Obama's Best And Worst --Madeleine Norton, 4th period

Nearing the end of his presidency, Obama has been speaking out these past few weeks about his grand and not-grand moments during his presidency. His biggest mistake, as he analyzes, was "Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya." Referring to the defeat of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, he continued on to say, "Our coalition could have and should have done more to fill a vacuum left behind." 

According to Ally Malloy and Catherine Treyz of CNN, Obama has spoken on this issue before, under much more private and personal settings. Apparently "In a profile published last month in The Atlantic, the President told author Jeffrey Goldberg that British Prime Minister David Cameron became 'distracted by a range of other things' after the operation. Cameron, along with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, took the brunt of Obama's criticism. Although Obama said he thinks the intervention went as well as it could, he views Libya today as a 'mess.' Privately, according to the article, he refers to the troubled state as a 'sh*t show.'"

They add, "He also recounted that his worst day in the White House was 'the day we traveled up to Newtown after Sandy Hook' when 20 children, mostly first-graders, were killed on December 14, 2012 at an elementary school. He spoke at a local prayer vigil two days later."

 

However, he felt he had some pretty good points as well. This being his assertion of saving America from "a great depression" after the financial crisis in 2008 and especially the health care reform. In fact, he noted--as he has several times before--that the height in office for him was the day when the reform was passed. Alloy and Treyz note from his interview: "'We sat out on the Truman Balcony with all the staff that had worked so hard on it and I, I knew what it would mean for the families that I'd met who didn't have health care,' Obama said."

 

It has been interesting to hear his presidency summed up in the good and bad as we move on to receive a new president this upcoming year. It makes one wonder what the next POTUS' greatest triumphs will be, and how they'll affect our future. Similarly, whatever their greatest faults may be, can we recover and continue on? What could they possibly be over? There's only one way to find out; to continue on living.

Obama's low points can be synthesized with George W. Bush's involvement in Iraq/Iran as well as American troops in Afghanistan, leading to the rise of the Taliban and eventually terrorist groups that continue to threaten countries today. His biggest triumph can be synthesized with the success proceeding FDR's New Deal and the building of new government programs to help serve/protect the American public.

 

Article located here: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/10/politics/obama-libya-biggest-mistake/index.html