The end of Obama's childish legacy

Since the election, as the New York Times reported, he’s banned oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, named over 100 people to a range of senior government jobs, created new environmental monuments, commuted the sentences of 232 inmates and pardoned 78 others, protected funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay and blocked new Israeli settlements.

As some critics sneer, it’s more governing than he’s done in eight years.

In his most dramatic action, Obama claimed Russia swung the election Trump’s way by hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails and leaking them to Wikileaks to destroy her campaign.

He retaliated by throwing out a load of Russian diplomats.

The fact Obama produced no hard evidence to substantiate this very serious claim didn’t seem to matter to the former constitutional law expert.

Nor did it seem to cross his mind that the really damaging part was the content of Hillary and her team’s explosive emails, not the fact we could all read them.

--from Piers Morgan 

So this is how Obama's presidency ends? With a very public temper tantrum, as he slams the proverbial door on his way out of the White House. What trepidations I have about Trump are offset by Obama's childish behavior.

How we leave is almost as important as how we live. While I can appreciate a "Dylan Thomas"-esque desire to "not go gentle into that good night", there is a fine line between raging "against the dying of the light" and a simple temper tantrum caused by not getting your way. One is a desire to continue to survive, while the other is just a selfish expression of not getting what you want.

Obama's presidency has been one example of infantile behavior after another, starting with pushing Obamacare, and specifically "no denial for pre-existing conditions" based on his mother's death from cancer. You can almost hear man-child Obama's cry, "I lost my mama! There ought to be a law!" He pushed through the law on a partisan basis, rather than working to get bipartisan support for a law, or even forgetting it entirely as Bill Clinton did in the face of political reality. No, the selfish child-like Obama had to have his way, and the Democrat-controlled Congress happily committed seppuku for him, thereby handing control of the states to Republican majorities in 2010, a census year, and allowing the Republicans to control the redistricting process. This allowed the GOP to have majorities in the House all the way up until this year, and possibly even until 2020.

Obama, being the emotionally-stunted man-child he is, complained about "Republican obstructionism" ad nauseum, even as he completely ignored the fact that he handed them the tools with which to obstruct him. If you play in traffic and get hit by a car, can you complain about the driver's skills later? You can if you're a Democrat, where everyone is just a victim and nothing bad ever happens (unless a Republican caused it).

Don't get me wrong: The next 4 years (possibly 8) will be likely brutal. But I won't be looking back longingly at the Obama years. When you are rolling downhill, it is hard to look at the spot slightly higher up the hill as "the good old days".