I quote it here:

“As Barack Obama is sworn in as the forty-fourth President of the United States, I for one wish him the very best.  His journey to this esteemed position has truly been extraordinary.  I hope that he can achieve the change and hope that he has come to epitomize.  I do fear that his biggest challenge will be meeting all of the expectations that so many people have placed upon him.

Mr. Obama has been hailed as the first African-American President of the US.  That is certainly very laudable, but also somewhat sad.  It is sad because we still have to point out his racial uniqueness as part of his description.  Sad because we, Americans and Canadians, still see a person’s skin colour, racial origin, gender or religion as a valid descriptor of the person.  Many years ago, I served under the first African-American Admiral in the United States Navy, Rear-Admiral (later Vice-Admiral) Sam Gravely.  He was a very fine officer with a wonderful sense of humour and, in my opinion, fully deserved to be a flag officer.  In later years, General Colin Powell was an outstanding Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.  In both these cases, their skin colour, racial origin, gender or religion had very little to do with their success. In the same way, I think Barack Obama will be a good or even great, US President.  We will only become a truly mature society, however, when these outward traits are no longer considered matters worth noting when selecting the best person for the job.”

As he settled into the job, Mr. Obama was referred to less and less as “the African-American President” and more as the President, and this was good.  But there were still some who considered him as illegitimate for the job, including the incoming president who tried hard to prove that President Obama was not a native American, even going so far as to question his birth certificate. But that has all passed now.

My assessment is that Mr. Obama has been a good president.  He got some signature legislation through a recalcitrant congress.  He did not involve the US into any more foreign entanglements, and this is what he has been criticized the harshest for.  But we have to remember the mood of the country at the time of his arrival.  The US was then caught in the ill-conceived war in Afghanistan and the fiasco in Iraq that he inherited from his predecessor.  If you want to read about how the Iraq war went bad, I recommend the book “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005” by Thomas E. Ricks.  At the time of his start in office, President Obama knew that the American people were tired of these two wars, and wanted no further foreign entanglements, and in fact were getting sick of Iraq in particular where things just seemed to be getting worse.  He undertook to wind down American involvement in these two wars, which proved to be significantly more difficult that anyone probably envisioned.  This made any further involvement in Middle Eastern wars, such as Syria, very unpalatable.  If there is one lesson in history when it comes to wars, it is to avoid at all costs getting entangled in someone else’s civil war.  It inevitably forces you to choose sides and almost always leads to major complications when you have to get out of it.  Unfortunately many on the right of the political spectrum forget that warning despite the fact that America has had to learn that lesson several times since 1945.  I think Mr. Obama knew that lesson and was willing to take the political flack to avoid it.

When we contemplate such wars we should remember the following admonition:

“Every War Must End”

“Thus it can happen that military men, while skilfully planning their intricate operations and coordinating complicated manoeuvres, remain curiously blind in failing to perceive that it is the outcome of the war, not the outcome of the campaigns within it, that determines how well their plans serve the nation’s interests.  At the same time, senior statesmen may hesitate to insist that these beautifully planned campaigns be linked to some clear ideas for ending the war….”

And,

“. . . fighting often continues long past the point where a ‘rational’ calculation would indicate that the war should be ended.”

From “Every War Must End” by Fred Ikle as quoted in “My American Journey” by Colin L. Powell, General (Rtd) US Army.

On the domestic side, he succeeded in passing a health care bill which, despite being flawed, was one of the most progressive moves in many years.  Even Bill Clinton was unable to accomplish that.  He also managed to overcome crises over the debt ceiling and got a budget approved after several years of congress’s failure to do so.  The growing US debt was another reason to avoid costly foreign adventures.

In all, faced for most of his tenure with an obstructionist congress, I would judge Mr. Obama’s administration to have been quite a success.  History will, of course, pass its own judgement as time passes.