In praise of Obama, who resolved old problems and avoided new ones.
IN ONE RESPECT, presidents are like kindergartners. Well, sometimes in more than one respect, depending on the president. That side, presidents and kindergartners have in common that one of the simplest ways to evaluate them is also one of the best: Do they clean up when they’re finished?
People who talk about presidential legacies typically have grandeur in mind. Did a president enact large new programs? Win a war? Forge a political realignment? Pass the torch to a new generation? End tyranny in the world? But the romantic ideal of the overachieving chief executive ignores the fact that presidents can much more easily do harm than good (another respect in which they resemble kindergartners). The world is full of traps and snares, and the presidency is surrounded by what the historian Gil Troy has called in visible trip wires, which are liable to snag presidents who overstep.
An older, more modest, and more mature view of the presidency was summed up by Calvin Coolidge with characteristic concision: “It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.” Coolidge might have taken presidential modesty a little far, but his aphorism expresses a profound if unromantic insight. Presidents are pretty darned good if they manage to resolve old crises and avoid new ones. Everything else is gravy.
This story is from the December 2016 edition of The Atlantic.
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This story is from the December 2016 edition of The Atlantic.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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