But critics argue Obama's successes at home did not translate overseas. While he did accomplish many things—like brokering a deal to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons (which Trump has since reversed) and successfully completing the Bush plan to withdraw from Iraq—Obama's foreign policy has been an extension of traditional hawkish American policy that created many of the issues facing the U.S. today.

Yet Obama’s presidency is in other respects a tragedy—and especially when it comes to foreign policy. It is a tragedy because Obama had the opportunity to refashion America’s role in the world, and at times he seemed to want to do just that. The crisis of 2008-2009 was the ideal moment to abandon the failed strategy of liberal hegemony that the United States had been pursuing since the end of the Cold War, but in the end Obama never broke with that familiar but failed approach. The result was a legacy of foreign-policy missteps that helped propel Donald Trump into the White House.

His critics on the left say he did not change enough. He maintained an America-World-Police style policy that just about every other president has pursued. The Obama administration largely embraced a distracted policy that had the U.S. jumping from region-to-region and crisis-to-crisis.

Like Bill Clinton, Obama tried to address a vast array of global problems as cheaply as possible (and without “boots on the ground”), but he never told the American people what their vital interests actually were. Equally important, this most eloquent of presidents never gave voters a simple template to help them distinguish between the places where the United States should stand ready to fight and regions it could safely leave to others. Instead, almost any part of the world could suddenly become a “vital interest” for which Washington was supposed to have a solution, and failure to act immediately in a crisis anywhere exposed him to charges that he was squandering U.S. credibility or leaving the country vulnerable to some shadowy danger. “He who defends everything defends nothing,” warned Frederick the Great, and Obama’s inability to develop a clear set of strategic priorities hurt him throughout his presidency.

Critics on the right say Obama fundamentally misunderstood international politics and world leaders. He was weak against Putin and made critical missteps. Obama believed that Putin could be reasoned with. Instead, Putin took the opportunity to reassert himself on the world stage. In essence, he had too much faith in people.

Second, in both domestic and foreign policy, Obama failed to appreciate that his opponents were not as reasonable, rational, cool, or unselfish as he was. If a central theme runs through Obama’s approach to politics, it is his conviction that people with differing views can come together, discuss, debate, share information, and gradually come to a mutual understanding that satisfies both sides and that will advance the public interest. This quality made him a great law review editor and a successful community organizer, but it hamstrung him as president in today’s highly polarized political environment.

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