The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
– A break at any price –
How to explain the fixation on destroying Obama’s legacy at all cost?
Trump has held high his determination to fulfill his campaign promises, and give form to a simple slogan: “America First.”
And his team recalls, with reason, that Obama acted by decree many times when thwarted by Congress. What has been decided by the stroke of a pen can be undone by the stroke of a pen.
Historian Jeffrey Engel, however, sees no equivalent in recent decades to Trump’s systematic application of the simple principle that “if the other guy liked it, it must be bad.”
To Engel, the explanation is that Trump’s electoral base “never accepted fully Barack Obama as their president.”
“There was a move among Obama’s opponents to delegitimize him and to say that this man is not really president and consequently anything that he did, Trump’s base is ready to get rid of,” said Engel, who heads Southern Methodist University’s center for presidential history in Dallas, Texas.
A notable fact: Obama has until now remained largely silent as his legacy is demolished.
American tradition, which is generally respected, holds that a former president should remain above the fray.
But, in thinking about his place in history, Obama is also playing the patience card.
“I think that Obama understands that his legacy ultimately will be defined by how America reacts to Trump in the long term and how Trump’s successors act,” said Engel.
On November 7, 2016, on the eve of the US elections, Obama warned voters “it all goes out the window” if they were to send Trump to the White House.
That attempt to rally Democratic voters now seems prophetic.
