According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “legacy” is defined primarily as an amount of money or property left to someone in a will and secondly, as something left or handed down by a predecessor.
The Cambridge English Dictionary offers similar definitions, with “legacy” meaning money or property that you receive from someone after they die, and also something that is a part of your history or that remains from an earlier time.
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines “legacy” as something that happens or exists because of things that happened at an earlier time, and as money or property that you receive from someone after they die, in the sense of an inheritance.
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Other dictionaries present much the same definitions.
So, on looking up the word “legacy” in an English dictionary, the primary definition most frequently has a legal sense, as of a gift of personal property, so it relates to possessions passed on to another person, meaning an inheritance, while the secondary sense of the word extends to the idea of continuity, of something that lingers on, that transcends time and represents a bridge between the past and the present, or something that sets a foundation for future generations to build on. In short, usually the first definition is about material things, assets or money, whereas the second definition refers to an abstract concept.
The term “legacy” derives from the Latin word “legatus”, that meant an ambassador or an emissary. It is also in connection with the Latin verb “legare”, meaning to appoint by a last will, to send as an ambassador. The original meaning changed to the primary legal sense defined by today’s dictionaries. In both types of definitions what remains from the Latin origin is that a legacy is brought forth by a person and it is something of value passed on to other people.
Moving on from dictionary definitions, the term “legacy” can also be defined as “an interconnection across time, with a need for those who have come before us and a responsibility to those who come after us. The concept of legacy is a powerful life tool for all ages and a catalyst for social change.”
When speaking about a political legacy, the concept is related to the state, to government, or to policy-making, and implicitly to leadership. The term comes up frequently when referring to past presidents or other leading figures in politics.
In a research paper analyzing political legacies in the American context, the researchers conducting the study found that public officials are aware of the importance of a lasting legacy and it is an aspect that drives them throughout their career and that legacies of politicians who are no longer in office frequently resurface in political discourse and influence policy debates. The authors of the study defined the concepts of “hard legacy” and “soft legacy” as the two sides of a political legacy, the first referring to “concrete policy achievements”, while the second to an “idea that is associated with a politician and endures after leaving office”. (“Political Legacies”, Christian Fong, Neil Malhotra, Yotam Margalit, August 29, 2017)
To exemplify politicians’ awareness of the significance of their legacy, a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress in 1862 is included in the study:
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”
In this part of the conclusion to President Lincoln’s speech, a reference to political legacies and their endurance throughout time sought to raise awareness of his audience about the lasting consequences of their actions in office. The issues at stake and the way in which they would be addressed would shape American history from that point on. While not all acts of American presidents would be of comparable historical significance and would impact the United States of America as much as Abraham Lincoln’s presidency did, political legacies are relevant nonetheless.
Barack Obama became a central political figure on the world stage the moment he was elected as the 44th President of the United States of America in 2009 and as the first African American to serve as president of the country. Barack Obama’s persona and his message had won the popular vote by appealing to people’s hope for a more tolerant society, for justice and equality, and his victory embodied the possibility of genuine change in American politics.
Barack Obama had captured the world’s attention and raised hope to such an extent that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’. President Obama was the fourth American president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. The achievement stirred controversy and mixed reactions because the president had been in office for just nine months, with critics claiming that, unlike the other American presidents awarded the Nobel Prize, Barack Obama had not had sufficient time to prove himself as president, thus making the honor bestowed on him premature. The award was representative for the high expectations generated by Barack Obama’s election as president.
The newly elected president was an intellectual pragmatist, who had studied at elite universities and had taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, a politician who embraced the liberal traditions and had in depth knowledge of the innerworkings of government institutions. As a law student, he had been the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, following graduation he had begun a civil rights practice, then entered state politics when he won a seat in the state legislature in 1996 and again in 1998 and 2002, serving as Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th district.
When the new president took office, the Democrats had control of the House and the Senate, which would most likely give Obama the possibility to move forward with the bold ambitions that were on his agenda.
“The Obama presidency offered a powerful counterweight to the political legacy of Reagan and the conservative movement. The president offered- with a rhetorical vigor we have not seen since the 1960s- a renewed commitment within the Democratic Party to using the federal government as a tool to alleviate social and economic problems.”
However, by the end of his presidency, the Democratic Party had not amassed sufficient strength to overpower the Republicans or to preserve the accomplishments resulted from eight years of the Obama administration. In 2010 the Democrats had lost control of the House of Representatives and in 2014 of the Senate, as well as over a thousand seats in state legislatures and in Congress.
With the election of Donald Trump and Republican control over federal government, a weakened Democratic party faces the challenge of protecting what was built between 2009 and 2016, once the new president would be sworn in to office.
Barack Obama inherited the effects of what was the worst recession in the United States since the Great Depression, and wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. His two terms in office marked massive investments in education, in health-care reform and in environmental research, and a reorientation of American foreign policy. The president was an advocate for diplomacy, for human rights and for engagement with adversaries, rather than for use of force and threats of elimination. Speaking in Berlin, Germany, in 2008, the President announced the overall aim of his foreign policy by stating that “America cannot turn inward (…) Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons (…) This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet.” On that occasion he also spoke about our rapidly deteriorating environment and the need to reduce carbon emissions, about defeating terrorism and about repealing nuclear weapons.
Some of the major foreign policy achievements included the Iran nuclear agreement designed to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons for at least ten years in return for renouncing United Nations-imposed economic sanctions, restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2014 for the first time in more than fifty years, and the agreement between China and the United States to lower carbon emissions, which led to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015 that prompted most of the world’s countries to reach an agreement to monitor and to strive to reduce emissions.
Seeking to strengthen ties between Pacific nations and the United States, president Obama negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and United States, signed on 4 February 2016.
Throughout his two presidential terms, Obama chose to continue some of the former president’s counterterrorism policies. Among these was a controversial assassination program targeting suspected terrorists and the surveillance program initiated by George W. Bush. This was contrary to what Obama had pledged on taking office. However, in accordance with the promise made during his presidential campaign, abusive interrogation techniques were banned and the president commanded that the Guantanamo detention facility, an institution that “has come to symbolize torture, rendition and indefinite detention without charge or trial in violation of internationally agreed standards of justice and human rights” , be closed within a year after he assumed the presidency.
Although he opposed the war in Iraq and he kept the promise of bringing American troops back home in 2011, it was war that marked his presidency, as the Islamic State outgrew predictions, the war in Afghanistan was longer than anticipated, and air attacks, notably drone strikes, although sparing human intervention from American soldiers, bombed seven countries in 2016- Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. As Obama’s presidency came to a close, after fighting wars on multiple fronts, the spread of terrorism has not been stopped, but still constitutes a significant threat, while the Middle East is marred by division to an even bigger extent than when president Obama took office.
What does the administration have to show for eight years of fighting on so many fronts? Terrorism has spread, no wars have been “won” and the Middle East is consumed by more chaos and divisions than when candidate Barack Obama declared his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
