Whither the LEGACY?

President Obama may or may not be interested in his legacy, though many think it's a main concern. Some believe it will be primarily marked by Obamacare, but the verdict is not in on that because Obama has seen fit not to enforce the employer mandate, perhaps the most important of its provisions. It was supposed to take effect in January 2014, requiring businesses with more than 50 employees to furnish insurance.

The president as chief executive and required by oath to uphold the nation's laws did not enforce the mandate in January 2014 or 2015 and will not enforce it in January 2016, making sure he will be out of office if and when it will be enforced. Since it applied mainly to full-time workers (30 hours per week, hardly full-time), the hours of workers have already been cut as managers prepared to skirt the law in preparation for its expected enforcement, making part-time work substitute for the usual 37.5- or 40-hour workweek. They could have saved themselves the trouble. The projected cost of the employer mandate put Obama in a corner, where he yet resides vis-a-vis healthcare.

So...a successful healthcare program may not be primary to his legacy; rather, his ability to lie about it may remark his legacy for the most part. His lies concerning Obamacare before it was passed—keep doctor, keep current insurance—form a case in point. Or his humongous lie about what happened in Benghazi in September 2012 is another case in point, actually lying to the families of the four victims when they accepted the bodies at Andrews Air Force Base. He, along with State Secretary Clinton, lied in the Rose Garden about that matter to the nation before that sad meeting at AAFB.

Damning his legacy will be his attacking of Libya in March 2011, with the promise of days not weeks for establishing a no-fly zone, which actually was accomplished in about four days, not least because Libya had virtually no air force to begin with. That was never his objective, another example of duplicity; rather, he wanted to bring about the death of Libya President Qaddafi. He, along with NATO holding its collective nose and actually contributing little (ran out of ammo), bombed Libya for seven months but never mentioned the number of Libyans killed. Libya—population 2 million less than that of New York City—posed no threat to any country (76,000 troops), certainly not the U.S. (1.6 million troops).

Defense Secretary Gates labeled Obama's little war as “on the fly,” i.e., without planning. Gates wasn't even in the U.S. when Obama started his war. He was in Russia when—if he had known what was about to happen—he should have been in Washington, conducting the war. In skirting Congress, Obama violated both the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act, an impeachable offense, and just went on a killing spree. Today, Libya is in chaos and provides the location for training al Qaeda butchers to wreak havoc worldwide. He ignored his own secretary of defense and Joint Chiefs Chairman, who stated publicly in a Congressional hearing that this war should not be waged. This horrible, bloody mistake will mark Obama's legacy in infamy.

The historians someday probably will say that Obama's legacy triumph (or perfidy, depending on the historian) was his insistence that homosexuals officially marry each other if so inclined, opening the way for combinations of all kinds—as the result of lawsuits—to be accounted as marriages, everything from polygamy to gang marriages...heteros, homos, whatever. In short, Obama will be given the credit for the nastiest of perversions.

Just as noxious as perversion to his legacy will be his “war on the police,” especially the white police, beginning right after he took office in 2009 when, though knowing no facts, he accused a white policeman just doing his job of acting stupidly. Again without knowing facts, he and his DOJ, inserted themselves into affairs like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, in which they virtually put their imprimatur on violent, bloody protests often eventuating in the burning of huge portions of real estate and small businesses. The policeman was innocent but Attorney General Holder ruined his career with unsuccessful civil lawsuits. Now, vulnerable policemen are almost routinely shot and killed, especially by blacks, who, noting the president's disdain of lawmen, might have considered Obama as “in the hood.”

Deviousness will probably be the keyword the historians use to describe Obama, who, as the first black president, completely blew the golden opportunity to make a difference, especially for blacks. During his administration, the racial divide has widened considerably, as has the “education gap.” He promised CHANGE and has delivered disastrously.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark