Obama Has His Sights Set on the History Books

President Obama seems to have already checked out as the nation’s chief executive and instead looks to have his sights set on the history books!

As the president comes to terms with the fact that he will serve the last quarter of his presidency as a lame duck, he seems dead set on leaving more to show for his eight years in office than a half dozen scandals, the slowest economic recovery on record and a troubled and unpopular healthcare law that bears his name.

With little to look forward to other than a mountain of legislation that will hit his desk once Republicans take full control of congress in January, the president has been reviewing his first year agenda to see what he might be able to get done through executive action over the next two years.

The president has already started on his quest for historic relevance with his recent executive actions on immigration.  Neither executive action was ground breaking nor will either do anything towards a permanent solution to the immigration problem in this country but to his supporters, they see them as a bold and historic move by their beloved president.

The executive actions in immigration will likely earn the president little more than a brief mention in the history books but as a legal and political matter, they will be fodder for republicans to chastise democrats with for decades to come.

Obama has also begun an effort to close the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  A first year pledge that he has largely ignored, it looks as though the president is going to make a real charge at putting a checkmark next to Gitmo before he leaves office, even if it means the release of war criminals, many of which will likely return to the fight.

A move viewed by his critics as putting politics in front of the security of the nation, the motives behind the president’s push to close Gitmo are much more cynical.  Obama will not be in public office in two years but he will be in history books forever.

President Obama will likely do some kind of end around on minimum wage, gun control and maybe even something on education.  Any executive actions taken on these issues will be of little consequence as the president cannot create legislation and there is no precedence or existing law to piggyback an executive order on.

But a memorandum signed by the president means a great deal to liberal academia which is filled with those just dying to immortalize the achievements of the first black president of the United States into print, as insignificant as these achievements may be.