Obama the King Narcissist, has painted a rosy picture of himself. He need look again, as the shine is a dull haze concealing a host of near misses and failures
-Geaux
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Next Tuesday, President Barack Obama will deliver his final State of the Union address. He's likely to spend much of his 60 or so minutes, pressing his case about the success of his presidential tenure and the historical nature of his policy legacy.
He's further likely to note the ways in which he has advanced progressive policy priorities on immigration reform and gun control by liberally using his "pen" to take executive action. He may also raise the big constitutional wins on marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act that he and his administration enjoyed last year in the Supreme Court.
The problem is that the list Obama judges himself on isn't the one the public cares about.
As Gallup has shown, many Americans are dissatisfied with the current direction of the country and fewer trust the federal government to protect them from terrorist attacks.
Much of this is likely the result of Obama's foreign policy decisions on Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which have often seemed short-sighted and ill-timed.
As Fred Kaplan recently noted in Slate, "The problem with the president's list of foreign policy triumphs is that they're provisional, while the failures are all too tangible and threatening."
Obama's Contested Legacy
-Geaux
=============
Next Tuesday, President Barack Obama will deliver his final State of the Union address. He's likely to spend much of his 60 or so minutes, pressing his case about the success of his presidential tenure and the historical nature of his policy legacy.
He's further likely to note the ways in which he has advanced progressive policy priorities on immigration reform and gun control by liberally using his "pen" to take executive action. He may also raise the big constitutional wins on marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act that he and his administration enjoyed last year in the Supreme Court.
The problem is that the list Obama judges himself on isn't the one the public cares about.
As Gallup has shown, many Americans are dissatisfied with the current direction of the country and fewer trust the federal government to protect them from terrorist attacks.
Much of this is likely the result of Obama's foreign policy decisions on Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which have often seemed short-sighted and ill-timed.
As Fred Kaplan recently noted in Slate, "The problem with the president's list of foreign policy triumphs is that they're provisional, while the failures are all too tangible and threatening."
Obama's Contested Legacy
