Debates Show How Much Obama’s Presidency Has Shrunk By Jonah Goldberg

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   Debates Show How Much Obama’s Presidency Has Shrunk
By Jonah Goldberg

August 2, 2019 6:30 AM

The moderates look like refugees from a wing of a party that has withered to a feather.

What ever happened to Barack Obama?

For a while there, no modern figure was supposed to be as consequential. It’s difficult to describe the hype in the early days of the Obama era. Time, Newsweek, and countless deep thinkers cast him as a 21st-century Lincoln or FDR. Some literally saw a messianic figure — “The One,” in Oprah Winfrey’s words. Self-help guru Deepak Chopra said Obama represented a “quantum leap in American consciousness.”

George Lucas speculated that he might even be a Jedi.

It was a global phenomenon. In a move that embarrassed Obama himself, the Nobel Committee gave him a Peace Prize on spec — i.e., in anticipation of what they were sure he would do. A leading Danish newspaper editorialized: “Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus.”

Obama himself set his sights lower; he wanted to be the Democrats’ Ronald Reagan. And for a time, it seemed to many that he’d succeeded. As late as April of 2017, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria said, “Obama aspired to be a transformational president, like Reagan. At this point, it’s fair to say that he has succeeded.”

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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/democratic-debates-obama-presidency-shrunken-legacy/