This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Now reread Obama's "major" climate speech, especially this:
"So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it's too late. ... As a President, as a father, and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act."
In light of Obama's deeds, what else can you see in his words, but a quest for an undeserved pro-climate legacy, financed in future years by anti-climate billionaires and their friends.
Obama's Real Legacy
Farron Cousins notes several ways in which Obama has been a "disappointment." There are many more, including the constant attempts to cut Social Security before he folded that tent. After all, just as it took Nixon to go to China; it takes a Democrat to cut Social Security, and Obama gave it a very good try for years.
So how will he be remembered? Will Barack Obama be remembered by his words and the twin ad campaigns that bookmark his presidency, the one that launched it, for example here...
...and the one that will end it, the legacy quest you're now reading about?
Or will he be remembered for what he really did, and not what he appeared to do? Here's James Galbraith's bleak assessment (my emphasis):
"And the President too is a young man. Unlike say Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter, when his term ends he won't be able simply to go home. He'll need a big house in a gated suburb, with high walls and rich friends. And a good income, too, from book deals and lecture fees. He may be thinking about that now. ... [But] it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes."
Galbraith was writing about Obama when he faces those he wanted to deprive of Social Security benefits. But he could also be writing about facing the climate-ravaged too.
Will Galbraith prove right? I guess, as with all legacies, only time will tell.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
