A president’s “legacy
agenda” are those projects a White House wants us to treat as especially
serious, above petty politics. They’re intended to improve America’s prospects
and impress historians. As such, they’re always bigger and classier than the
business at hand. They can also crowd out other merely worthwhile interests.
For instance, Obama’s “legacy” project of securing American leadership in the fight against climate
change has been invoked by as sufficient reason to restrict energy trade with
Canada. His project of securing greater American influence in Asia means less
protection for vulnerable American workers and less generous investment of
American power in the Middle East.
As his power fades,
Obama’s work on his legacy agenda is now largely rhetorical and contingent on
the uncertain support of others. What he’s penned in speeches and executive
orders will need to be honored in hundreds of big and small and unpleasant decisions
by China, Japan, South Korea, India and, oh yes, the courts and the next president of the United States. Nevertheless, even rhetoric can alter the
future. Obama’s favorite conservative president, Dwight Eisenhower, coined that
ear bug: “military-industrial complex.” The complex has kept up with the growth
of the US economy, but Ike did entrench a healthy fear of it at the center of
America’s political culture.
With months left
as president, Obama’s legacy work will be cultural as well. While he talks with
conviction about the world, he’s building his place in history at home.
His utterances on
climate change and his calm crisis-management style are entrenching two powerful
political memes: that today only liberals respect scientific evidence and, that
since a black man can be a thought-minded, essentially conservative president of
these troubled United States, then any talented outsiders can.
(Thanks to the
discipline and often-tedious formality of Obama’s presidency, change in the
White House is now so normal an idea that it’s possible that even a white male
will beat a woman in this November’s election.)
His science
project and his global pivot, however, largely rest with that woman: Hillary
Clinton.
A deft Republican
president (Jeb Bush or possibly Marco Rubio or John Kasich) could have
consolidated major components of Obamas foreign policy: global trade
agreements, restraint in the Middle East, activism in Asia, and steady collaboration
with other major powers on climate change. However, a Donald Trump or a Ted
Cruz victory would be humiliating. At least Woodrow Wilson didn’t live to see
what the Republican Roaring Twenties did to his liberal vision of collective
security.
Obama’s homilies
on race and civility during the Republican primaries likely helped make Trump
an irresistible hero on the right. Now that his nomination is almost
unavoidable, Obama will have to move heaven and earth to make sure he is, in
fact—what Democrat fantasists had idly presumed, months ago—a Republican
disaster this fall.
Whatever we think
of the Clinton election machine’s touch or integrity, a Clinton presidency will
be compelled to guard the hardening cement at the base of Obama’s legacy. It
will end up backing his trade agreements and being as careful in the Middle
East. It will want to try and might do better at finding bipartisan support
where Obama failed legislatively.
It is bittersweet
that Obama’s most ambitious dreams need the election of another Clinton. But
the world would probably be that much nicer even if Hillary Clinton doesn’t achieve
much more than being the president who entrenched Barack Obama’s legacy.
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