Barack Obama delivers farewell address

In his farewell address in Chicago, US president Barack Obama called on Americans to defend their democracy.

Bogdan Matei, 11.01.2017, 12:50

Considered, for
the last eight years, the most powerful man on the planet, Barack Obama last
night delivered his farewell speech as acting president. Commentators have
noted the spectacular setting for his address. Gathered in the centre of
Chicago, where the president’s children were born and where he began his
journey to the White House, 20,000 people listened to the president.

A leit-motif of
his rhetoric, ordinary Americans were again celebrated by the president as a
driving force of change and guarantors of democracy. According to a poll
published right before his speech, 55% of Americans approve of the president’s
actions as head of state and only 39% say they are disappointed with his two
terms in office. The president himself said America is a better, stronger place than it was eight years
ago. He called, however, on his fellow Americans to defend their democracy,
which he sees as being threatened by economic inequality, racial division and
the isolation of certain sections of society. Ignoring these problems would be
to betray both future generations and America’s founders, Obama warned.

As far as his foreign policy
legacy is concerned, commentators are divided. They all hail, however, the
elimination of the Al-Qaida leader Ossama Bin Laden by an American commando,
maintaining solid links with the country’s allies in Europe and opening the
country to the Asia-Pacific area. On the other hand, analysts note that it was
during Obama’s presidency that a vengeful Russia dared, for the first time
since the end of the Cold War, re-annex foreign territory, the Ukrainian Crimean
Peninsula. Moreover, the illusion of the entire West, including Washington,
with regard to the democratic future of the so-called Arab spring in fact
transformed the Middle East and North Africa into an inferno. In Libya, Yemen,
Iraq and Tunisia, abusive and corrupt, albeit secular and relatively stable,
regimes were replaced by chaos, fertile ground for the emergence of jihadist
groups, with millions of people trying to escape forcing Europe’s land and
maritime borders. Commentators also say that Obama has alienated Israel,
America’s most consistent regional ally and the region’s only functional
democracy.

America’s first black president
thus leaves his successor, the controversial magnate Donald Trump, with a lot
of hot files. Already made vulnerable by scandals both during the election
campaign and after winning the presidential race, Trump will be sworn in on the
20th of January at a time when only one third of Americans approve
of his actions, according to opinion polls.