President Barack Obama talks on the phone with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Oval Office, after learning of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” June 28, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Donald Trump has been president for 22 months, and the final verdict on his administration is still pending. Victor Davis Hanson suggests it would be wise to wait until Trump’s four-year term is over before weighing in on his legacy or lack of one.
Former President Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, Donald Trump.
Obama’s charges are paradoxical. On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump’s policies are pernicious and failing.
Trump’s Success Due to Obama
Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.
… the frenetic Obama should take a deep breath, stop arguing the past, and allow history to adjudicate his own eight-year economic and foreign-policy record.
Given that Obama was a strong progressive while Trump surprisingly has proven to be a hard-right conservative, their presidencies offer a sort of laboratory of contrasting worldviews.
History will decide whether a more managed or more deregulated economy works best. We will learn whether a focus on traditional energy sources is preferable to an emphasis on subsidized green energy.
In recent times, Republican ex-presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush—left the limelight upon the end of their tenures. They kept silent about their successors, and they allowed history to be the judge of their relative successes or failures. Reagan and the younger Bush often were ensconced on their ranches in out-of-the-way places.
Obama would do well to buy a ranch, too.
Read more on the contrasting presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump here.
