20/01/2017
Washington, D.C. - Barack Hussein Obama 2nd, who marshalled consummate political skills and an improbable personal story into a movement of hope and change that elected him the 44th President of the United States in a historic first for an African American but whose legacy as a champion for the progressive politics of equality, justice and fairness is imperiled by the election of an insurgent, wildcard successor in the person of Donald J. Trump, left office today. He was 55.
Coming seemingly out of nowhere, Obama burst into the big stage in the summer of 2004, at that year’s Democratic Party convention, with a soaring speech exulting the virtues of a united country in the face of an unpopular war. He then went on to be elected to the United States Senate from his adopted homestate of Illinois…
[Well, you probably know the rest of this story so write on from here. @Meria Mata can provide research na @gashwin a’check osungu]
Here’s what the NYT thinks of Obama:
Barack Obama is leaving the White House with polls showing him to be one of the most popular presidents in recent decades . This makes sense. His achievements, not least pulling the nation back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, have been remarkable — all the more so because they were bitterly opposed from the outset by Republicans who made it their top priority to ensure that his presidency would fail.
Many Americans celebrated the election of the first African-American president as a welcome milestone in the history of a nation conceived in slavery and afflicted by institutional racism. Yet the bigotry that president-elect Donald Trump capitalized on during his run for office confirmed a point that Mr. Obama himself made from the start: that simply electing a black president would not magically dispel the prejudices that have dogged the country since its inception. Even now, these stubborn biases and beliefs, amplified by a divisive and hostile campaign that appealed not to people’s better instincts but their worst, have blinded many Americans to their own good fortune, fortune that flowed from policies set in motion by this president.
That story begins on Inauguration Day in 2009. That’s when Mr. Obama inherited a ravaged economy that was rapidly shedding jobs and forcing millions of people from their homes. The Obama stimulus, which staved off a 1930s-vintage economic collapse by pumping money into infrastructure, transportation and other areas, passed the House without a single Republican vote . Republican gospel holds that government spending does not create jobs or boost employment. The stimulus did both — preserving or creating an average of 1.6 millions jobs a year for four years . (A timely federal investment in General Motors and Chrysler, both pushed to the brink during the recession, achieved similarly salutary results , preserving more than a million jobs. )
Mr. Obama’s opponents have had trouble accepting that any of this actually happened. They have not learned the simple truth — a truth clear in the New Deal and just as clear now — that timely and significant federal investment can make a real difference in people’s lives. Or accepted that compassionate and well-designed government programs can do the same. Driven by ideology or envy, or maybe both, Republican leaders have now pounced upon the demonstrably successful Affordable Care Act of 2010, a law that has improved the way medical care is delivered in the United States, providing affordable care for millions and driving the percentage of Americans without insurance to a record low 9.1 percent in 2015 . Despite the law’s clear successes, Mr. Trump and Republican congressional leaders have nevertheless declared it a failure, hoping to justify a repeal that would rob an estimated 22 million people
of health insurance. The point of following this destructive course can only be to destroy a central Obama legacy — even though doing so will drive up costs and cause havoc in the lives of the newly uninsured.
With no help from Congress, Mr. Obama has also managed to make progress on issues where nobody gave him much of a chance, notably climate change, which both he and his secretary of state, John Kerry, placed very near the top of their to-do list. Against heavy odds, Mr. Obama first managed to persuade the Chinese to join the effort. This demolished the critics’ argument that he was asking America to do all the heavy lifting. It also made possible the Paris agreement in December 2015, in which 195 nations agreed on a plan that they hope will reduce greenhouse gases that are warming the atmosphere and threatening the viability of the planet itself.
Americans will miss Mr. Obama’s negotiating skills on tough issues and the dignity and character that he and his family brought to the White House. Beyond that, they will also miss an impassioned speaker whose eloquence ranks with that of Abraham Lincoln. The way he has defended the founding precepts of the United States while also arguing that those precepts have to be broadened to achieve a new inclusiveness has been especially striking, as have his remarks delivered at moments of national tragedy.
