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How eight years of Barack Obama created Donald Trump

SIMON HEFFER

20 JANUARY 2017 8:30AM

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This man's failures encouraged the rise of Trumpism CREDIT: PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/AP PHOTO

T his article was originally published on February 13, 2016. It has been republished in light of the course of the US
election.

The morning afterBarack Obama was elected, in November 2008,I put the television on in my hotel room in New York to
watch the reaction. Fox News was putting on a brave face, though the sourness and anger were barely contained: but
MSNBC, an avowedly liberal network, was in a state of almost convulsive ecstasy.

His stump oratory was vacuous. He is clever and has a way with words: but his words
His stump oratory was vacuous. He is clever and has a way with words: but his words
contained little

As dawn broke a woman, interviewed outside her run-down house somewhere upstate, shed tears while telling an
interviewer what the victory meant for her. I now know, she sobbed, that my house wont be foreclosed on. I hope she
was right: but the evidence of the seven years since Obama the miracle-worker took ofce suggests she may have been
disappointed.

Watch | President Barack Obama's best moments on camera

02:35

America was angry after two terms of George W Bush. Though he could not stand, his partys candidate would be punished
for how Mr Bush and the lunatics around him had made America an international pariah. The nancial crisis of 2008 the
collapse of Lehmann Brothers came between the conventions and polling day was the last straw.

I had seen Obama at the primaries, and at the Democrat Convention. I had waited for him to speak intelligently and
practically about the state of America and how he would put it right, but I waited in vain. The clich at the time, which
became more relevant later, was about how he campaigned in poetry but would govern in prose. Some prose can be
magnicent: but not his.

Obamas international legacy is the repulsive sight of Vladimir Putin, whom he

underestimated, ruling the roost

His stump oratory especially his convention speech, delivered from a preposterous mock-Grecian stage set in Denver was
vacuous. He is clever and has a way with words: but his words contained little. He entranced audiences, rst in his own party
which is why he beat Hillary Clinton, arrogant and boring then as now, for the nomination and then in the wider
electorate. John McCain old, white, Republican and with the medias hate gure, Sarah Palin, as his running mate didnt
have a prayer.

Watch | Donald Trump's road to the White House

 03:17

As Lehmanns sank, political leaders, including potential presidents, met to discuss what to do. Mr Obama said nothing: and
the liberal media praised him for his silence, suggesting it showed his wisdom by reserving judgment on so complex a
matter. Perhaps it did. Or perhaps it showed he didnt have a clue. Americas slow, stumbling path to recovery, and its
awesome level of debt just under $19 trillion, or 104 per cent of GDP suggest the latter. The great stimulus the Democrats
then engineered disappeared and achieved nothing.

US election results
Donald Trump wins

Democrats Republican

232 306
Clinton 270 to win Trump
Last updated: 11 November

The sobbing woman in upstate New York was white and middle-aged. To glimpse how little Mr Obama has done for his own
constituency the poor blacks it is worth reading an instructive article in the latest New Yorker. It is about evictions in
Milwaukee, a city that is 40 per cent black. An industry exists to service evictions courts, lawyers, removal men, bailiffs
and operates full-time, dealing with masses who cannot pay their rent, or their mortgages.

Mr Obama was elected promising to end such misery, but he hasnt, and he never would. America has astonishing wealth;it
also has astonishing deprivation and squalor, because there isnt enough well-paid work to go round. I dont know
Milwaukee, but am familiar with cities such as Baltimore, Newark and Trenton on the east coast, which have square miles of
squalor on a scale unknown in Britain. Detroit teeters on the verge of extinction: in thriving cities such as Los Angeles and
Washington DC pockets of afuence sit cheek-by-jowl with areas of appalling poverty and crime.

Racial tensions, which a black president was supposed to heal, seem worse than ever, and Mr
Obamas interventions have often been clumsy and grandstanding

Racial tensions, which a black president was supposed to heal, seem worse than ever remember Ferguson and Mr
Obamas interventions have often been clumsy and grandstanding. He has failed to control immigration, even though (unlike
in Britain) he has the sovereign power to do so. And America has largely rejected Obamacare, which displays all that can go
wrong with massive state intervention.

But if Mr Obamas economic legacy is poor, his other achievements or failings are alarming. He has largely removed
America from international conversations. After the disastrous interventions in the Islamic world after 2001 it is quite right it
should think more deeply about such expeditions: but that does not mean the superpowers global responsibility can be
abdicated completely. The Kerry intervention in Syria in February was typically, and tragically, late. Mr Obamas
international
legacy is the repulsive sight of Vladimir Putin, whom he underestimated, ruling the roost, the barbarians of Isil
(for dealing with whom he had no strategy) and a Europe mired in introspection.
 Watch | Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton created Isil with Obama

00:33

It was interesting,after Donald Trump triumphed in the New Hampshire primary, how many of his voters complained of
feeling that America was being kicked around in the world. A great nation that is being forced to confront its global
impotence is one for whom the bombastic Mr Trump holds inevitable appeal, and an America with such deep-seated social
and economic problems is one that will look alsoto Bernie Sanders. After all, everything else has been tried, so why not what
he calls democratic socialism?

Barack Obama created neither the poverty, nor the suspicion and loathing with which America was regarded in the world
after George W Bush. However, he promised to cure the rst, and has been found wanting; and he has used the second as an
excuse to do nothing except withdraw. His role as President is now little more than as a spokesman for the bleeding heart and
the bleeding obvious. When he is gone no one will miss him, least of all the one-time allies who feel he has spurned them. He
has made America much less relevant.

Since George H.W. Bush left ofce in 1993 America has been ruled by a spin-obsessed sex addict, a dangerous halfwit and a
clever incompetent. They all bore the imprimatur of their respective party machines. For much of America, Barack Obama is
the last straw. He is the creator of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. If one of them becomes president and the world doesnt
like it, they know whom to blame.

Five reasons some Americans hate Obama

From holding a coffee while saluting Marines to his views on gun control, here are ve
reasons why many Americans are critical of President Barack Obama

Obamacare

Executive action

Protests against Obamacare

Mr Obama's Affordable Care Act

means millions more Americans have
access to health insurance, but
insurance companies have raised
premiums for the middle class.
Republican politicians, including
Mr Obama delivers remarks on his executive
action on immigration at Del Sol High School
in Las Vegas in 2014
Stymied by a Congress that will not
pass his proposals, Mr Obama has

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35 Comments

Newest Oldest Top Comments

TERENCE COURTNADGE 20 Jan 2017 3:41PM

To those dreading the thought of an incoming President Trump - console yourself, you're seeing the back of Obama ; now he can go and play all the
golf he wants.

Flag

IVAN NOBLE 20 Jan 2017 3:36PM

A day of weeping for the cultural marxists . Great .

Flag

Geraldine Leale 20 Jan 2017 3:18PM

Obama is ideally suited to a job in Brussels.

Flag

TERENCE COURTNADGE 20 Jan 2017 3:42PM

@Geraldine Leale he wouldn't demean himself.

Flag

Stevie Gee 20 Jan 2017 3:12PM

Come on Simon, tell us what you really think...

Flag

Peter Bolt 20 Jan 2017 3:00PM

Sadly modern politics seems to need " charisma"A strange product that can be purchased .

Whereas " leadership " is at least tangible andrecognisable . It musthowever be " earned ".

There in lies the whole morass we call " The Media"

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