Remembering what we like to forget: Obama's controversial moments
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    Photo by Mia Zanzucchi / North by Northwestern

    President Trump’s eventful first days in office have left many yearning for, and romanticizing, the era of the previous Obama administration. Yet despite this recent outpouring of nostalgia, Obama garnered criticism from unsatisfied Democrats and Republicans alike over the course of his two terms.

    President Trump currently has an incoming approval rating of 40 percent, one of the lowest in U.S. history. He quickly took to Twitter, claiming the reported low ratings were “rigged.”

    Conversely, former President Obama’s approval ratings continued to climb during the 2016 election, reaching 60 percent, the fourth highest of any outgoing president in the last 80 years. However, his sometimes controversial policy decisions meant that much of this support was absent during his time in office.

    DRONES

    Since 2009, Obama’s use of drone strikes has been denounced for its resulting civilian casualties, which the New York Times estimated had reached 391 last January. The White House’s estimates were much lower because all military-age males were counted as combatants by default.

    He didn’t address the concern until May 2013, when he gave a speech announcing the Presidential Policy Guidance he had signed the day before, “a framework that governs [U.S.] use of force against terrorists.” It mandated that before a drone strike could be approved, there must be a “near-certainty” that it would result in no civilian casualties and the target must be a “continuing and imminent” threat.

    However, Obama also said his role as Commander-in-Chief necessitated that he “weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives,” asserting that “the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.”

    Especially controversial was the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and the chief of external operations for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Though this was the only drone strike authorized to specifically target a U.S. citizen, a handful of others were killed in collateral.

    “He is the head of the American military and the American empire, and killing comes with that job,” said Alvin Tillery, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern. “I think Americans prefer drones to their sons and daughters on the ground doing this killing.”

    The success of the Presidential Policy Guidance has since been questioned, but the Obama administration was unwilling to say much more on the topic. One thing is certain: increased reliance on drones during Obama’s time in office, and the lack of transparency surrounding their use, has set a dangerous precedent.

    DEPORTATIONS

    A record-setting 2.5 million undocumented immigrants were deported during Obama’s presidency, surpassing George W. Bush’s 2.1 million and earning him the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief.”

    The sky-high deportation numbers can be partly attributed to the “bed mandate” created in 2006 and the Secure Communities program of 2008, which was repealed in 2014. Both policies were imposed before Obama took office.

    Obama’s 2014 executive action – which aimed to defer deportation for parents of citizens and green card holders, prioritize the deportation of criminals over that of families and expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – would have decriminalized 5 million undocumented immigrants, nearly half of the estimated 11 million in the country.

    The policy was appealed up to the Supreme Court where a 4-4 split upheld the lower court's decision in favor of the opposing 26 states. The absence of a ninth justice to break the tie (after Scalia’s death and the Senate’s failure to hold a hearing for Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland) hurt the decision’s legitimacy.

    “As soon as they threatened that they were not going to have the hearings, he probably should have recess appointed Judge Garland,” Professor Tillery said. “That would have been a very strong way to make sure that they weren’t able to steal the seat outright. He also could have appointed a more exciting candidate to mobilize the base – a woman, a person of color – that would have really ratcheted up his core voting bloc.”

    Ultimately, it meant that millions of undocumented immigrants had lost their chance to become legal residents and now face the threat of deportation under the Trump administration.

    Black Lives Matter / Race

    As the first black president, it’s safe to say Obama had a complicated relationship with race during his time in office.

    “I never expected him to move that ball forward because he never seemed particularly interested in doing that on the campaign trail,” Professor Tillery said.

    Still, black people held out hope, and many were disappointed – specifically black women, 96 percent of whom voted for him in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

    When Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor, was arrested for breaking into his own home in 2009, Obama invited him and the arresting officer to a “beer summit” at the White House.

    When Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, Obama founded My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative to “improve significantly the expected life outcomes for boys and young men of color.” In response, over 1,500 black women signed an open letter asking for the initiative to be expanded to include girls and women of color.

    “The need to acknowledge the crisis facing boys should not come at the expense of addressing the stunted opportunities for girls who live in the same households, suffer in the same schools and struggle to overcome a common history of limited opportunities caused by various forms of discrimination,” the letter said. “[W]e cannot rest easy on the notion that the girls must wait until another train comes for them.”

    When ongoing protests occurred in Ferguson, Missouri after Michael Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson in August of 2014, Obama called for law and order. A grand jury declined to prosecute Wilson the following November.

    Only then did he take concrete rather than symbolic action, requesting funding for police body cameras and training. In May 2015, the White House announced its plan to dispense $75 million over the course of 3 years, an amount that would be matched by the awarded states.

    “The idea that body cameras are the solution to this problem when we see through cell phone cameras over and over these things are happening, and more often than not, the officers are getting off … I think that was a weak policy solution,” Professor Tillery said. “But more troubling is his dismissive stance toward the Black Lives Matter movement. I think that is a very classic, respectability politics response.”

    Maybe his failure to act on racial issues was because his focus was elsewhere – healthcare, the economy, foreign policy. But, as Professor Tillery said, “He’s defined by his race no matter what he does. Just his body, who he is, is polarizing to that third of the electorate that is motivated by racism.”

    Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

    Congress failed to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Obama’s controversial trade deal with 11 other countries, before the end of his term. As a result, Trump kept his campaign promise and backed out of the deal the Monday after his inauguration.

    The deal, which had been in the works since 2010, aimed to pivot U.S. foreign policy toward Asia and other Pacific Rim countries as well as mitigate China’s influence in the region. Proponents of the deal talked of access to a larger export market and increased competition and innovation. Its detractors argued that more manufacturing jobs would be lost to cheap labor overseas.

    The partnership was more popular with Republicans, who tend to favor free trade, and less so with Democrats; Bernie Sanders and eventually Hillary Clinton opposed it.

    The remaining nations may choose to move forward without the U.S., or another country, like China, may fill the spot. Trump plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and only pursue bilateral trade deals going forward.

    “President Trump just gave this really neo-mercantilist, isolationist, dystopian inaugural address promising to bring back these manufacturing jobs,” Professor Tillery said. “The joke of that is that most of these jobs are not lost by trade, they’re lost by automation. The second big joke of that is that President Trump’s core base is kind of Walmart country. All of the cheap things that they enjoy buying from Walmart are only so cheap because they’re made in China, and Indonesia and overseas.”

    Nevertheless, with a stroke of his pen, Trump undid what would have been a historic, although divisive, part of Obama’s legacy.

    Although to some, the memory of Obama’s presidency seems sweeter the further we get into Trump’s, it wasn’t always – or ever – smooth sailing.

    “He’s an extraordinary president,” Professor Tillery said on Inauguration Day, Obama’s last day in office. “He saved the country from having a second Great Depression. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made mistakes.”

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