Rolling Stone Names President Obama ‘One of the Most Successful Presidents in American History’

President Obama graces the cover of the latest issue ofRolling Stone.
In the mag, Nobel Prize- winning economist Paul Krugman wrote an amazing piece in defense of President Obama’s presidency.

Mainstream media is often quick to point out President Obama’s perceived failures during his tenure, so it’s refreshing to see a publication highlight his many accomplishments — especially because President Obama’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s ever been (according to CNBC).
Krugman declares President Obama as one of the “one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history” and acknowledges the harsh and often unfair criticism he endures.
Obama faces trash talk left, right and center – literally – and doesn’t deserve it. Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it’s working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it’s much more effective than you’d think.
Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.

I’ll go through those achievements shortly. First, however, let’s take a moment to talk about the current wave of Obama-bashing. All Obama-bashing can be divided into three types. One, a constant of his time in office, is the onslaught from the right, which has never stopped portraying him as an Islamic atheist Marxist Kenyan. Nothing has changed on that front, and nothing will.

There’s a different story on the left, where you now find a significant number of critics decrying Obama as, to quote Cornel West, someone who ”posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit.” They’re outraged that Wall Street hasn’t been punished, that income inequality remains so high, that ”neoliberal” economic policies are still in place. All of this seems to rest on the belief that if only Obama had put his eloquence behind a radical economic agenda, he could somehow have gotten that agenda past all the political barriers that have con- strained even his much more modest efforts. It’s hard to take such claims seriously.