At Financial Times Edward Luce is already nostalgic somewhat prematurely for the Obama Era or, as he puts it, “Barack Obama’s world”:
Whatever precise form Mr Trump’s administration takes, we know this: Mr Obama’s legacy will be purged. In many cases all it will take is the stroke of Mr Trump’s pen.
The Obama erasure will go far deeper than undoing domestic laws, or foreign deals. Mr Trump will repeal ObamaCare, or alter it beyond recognition. He will “keep an open mind†about whether to pull the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change and quite probably blow up the US-Iran nuclear deal. These acts would undo Mr Obama’s most visible achievements. Less obvious ones, such as the ban on Arctic drilling and enhanced interrogation techniques and the intention of closing Guantánamo Bay (never completed) will also be consigned to the dustbin. It will be as if Mr Obama was never here.
I think he’s remembering a Barack Obama of the imagination rather than the one that actually sits in the Oval Office. The Barack Obama I recall cultivated no friendships, enlisted no allies, cut no deals, built no coalitions, formed no consensus, and generally disdained the ordinary political process that presidents have used to accomplish their goals and make them stick. He relied exclusively either on pure power politics or simply governing by fiat. That’s not salving problems by reason as Mr. Luce would have it. That’s using brute force.
He may be overestimating how much of President Obama’s legacy can be “consigned to the dustbin”. For many of his signature accomplishments the costs were frontloaded and the benefits backloaded. The costs have already been sunk with the benefits if any barely or still to be realized.
Sadly, President Trump shows very few prospects of improving on President Obama’s record. Do you see him as somebody who will use the ordinary tools of politics to build consensus? I don’t.
Still, the greatest prophet may astonishingly end up being Michael Moore who years ago predicted that Barack Obama would be remembered solely for being the first black president.
