By objective measures, President Barack Obama has been one of the most consequential presidents in the modern era, according to Philadelphia Daily News Editor Michael Days in his book, Obama’s Legacy: What He Accomplished as President.
With just a few weeks before Obama leaves office, the book is one of the earliest attempts to put in context the president’s achievements. There have been many.
For example, he will be remembered for pulling the U.S. economy from the brink of depression, creating nearly 14 million jobs, saving the auto industry, restoring relations with Cuba, and avenging the deaths of nearly 3,000 people massacred on 9/11 by killing Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaida, which claimed responsibility for the attacks.
On economic indicators alone, Obama is credited with the longest streak of job growth in U.S. history, reducing the unemployment rate to 4.9 percent down from 10 percent his first year in office after the market meltdown. He will leave a rebounding stock market that has increased 11.8 percent and with record highs for the Dow Jones Average ranging from 15,000 to 17,000, following the record lows of the Great Recession under his predecessor. Oh, and Obama also reduced the federal budget deficit by a two-thirds.
These accomplishments and more are enumerated in Obama’s Legacy. Days presents readers with a comprehensive overview of the work done by a president who has forged ahead despite a hostile Congress, led by Republican Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who vowed, unsuccessfully, to make him a one-term president.
Instead, President Obama, who will leave office after eight years with an unprecedented 50 percent approval rating, found a way to overhaul the health care system, something many presidents have tried, but no one else succeeded. Days says, as the first Black president, his hard-won victory came against a backdrop of racist commentary in traditional and social media and open defiance from ultra conservatives that threatened to derail his second term.
But Obamacare, as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is colloquially known, changed the way doctors, hospitals and insurers treat patients. It has provided health care for nearly 20 million people, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and banned insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing health conditions.