His 2015 eulogy in Charleston, S.C., after a Confederate flag-waving white supremacist slaughtered nine African-American parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, was redolent with history. As always, he viewed the horror through the prism of a seemingly innate optimism about the country’s ability to set aside hatred and move toward a more perfect union.
Mr. Obama never would have gained the office without that unflagging optimism, which inspired a generation of young voters who saw in him a new kind of leader. So it seemed fitting that he would end his farewell address in Chicago on Tuesday with them in mind:
“Let me tell you, this generation coming up — unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic — I’ve seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair and just and inclusive America; you know that constant change has been America’s hallmark, that it’s not something to fear but something to embrace; you are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You’ll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result the future is in good hands.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/opinion/sunday/the-optimism-of-barack-obama.html
I will miss his speeches, he is one great orator
LLP. Don’t ask what it means.
Brarefuuu
The pauses in his speech
We gone ignore the roits …ait.he still the best I have witnessed personally. as a global leader especially that Osama clap back…either way you believe, osama ain dropped vidz lately.
Obama in his disruptive policy killed capitalism as we knew it. He proved that pure capitalism cannot work it has to be controlled a liitle bit. As one congressman said the free market needs a visible hand to monitor it. This is what saved the auto industry and the economy of a city (Detroit) and a whole state (Michigan). He also cut open the the underbelly of American capitalism to deal with a manipulated system whose market was not free afterall, for how as Obama discovered could one insurance company (AIG) underwrite the entire economy insuring banks and their mortgages and also reinsuring insurance companies and not just in US but Europe also? ( remember when in Kenya AIG briefly changed its name to Chartis?)
To be fare to republicans they were opposing Obama’s bailout purely on a capitalistic base, if you cant float in the market ship out. Obama mainstreamed socialism by proving that capitalism must ne tempered by some socialism, and that is how capitalism died. But let us not forget the great conjurer in this beautiful story, a guy called Bernanke, a wall street eagle who Obama appointed to deal with the mess, a classic case of setting a thief to catch the thieves.
Having said that, Obama failed to deal with the issue of race more strongly or conclusively that je ended up looking like a prisoner of the racist hegemony who used him for PR then turned around and escalated their bigotry. In the face of open racism by government officers, Obama appeared helpless (muntaka nifanye nini jameni?) and tearful rather than the savior of the blacks. The #blacklivesmatter movement happening under his watch will remain a bloat in his legacy. For where was the change the black youth in Harlem believed in?
Though he campaigned initially on a platform of ending wars Obama ended upsetting the entire Middle East ablaze much more than any of his predecessors had done (and spending much more on the military than any president). To his credit, he reduced significantly American casualties by maturing the development of drones as an army, and using his skills as a community organizer, a phrase Hillary Clinton chided him about he came up with the Arab spring where locals were organized and supported to bring down governments, and with that stroke of evil genius he brought down Gaddafi, Mubarak etc. This strategy however gave him his waterloo, Putin left him with a bloodied nose in Syria.
And because this strategy distances America from the theatre of war, they lacked control of it and ended up losing the trajectory of Obama’s wars: Isis revised their mission from toppling Asad to invading Iraq and filling the gap left by Alqaeda, The American ambassador in Libya was murdered and Europe got swarmed by refugees and became a terrorist backyard. These have seen the American empire lose stature to the point of being spoken down to by Putin and being disregared by Britons in the Brexit vote. This gave Trump a great campaign platform of making America great again (yes, Obama created Trump)
All the same under Obama the American economy jas held and grown and so the empire marches on. I will miss Obama. Thanks Obama for giving me an opportunity to campaign for you through the inspiration of believing in change, the first time in my life I got directly engaged in political spanner works and seeing the power of community organizing. Oriti jathurwa