There will be a veritable cornucopia of commentary regarding the President’s legacy; some will find favor, many will not. Still with 14 or so months remaining there’s insufficient time and more likely no interest in altering the course. Like many Presidents before him each Administration recorded seminal moments forever altering the image of the Office, its scope and the consequence.
In contemporary times you have Woodrow Wilson and the Federal Reserve Act, FDR’s New Deal & Supreme Court Challenge, Truman and “the Bomb”, Eisenhauer and Senator McCarthy, Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis, LBJ and Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate, Clinton and Monica and then Bush II’s misadventure in Iraq. President Obama will enter the field with an epitaph that I believe will be his crushing blow to the principal of Separation of Powers; their order, structure, function and purpose. It may also be his ineptitude on Foreign Policy issues however, we’ll leave that to another time.
We mustn’t ignore how important this fundamental principal is to this country’s order of Government and the manner in which his rank politicization of this order has forever altered the scope of the Executive Office. His actions have exposed both the courts and various law enforcement agencies to an entirely new level of political vice. His calculated bypassing of Congress has silenced Government/Legislative oversight both in his use of regulatory influences where his domestic agenda is concerned and his binding of the U.S. Also by way of his authoritative directives on or to foreign policy ventures that suit his political agenda or bear the residue of fantasy and universal contempt. The most conspicuous being where climate change and foreign entanglements are concerned.
For example: the disfiguring policy in Libya, funding of Syrian Insurgents, Iran Nuclear Agreement and most importantly the failure to stabilize Iraq with a Status of Forces Agreement. Collectively these represent a most potent fuel for giving rise to ISIS. I’m not interested in scaling President Obama’s service or his political agenda. I’m far more concerned about the failing structure of this country and his contribution to it.
What is critical to understanding the point I intend to make is this: someone is going to have to deal with the fallout of his actions. Someone is going to have to figure out how to unravel what may very well be an untieable knot. Obamacare, for instance, is just one example. The effect of this legislation, likely among the worst possible political exhibition ever, has completely dismantled the separations of Government and the Private Sector, like HSA, it has created an entirely new level of inter & intra state bureaucracy. It has infused itself into every level of the economic, regulatory and intra-governmental facets of the country. Its unrepairable to be sure however, now in the aftermath, so is the private sector component as well.
Voiding the statute’s a simple task however think of the massive void of dysfunction that will exist in its absence. In aspects of Foreign Policy, suffice it to say, I’d always felt that U.S. Mid-East Policy was best defined as congenitally defective and that it was impossible to make it worse. I was wrong. If the Presidents own ideology weren’t sufficient it became incomprehensible with the addition of Hillary Clinton; that’s all.
As is always the case, there are viable solutions to every challenge however, I’ve little to no confidence in the aptitude and will of Congress to apply a functional solution without the overbite of political banter and its influences. Either way the die has been cast and regardless of one’s affinity for the President one point is clear: History will not be a good friend to this President. Yes indeed, the President, like others before him has left his mark on the country and the world. Unfortunately, as we’ve already observed, not a one for the better, not a one. You and I will have to live with it along with what follows!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
