Looking Back on President Barack Obama’s Legacy: Hope and Change

272 Pages·2019·3.956 MB·English

by  Wilbur C. Rich

Edited by Wilbur C. Rich
LOOKING
BACK ON
PRESIDENT
BARACK
OBAMA’S
LEGACY
Hope and Change
Looking Back on President Barack Obama’s Legacy
Wilbur C. Rich
Editor
Looking Back
on President Barack
Obama’s Legacy
Hope and Change
Editor
Wilbur C. Rich
Department of Political Science
Wellesley College
Wellesley, MA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-01544-2 ISBN 978-3-030-01545-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01545-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962971
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To Professor Charles V. Hamilton, scholar, mentor, and friend,
whom I met as his student at Tuskegee Institute. Thank you
for the advice, insights, and opportunities that you have provided
to me in my career and for writing the foreword for this book.
F
oreword
Obviously, there are and will be many books on the legacy of President
Barack Obama. This book will be one of the most interesting and useful
one. It presents the views of twelve scholars with varying analytical inter-
pretations on varying policy topics: foreign policy, global warming, health
care, budget crises, and so on. Obama, from the beginning of his two
terms had to cope with all these issues.
Thus, his “legacy” (at this early stage of his “post-presidency”) is still in
the making. In fact, in a sense, precisely because of his dynamic two terms
and the clear opposite nature (policy-wise and otherwise) of his successor,
Obama’s legacy is still being formed. This is a good thing. This book is an
excellent guide to all the analytical factors to follow. It presents different
views of Obama’s presidency from different sharp perspectives that ought
to be part of any serious presidency. Integrity and intelligence ought to be
part of the calculus.
Obama’s presidency is a good one to study.
Whatever it was, it was a “first.” All “firsts” have a special place in
American narratives. AMERICANS LIKE FIRSTS. The first to go to the
moon, to discover a health vaccine, to be the first black Supreme Court
Justice, the first woman astronaut.
Obama was America’s first Black President.
From that point, all political analysis began with a new chapter.
What did it mean?
The title of this book is appropriate: Hope and Change.
vii
viii FOREWORD
What did this pretend? What would this change? This is the analytical
task of this book. It should be studied (not just read) slowly and seriously.
Something like the “legacy” of the man who so admirably is its subject.
Columbia University Charles V. Hamilton
New York, NY, USA
C
ontents
Introduction: Barack Obama and the Transformational Impulse 1
Wilbur C. Rich
The Obama Legacy in American Electoral Participation 25
Lyn Ragsdale
Managing a Regime in Crisis: The Twilight of Neoliberalism
and the Politics of Economic Recovery During the First Year
of the Obama Administration 47
Kristoffer Smemo
The Obama Health Care Legacy: The Origins, Implementation,
and Effort to Repeal the Affordable Care Act of 2010 69
Jill Quadagno and Daniel Lanford
Appraising the Foreign Policy Legacy of the Obama Presidency 93
Meena Bose
The World We Have Lost: US Labor in the Obama Years 115
Ruth Milkman
Swimming the Multiple Currents: The Political and Racial Time
of Barack Obama’s Presidency 133
Kimberley S. Johnson
ix
x CONTENTS
The Legacy of President Obama in the U.S. Supreme Court 149
Isaac Unah and Ryan Williams
The Obama Administration’s Global Warming Legacy: Going
with the Flow and the Politics of Failure 191
George A. Gonzalez
Unfulfilled Hopes: President Obama’s Legacy 211
Stanley Renshon
Conclusion: Who Was President Barack Obama? 249
Wilbur C. Rich
Index 259
n C
otes on ontributors
Meena Bose is Executive Dean for Public Policy and Public Service
Programs, Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and
International Affairs, and Director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the
Study of the American Presidency, at Hofstra University, USA. She is the
author of Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security
Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy (Texas A&M University
Press, 1998), and the editor of several volumes in presidential studies. She
is an author of the American Government: Institutions and Policies text-
book (16th edition, 2019) and of The Paradoxes of the American Presidency
textbook (5th edition, Oxford University Press, 2018).
George A. Gonzalez is Professor of Political Science at University of
Miami, USA. His books include Energy and Empire: The Politics of Nuclear
and Solar Power in the United States, Energy and the Politics of the North
Atlantic and American Empire and the Canadian Oil Sands. He has writ-
ten extensively on issues of environmental policy and ethics.
Charles  V.  Hamilton is a former Professor of Political Science at
Columbia University, USA, where he served as the Wallace S. Sayre
Professor of Political Science. He published several books and articles
including a famous book entitled Black Power with Stokely Carmichael.
Kimberley S. Johnson is a Professor in the Department of Social and
Cultural Analysis at New  York University, USA.  She has published
Governing the American State and Reforming Jim Crow.
xi