Since I have spent a grand total of three weeks on US soil during his inhabitation of the Oval Office, and since I am two weeks older than he is, and thus kind of like an older brother, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on what the world will take away from these past eight years.
One thing is certain: in two hundred years, Obama will absolutely be remembered as the first...um...blank president. Yes, I said "blank," not "black." Not a typo there.
Because Obama has almost zero verifiable past, he is a white sheet of paper upon which historians will be able to write any story they so choose. This makes him a boon to future researchers, since they will, like JFK's assassination, be able to concoct any story they choose on the flimsiest evidence and no one will be able to gainsay the story. To be able to falsify a claim requires facts and evidence, of which there is precious little in the case of Barack Husein Obama.
So far, he was born in three different countries (US, Indonesia, Kenya), did not have a high school sweetheart nor attended the prom. He has no accessible school records that anyone can dig up. He has somewhere in the range of four different fathers. And he just simply appeared on the national political scene in 2004, as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
Since Obama has no discernibly strong convictions or vision, people have been able to project their wants and desires on him. Depending on your particular point of view, he has either been a champion or bugbear of just about every cause that ever existed. About the only major achievement he has is a universal healthcare program that appears to be failing faster than the moving men can haul his stuff out of the White House. Even his wife's school lunch program is dying faster than Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, since no one really liked the food and were only being polite.
Obama added $10 trillion in national debt, but no one seems to be able to point to where the money went. If I had spent that much, I would at least have a house full of stuff to proudly display, but the US doesn't have any shiny new toys that still have trillion-dollar price tags on them. Instead, all we see are stories about every public program failing, from military to infrastructure to education.
For a paltry $1 trillion, I could have built a coast-to-coast tunnel linking all the major subway systems in the country with a mag-lev train and still have pocketed a tidy profit and retired to Indones...oh wait...already did that...OK somewhere else.
Hell, the nation's space program can't even put a man, much less a monkey, in orbit. They have to rely on the evil, nasty, horrible Russians to haul their carcasses up and back. Good lord! Even US rockets have to use old rusty engines from a Russian military surplus store on the lower east side of Minsk.
And while we're talking about Russians...
Remember that little-hyped event where Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize? He had been in office for nine months when the Nobel Committee came up with this knee-slapper:
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United States President Barack Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".
You have got to be kidding, right? I mean, with less than a fortnight to go, the world is on the verge of nuclear war - closer than during the Cuban Missile Crisis - thanks in great part to Barack Husein Obama. Using this criterion, Adolph Hitler should have won at least two NPPs while he was destroying Europe.
When I think about it, the only thing Obama has achieved that no one can argue with is that he is the first president with a great tan. Honestly though, the US could have elected George "The Tan" Hamilton and at least gotten better acting, plus he could have done a whole gag on being related to the first US Treasury Secretary, and even starred in the hit Broadway musical.
We all owe at least one debt of gratitude to the erstwhile president, though. Obama did more to highlight the American obsession with façadism that any other president in history. As the old Billy Crystal gag went, "It's better to look good than to feel good," and Obama is the embodiment of that concept.
Think about it: you've got the world's most advanced fighter jet that doesn't work, the most advanced stealth destroyer that doesn't work, the most advanced space program that can't put a man in orbit, the most advanced interstate system that is crumbling to dust, the most touchy-feely education system that produces Millennials and SJWs, the most advanced internet that can be hacked by a 14-year-old, and the most advanced surveillance system that can only tell us whodunit, not who-will-dun-it.
Yes, the Obama years shall be fondly remembered as the Mirage Years, where everything looked great from across the noon-day desert, but when you get there it's only sand and cactus.
I imagine this period in American history will be remembered much like the caesarhoods (?) of Nero or Caligula - lot's of fiddling and burning and riding horses through the Senate. In fact, there's even a hint of godhood in the left's idol worship of Obama. He reminds me a lot of Woodrow Wilson, whom the left also idolizes, but who also gave the nation a Central Bank, income tax, the first incarnation of the UN, and a gross pile of lies that led to war.
Remember when Obama was installed? No one was allowed to say a cross word, and school children had to genuflect and cross themselves whenever his image and likeness was paraded through the room. Photos of the man were always framed with a halo of light, as if he was channelling Ra or Apollo or Mithra. At least that level of insanity has faded, but all-new forms have surfaced in their places.
Like a falsified birth certificate, Obama is a character of many layers, which when switched off leave one with a blank page. History will not be kind to Obama, nor will it judge the generation that elected him with fondness and nostalgia. Even his hard-core worshippers will someday snap to their senses, or at least one hopes, although one is forced to admit there are many for whom little hope exists.
The smartest thing Obama could do at this time is to fade quietly into the background, but one gets the feeling that is not likely to happen. There are all kinds of trial balloons floating about him becoming Generalissimo of the UN, and that probably won't happen, because outside the US, Obama is little more than a polite joke at cocktail parties.
Not having demonstrated cunning and insightfulness over the past eight years, smart money is on the likelihood that this Blank Page will attempt to salvage some legacy for his having used resources on this Earth. One gets the feeling that instead of polishing his image, time will further erode it as the spell wears off.
I wish that we could bid farewell to Obama, but alas, that is not likely to be. At least we can rest assured that his influence in US politics will greatly diminish, as the immediate result of his tenure is a complete repudiation of virtually everything he achieved.
Like Donald Trump or not, he is far more likely to be a lasting historical figure (for better or worse) than Obama will ever be. Blank pages, like white bread, 2% milk and filtered water, just don't leave much of a lasting impression on the palette.
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