Getting elected should have been the beginning, not the end.

"Was Obama a Transformational President?" asks Professor David Greenberg, writing in Politico, which has been an ardent admirer of Barack Obama. What is a 'transformational' leader? "In contrast to 'transactional' leaders, who serve their constituents' interests as best as they can in exchange for political support (and leave the constituents essentially unchanged), transformational leaders bring their constituents aboard a moral or spiritual project, revising in some fundamental sense who they are," writes Greenberg. In the way that FDR, LBJ, Ronald Reagan or even Bill Clinton did. LBJ was from Texas, a racist who openly addressed blacks as 'niggers', who got Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, smashed Jim Crow laws of the South, and tackled poverty by starting Medicare and Medicaid programs, which are in effect to this day. Greenberg finds similarities between Clinton and Obama, both Democrats, struggling with a hostile Congress, but the difference was foreign policy. " Where Obama broke from the Clinton script was in foreign policy, and not, alas, for the better," writes Greenberg. For those of us who live outside the US his foreign policy was a disaster. He used drones in thousands of extrajudicial killings. In 2014 the government admitted in a court filing that 469,000 people had been included in a database of "known or suspected terrorists", which means they were all fair game. Chilling. The newly created state of South Sudan is locked in civil war. Obama confessed that the aftermath in Libya was the "worst mistake" of his presidency, but insisted that it had been "the right thing to do". It is shocking that he learnt nothing from the disaster in Iraq consequent to the removal of Saddam Hussein. If this was a 'cerebral president' give us Donald Trump any day. At least we know what we are getting. If we don't he will let us know on Twitter. The Iran deal is suspect in many people's eyes as it allows Iran to certify its own program. If Iran is not making nuclear bombs why is it guarding its Fordow enrichment facility with S-330 anti-aircraft missiles, bought from Russia? Obama's classification of 'good terrorists' and 'bad terrorists' is plain stupid and his support for the rebels in Syria not only prolonged the civil war but resulted in the deaths of 300,000 people, and a flood of refugees into Europe, which could mean Angela Merkel losing in German elections and Marine LePen becoming the President of France. For all his talk he could not resist the temptation of 'regime change', engineering an armed coup in Ukraine, which prompted Putin to annex Crimea and a de facto division of the country. The world has become much more dangerous during his tenure. "To this day, the very fact of getting elected remains Barack Obama's greatest achievement," writes Greenberg. Exactly. The first black president. And maybe the last.