By JAMES SCALIA and JOSH KIRSTEIN
Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States and first African American president leaves the country with a stronger economy, health care reform and push for gay rights.
When Obama was elected president in 2008, his campaign promoted America was ready for change. During the eight years of his presidency, he overhauled healthcare, saved the auto industry from collapse, supported LGBT rights and civil rights issues, demise of Bin Laden, efforts to preserve the environment and recognition of climate change.
According to live voters, Obama’s legacy represented hope for a lot of people who had lost faith in how our government officials.
“Obama is leaving behind a kindness in the world of politics that is unfortunately viewed as extremely rare,” said Wendy Kirstein of Brooklyn.
Many voters interviewed agree with this sentiment saying that he was a fresh breath of air in comparison to our usual political leaders.
Obama started out trying to help people in 1985 when he was hired to work in Chicago in the south sides poor neighborhoods. There he spent three years of his time organizing events for low income residents. After he left Chicago, he went to Kenya and came back wanting to be a lawyer. So he went to Harvard law school and became a lawyer. He moved back to Chicago to become a civil rights lawyer and during his time as one helped organize voter registration drives.
His advocacy work helped him decide to run for a seat as Illinois State Senator. From there he decided to run as the democracy primary in 2000 and failed but tried again in and in 2008 became a Democratic Presidential nominee and became our 44th president.
Obama’s departure from the White House has been difficult as many people were not happy about Donald Trump, considered an uconventional cndidate in the election.
On social media many people are talking about Obama and how they didn’t want him to leave. Many of the people have been recently talking about how great he was and how nice he has always been.
There was also an abundance of pictures and videos and quotes talking about how much they are going to miss him. However, like most things in social media not everyone agrees with it. Many people are saying that they are glad that he’s out of office and are extremely happy with the way that things are turning out.
Whether his demeanor was loved or hated, Obama sparked a strong interest from younger audiences around the country. His original campaign in 2008 was extremely exciting as he traveled through city to city telling people “Yes We Can,” referring to making change for the country. 51% of millennials came out to the polls for the popular nominee.
Obama’s message worked so well that he was re-elected in 2012 when he ran against Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Another term for Obama meant for more events to happen – good and bad – within the next four years. Some Ramapo College students voiced their thoughts on Obama and how his legacy will be remembered.
Bill Hooper, a film major at Ramapo college, respected Obama’s passion and goal that he set for himself, but also argued that it was difficult for the president to accomplish a lot with Republican senate.
Before blaming Obama entirely for this, Hooper recognized other factors surrounding his presidency. “Well, he only had a democratic controlled Congress for two years and then a republican controlled congress for the next six years. That certainly was not an optimal solution for him,” said Hooper.
He added that the 44th president did help lower unemployment rates and gas prices which benefited the country from a financially standpoint. With that said, Hooper was not thrilled with how Obama didn’t stop the “corruption” in Washington referring to how he managed oil companies and the big banks.
While Hooper acknowledged Obama’s pros and cons, sophomore student Gianna Diflora perceived Obama’s legacy in a different light. She thought the nation made great strides with Obama serving two terms in office, citing various key events such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden, gay marriage becoming legal across the country and how he “got us back on our feet” economically after the recession in 2008.
Diflora also noted that not everything went perfectly during his time in office and that every president has their good and bad attributes, but his presence really had a strong impact on her.
“He was a great speech writer, handled himself with class and was able to appeal to a wide range of citizens due to his personality,” said Diflora.
I noticed a few grammatical and spelling errors, but for the most part this piece was well written. Some other things to pay attention to would be the wording, sometimes it felt like there were better ways to organize thoughts and points. Other than that the story was full of important points that many of us probably were not aware of, such as President Obama having a republican senate for 6 years of his time in office.
This article was an extremely poignant and chronologically well-organized and coherent piece of work that analyzes Obama’s legacy on the basis of policy and a warm personality. I would have like to seen slightly more coverage on the Affordable health care act and what could be it’s inevitable demise.
Something new I learned by reading this story was more about Obama’s background something many people might not know. Also, a lot of the work Obama has done in the past eight years.