Is Obama As Bad As The Media Makes Him Out To Be?

We are now approaching the end of the first African American president in our nation's history. Many people have despised him. Others have staunchly defended him. Let's have a look at the different elements of the United States to see just how good or bad he was.

1. Economy

As we know, the country just recently experienced a recession in which the national debt ceiling exploded. This resulted in people spending less money and therefore a sharp increase in unemployment. The GDP was also severely impacted at rates that we haven't seen in about 80 years. However, that's not entirely his fault. George Bush's foolish handling of government funds through extensive defense spending and 2 wars that we had no business having in the first place was timed well enough for the next president to inherit. However, since the recession in 2008, the GDP has slowly crawled it's way back up under Obama. It's not as high as it was prior to Obama's presidency, but back then we didn't have a recession to recover from. That in combination with the fact that two-thirds of government was against him for the extent of his time there means that he didn't do as bad of a job as his critics say he did.

Also, America is still hailed as one of the richest countries in the world. The economy is also expected to continue growing in the years to come projected to be higher than the UK and the EU this year and almost as high as the UK in 2020. So we're not doing that bad for heaven's sake. The U.S. dollar is still higher than most major currencies in the world and the job market is strengthening. Yes, employment rates have been going up since 2010. The economy isn't falling to pieces people calm down.

2. Crime

Despite what the media or politicians may tell you, the crime rate has been going down nationwide for decades. The homicide rate in 2014 was at the lowest it had been since the 1960's. Crime has fallen a whopping 49 percent in the last 20 years alone. It's actually mind blowing how many Americans (although not surprising) are completely ignorant of how the crime rate has declined over the years. But no, just listen to the stupid Republicans and other idiots who say that Obama has increased the crime rate. The crime rate never increased. It's just that now people were reporting more and more crime than in previous years.

3. Immigration

This talk of illegal immigration under Obama is just completely blown out of proportion especially with Donald Trump. Mexicans are typically the ones who have been demonized in the current presidential election. Obama has been blamed for letting so many of these aliens into the country. But quite frankly, they're all lying. From 2000-2014, 42.7 million immigrants have entered the country. Most of those immigrants didn't even enter the country under Obama. Almost 80% of them entered either before 2000 or under Bush's presidency. Obama only inherited about 20% of them. Thanks Bush.

Also, in 2014 47 percent of those immigrants were naturalized. Most of them naturalized before Bush or after him. The other 53 percent had work visas and were lawful permanent residents. Only a few of them were unauthorized.

You know what else is funny? Most of those immigrants reported as being White. 48% of them to be exact. It sounds to me like the white people ought to be kicked out not the Mexicans.

Also, those Mexicans that people want deported so badly are actually very useful to us. Almost 70 percent of the nearly 11.3 million Mexican immigrants aged 16+ were in the labor force in 2014. Over half of them have private health insurance and they comprised almost 17 percent of the labor force. Again, you can't blame Obama for the status of immigration in the country. Most of it isn't his fault, many are legal, and almost all of them working. We can't just deport people.

4. Foreign Policy

Obama's foreign policy was generally more successful than his predecessor who sought to go to war every time the opportunity presented itself.

Obama got the embargo on Vietnam lifted which was very important considering that it changed the geopolitical atmosphere between us. 33% of trade occurs in the South China Sea so keeping tensions to a low is the best way to make sure that the global economy doesn't suffer.

We started communicating with Cuba again. Obama made a very strategic move after observing the potential economic crisis that would occur as a result of Venezuela's own shortcomings. Since they depend on leftist governments to survive, it gives them incentive to play nice with us and Obama capitalized on that opportunity.

The Iranian nuclear deal wasn't that bad either. With Iran's economy doing so poorly with a 50% youth unemployment rate, they wouldn't go after a nuclear arms program because it was be a bigger hindrance to themselves. So Obama's sanctions on them would actually keep their economy from completely falling apart whilst preventing them from constructing WMD's.

I won't say that Obama hasn't had some failings such as Russia, but in general he has done a decent job with foreign policy. Stop taking everything the media says as fact.

There's other things that I could mention, but then this article would never end. Do you see now that Obama was not as bad a president as you believe him to be? If you weren't so busy listening to right wing media and paying more attention to the statistics, you wouldn't be in such darkness.