by WorldTribune Staff, December 9, 2016

After President Barack Obama delivered a summary of his achievements during his 2016 State of the Union address, the White House issued a press release with a list of the president’s accomplishments in his two terms.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, looks at how the Obama initiatives listed in the press release actually worked out in an analysis published by The Washington Times:

• Securing the historic Paris climate agreement. “The accord was never submitted to Congress as a treaty. It will be ignored by President-elect Donald Trump.”
• Achieving the Iran nuclear deal. “That ‘deal’ was another effort to circumvent the treaty-ratifying authority of Congress. It has green-lighted Iranian aggression, and it probably ensured nuclear proliferation. Iran’s violations will cause the new Trump administration to either scrap the accord or send it to Congress for certain rejection.”
• Securing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “Even Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton came out against this failed initiative. It has little support in Congress or among the public. Opposition to the TTP helped fuel the Trump victory.”
• Reopening Cuba. “The recent Miami celebration of the death of Fidel Castro, and Trump’s victory in Florida, are testimonies to the one-sided deal’s unpopularity. The United States got little in return for the Castro brothers’ propaganda coup.”
• Destroying ISIL and dismantling Al Qaida. “We are at last making some progress against some of these ‘junior varsity’ teams, as Obama once described the Islamic State. Neither group has been dismantled or destroyed. Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, the widespread reach of radical Islam into Europe and the United States remains largely unchecked.”
• Ending combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. “The Afghan war rages on. The precipitous withdrawal of all U.S. peacekeepers in 2011 from a quiet Iraq helped sow chaos in the rest of the Middle East. We are now sending more troops back into Iraq.”
• Closing Guantanamo Bay. “This was an eight-year broken promise. The detention center still houses dangerous terrorists.”
• Rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region. “The anemic ‘Asia Pivot’ failed. The Philippines is now openly pro-Russian and pro-Chinese. Traditional allies such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are terrified that the United States is no longer a reliable guarantor of their autonomy.”
• Strengthening cybersecurity. “Democrats claimed Russian interference in the recent election. If true, it is proof that there is no such thing as ‘cybersecurity.’ The WikiLeaks releases, the hacked Clinton emails and the Edward Snowden disclosures confirm that the Obama administration was the least cybersecure presidency in history.”
• Honoring our nation’s veterans. “Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs was mired in scandal, and some of its nightmarish VA hospitals were awash in disease and unnecessary deaths. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki was forced to resign amid controversy. Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized for issuing an offensive report falsely concluding that returning war vets were liable to join right-wing terrorist groups.”
• Promoting immigrant and refugee integration and citizenship awareness. “The southern U.S. border is largely unenforced. Immigration law is deliberately ignored. The president’s refugee policy was unpopular and proved a disaster, as illustrated by the Boston Marathon bombings, the San Bernardino attack, the Orlando nightclub shooting and the recent Ohio State University terrorist violence.”

Hanson added: “Note what Obama’s staff omitted: his doubling of the U.S. debt in eight years, the unworkable and soon-to-be-repealed Affordable Care Act, seven years of anemic economic growth, record labor non-participation, failed policy resets abroad, and a Middle East in ruins.”

  Grading the Obama administration on its own scorecard, immigration, Iran nuclear deal, TPP, WorldTribune.com