As President Obama readies to deliver his valedictory address in Chicago Tuesday night, a new report card on his legacy is drawing attention to his inability to stop the “hollowing” of the middle class, slow income inequality and improve race relations.
In an essay, the president of Pew Research Center found several positives that should help to bolster Obama’s place in history.
But Michael Dimock also highlighted key areas where Obama failed to make positive changes, notably on the economy and race.
Yes, he wrote, the economy stabilized and the stock market profited. “But by some measures,” Dimock added, “the country faces serious economic challenges: A steady hollowing of the middle class, for example, continued during Obama’s presidency, and income inequality reached its highest point since 1928.”
What’s more, as Obama himself has noted in a new book from White House correspondent April Ryan, At Mama’s Knee, his election has solved racial tensions just by virtue of being the first black president.
Dimock wrote, “The election of the nation’s first black president raised hopes that race relations in the U.S. would improve, especially among black voters. But by 2016, following a spate of high-profile deaths of black Americans during encounters with police and protests by the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups, many Americans – especially blacks – described race relations as generally bad.”
The report card comes a day after the Urban League also highlighted the lingering national problems unsolved by Obama.
The Pew review provides a timely portrait of America and its divisions as Washington shifts to a new, Republican administration under President-elect Trump.
“Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in November’s bitterly contested election, becoming the first person ever to win the White House with no prior political or military experience. But the divisions that emerged during the campaign and in its aftermath had been building long before Trump announced his candidacy, and despite Obama’s stated aim of reducing partisanship,” he wrote.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
