As we're wrapping up the Obama presidency, I'm reflecting on the past eight years as I'm certain many of us are. I'm probably less enamored of him than other people, but I don't think he was either of the extremes of terrible or amazing. Unfortunately he was dealt a very bad hand, coming right when the financial crisis hit. As he said during his victory speech, recovery would take years and possibly longer than this presidency. So whatever he's done is always shadowed by how he had to try to pull us out of this shithole. Considering he was voted in for being amazing at making and delivering speeches, as well as seeming cool compared to Hilary Clinton, he did relatively well for himself. Only three years in Congress and I think six or seven in the Illinois senate doesn't really prepare you for being President of the United States.

On the domestic front his signature policy is Obamacare, which had major, major flaws. Right now the talk of the town is how the Republicans are undoing it, but honestly it may have failed anyway even without their involvement. Several insurance companies were pulling out of the program because they simply couldn't afford to take on all the sick people signing up. I don't understand why the Democrats couldn't hash out a more coherent law considering at the time they had a fucking supermajority. Bush was able to do it with almost anything he fucking wanted. Why couldn't Obama corral his people?

On the international front, he's made serious fuck ups. Thankfully he closed the war in Iraq and somewhat for Afghanistan, but consequently ISIS just grew out of nowhere. A large portion of that is probably because we pulled out of Iraq, but then again the American people were demanding for those two wars to end. However he didn't do well in Syria; we definitely lost in this proxy war with Russia and our influence has decreased. Perhaps the most worrisome legacy is the rising tensions with Russia, which I'm hoping Trump will alleviate to some extent.

I think that was his biggest problem: forcefulness. My impression from the first term is he and his team thought if they gave a rational argument the American people would just follow them. That's noble and all but when you have the Republicans marching on CNN talking about death panels killing your grandmother, most people aren't going to listen to whatever logic you have. Obama was never able to really control congress to the extent Bush or the legendary LBJ had, even his own people. It may have been out of his hands with the hyper-partisanship, however I've never heard of any direct policy he's tried to alleviate the problem. In the later part of his presidency he found his teeth to an extent, but no one will ever recall him for that.

Yet he's done good. For all my complaints about it, many people have received healthcare. He's taken large steps in normalizing relations with Cuba and somewhat with Iran (although our deal with them is really not that great), both of which should've happened years ago. Out of all the presidents he's pushed the most for LGBT rights. He got Osama bin Laden, Bush's great embarrassment. He pushed for environmental policies that would curb climate change, like the Paris Accord, something that many nations like China and India are really trying to meet.

As a president I've found him to be mostly centrist. He does lean left in many areas — support of LGBT, taking over Ford — but then again he did many things the right would applaud — massive deportation of illegal immigrants, constant drone bombing of Pakistan. What interested me the most is when I read other historians weighing in on his legacy, many of them commented how he's going to be remembered for being the first black president. Which don't get me wrong, that's great and we're still all proud of that moment, but there's still the other 364 days out of the year. If the most memorable part of your presidency is the pigment of your skin, I'm not certain what that says about your actions. I really hope his blurb in high school history textbooks will be more than that.