During President Barack Obama's eight years in office, it was common to see a variation of the Old Glory flag of the United States where the stars in the blue field were replaced with Obama's face. And yet, it was just as common to see bumper stickers that infamously proclaimed "Obama: One Big *** Mistake America."

Clearly, there were those who were fans of the former president just as there were those who opposed him and all of his policies. Today, there are, not surprisingly, those who see him as one of America's greatest presidents and those who view him as one of the worst.

A Bad President? How Bad?

There have certainly been cases made that Barack Obama was among the worst presidents in U.S. history – but that overlooks such former commander-in-chiefs as Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover, and John Tyler.

Nixon, of course, is remembered today for Watergate, while his normalizing of relations with China is largely an afterthought; likewise, Hoover's mishandling of the early years of the Great Depression overshadowed his "Good Neighbor Policy" that improved relations with Latin America. 

Tyler, on the other hand, was a slave owner who went on to serve in the Confederate House of Representatives!

Warren G. Harding would likely be the president most remembered for scandal, was Nixon not elected! Harding was a womanizing poker player whose administration is best remembered for its litany of corruption and scandals.

History has yet to truly judge Donald Trump, but those indictments aren't exactly helping his legacy.

Barack Obama a Lame Duck From 2010

A case could be made that while the Obama administration was largely scandal-free, President Barack Obama also didn't really do all that much. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act – commonly referred to as Obamacare – Obama largely became a caretaker president. 

It wasn't entirely his fault, of course.

As Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institute noted in 2018 while looking back at the legacy of Obama, "By 2010 Obama's fate was sealed. In the midterm elections, Republicans ran on the slow recovery, the perception that the stimulus package favored Wall Street, not Main Street, and the Democrats’ tone-deaf obsession with the health care bill. They easily took control of the House, picking up sixty-three seats—the biggest midterm election gains for the out party since 1938. And from then on, the Obama presidency struggled under a radicalized Republican Party.”

Obama's Foreign Policy – His Biggest Failing?

When future historians look back at the Obama legacy, what might be most remembered is his failure with foreign policy. It is true that Obama inherited what has been described as an "awful mess," which included the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, instead of finding a way to win them, he sought to end them by any means.

He further dismissed the Islamic State (ISIS) as the "JV team," and within a few years, they evolved from relative obscurity to the world's most brutal terrorist network. 

During a 2012 presidential primary, Obama won praise for a "zinger" delivered at GOP candidate Mitt Romney who had suggested Russia was "without question, our number one geopolitical foe."

Obama stated somewhat smugly, "Gov. Romney, I'm glad you recognize al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical group facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s."

Fast forward a decade, to February 2022, as Russia prepared to invade Ukraine, and CNN offered the headline, "It's time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia." Moreover, it was also under Obama's watch that Russia illegally annexed Crimea and engaged in a proxy war with Ukraine in the Donbas.

Moreover, China continued to expand its presence in the South China Sea.

Finally, while Obama promised to lead "the most transparent administration in history," it actually proved to be the least transparent, and until Trump, the Obama White House was the most antagonistic toward the media since Nixon. 

Whether all that will put Obama on future "worst" lists has yet to be seen.

Author Experience and Expertise

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.