On President Obama's Economic Legacy

 AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS PIECE APPEARS ON MAY 15, 2016 IN THE SUNDAY MAGAZINE SECTION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES


("President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy")

It takes far too much effort to follow the dots for the vast majority of Americans. Those who feel a general uneasiness, even as they know it is not as bad as it was, believe it is not as good as it used to be and blame the President for what they sense is a far too tepid recovery. 

It matters not that the Republicans orchestrated much of the slowness, that they forced austerity measures upon a nation crying for an infusion of capital. It is of little consequence that the opponents of the President would have preferred to pass sweeping legislation that, far from stimulating the economy instead would have inevitably led to a prolonged depression. It is seemingly almost forgotten that President Obama inherited an absolute economic disaster and was called upon, in the face of unrelenting Republican obstructionism, to right a sinking ship.

History will be the ultimate arbiter for this President. His immediate legacy is one that is replete with critics, left and right, that he did little, or  worse, that he was in bed with the 1%. It is a harsh and often unfair image being portrayed, but  it is almost impossible for the President to ask the public to grasp that what he avoided is, to a large degree, a measure of what he accomplished.