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Every President, as soon as the bloom is off the rose, so to speak, and the first one hundred days are over, begins the  whole thought process of defining and then building his legacy. These men cannot bear to leave office without wanting to have something of a certain amount of gravitas for history to talk about, in connection with their administrations, when they are gone.

Ronald Reagan’s legacy was the ending of the cold war, something that had plagued America for almost fifty years, and the liberation of Eastern Europe from the horrible, suffocating grasp of Communism. Bill Clinton’s legacy, aside from the giant plethora of really funny lewd jokes, was quite possibly the huge Dot Com boom, and consequently the Dot Com bust. George Bush left behind two unfinished wars which will forever define him and his legacy. Richard Nixon’s legacy was the inroads to détente with China. Gerald Ford did more to hold the Union together, post-Water Gate, than any President has since Andrew Johnson (during reconstruction) and Lincoln through the use of force against the errant States of the South.

 Then there are those who can only be remembered as dismal failures.  Jimmy Carter springs unrestrainedly to mind and despite valiant attempts to find anything that Carter left behind which can be looked at positively, Carter remains the single biggest Presidential failure in modern times. Recall that Carter was elected as a refreshing change from an “inside the beltway” administration and a refreshing change from Conservatism which had failed to walk the conservative walk.

Now we are looking at another man who is trying to build a legacy. He is doing so much to almost insure being a one term President that Mr. Obama is trying to building something to leave behind that he might be remembered by, during his first term in office. Something which will come up in the banter when commentators have time to kill while awaiting election results or while some technical glitch is being fixed. Obama poses the same problem that Carter did.

Let’s focus now. Let’s see if we can find anything that a generation, fifteen years from now, will remember him for. He is half African American. But how much can one take credit for as far as one’s race goes? He did ram through Congress, albeit with a lot of arm twisting, a health care bill which 65% of the country hates. He has criticized America on every continent, with the misguided hope of making friends and influencing people. This latter move has not worked at all. Iran is still thinks of him as an innocent and is treating him like an idiot who cannot be respected. This is true of North Korea as well. There’s the debt that generations, for the next hundred years, will be paying off, that will set people thinking about the Obama spend-athon. Now he is suing one of the States in the Union over pre-emption.  The last President who stepped on States Rights had a civil war on his hands and while the outcome reinforced the Union and the Republic, who wants to go through what Lincoln went through?  The economy is still listing to port, we’ve tried rearranging the deck chairs on board, heavens knows there aren’t enough life boats for everyone and  the ice berg is laughing it’s head off, watching us making a huge U-turn, heading back for a second, equally fatal collision with it. There’s also the oil leak and China threatening to cut loose from the Yankee Dollar. So we are not getting far with finding something that is a “wow” situation. Like ending the cold war or sending Qualcomm stock up to five or six times IPO value.

But there is some good. The whole drone program which is definitely wiping out Al Qaeda leadership, right where they live under rocks in the mountains of Afghanistan. His own side hates Obama for this. It is way to Bush-esque. Way to warrior-like for an elite Progressive. But he is doing it and one way to end the war in Afghanistan might be to kill off enough leadership so that the group is left foundering without a rudder. General Patreaus is going to shoot to kill now, and that too is a good thing. Won’t it be mind-blowing if an elitist, progressive, peace loving, global village type President wins an unwinnable war against an enemy which is hiding in the shadows?

But, here is my take on the real Obama legacy. Here is a man who convinced everyone that he was the greatest communicator since Reagan. He gave great campaign speeches. People actually fainted during some of them. He bowled over the nation into electing him. Somehow all the socialist tendencies were kept hidden from view. How many people actually knew that he taught from Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”? By his own admission he hung around with leftist, socialists, hoping to learn from them. He promised change. He asked us to be audacious enough to actually hope for a good future. He said that he would cut taxes on all American making under $200,000 or something in that vicinity. He would withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq and close Guantanamo and he would win the respect and trust of the whole world. In other words, he fooled us all into thinking that he would be a leftist who would try very hard for bipartisanship and who would governor from a position slightly left of center. AND…. We all bought it: hook line and sinker.

This is the Obama legacy. No American President has ever pulled such high class wool over so many eyes as Barack Obama has. He has singled handedly refuted what Lincoln said about fooling all of the people all of the time, because he sure fooled 54% of the electorate. In a major leftist progressive move he appointed, while the Senate was on a four day break, a radical socialist to head up the agency that manages Medicare and Medical. Donald Berwick was nominated as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Berwick who has said that healthcare in order to be good has got to be redistributive. How many Americans will buy into that kind of rhetoric?

Can Barack Obama do it again in 2012? Most probably not. But he could. This man is an accomplished socialist wolf in centrist sheep’s clothing. If he does again and he is able to get re-elected, then his legacy will be that he was able to dupe the electorate twice. No mean feat. And that would be a unique legacy for any President!

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