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How will history rank President Obama?

The White House photograph has become an icon: President Obama bending low in front of his desk in the Oval Office so a 5-year-old African American boy could touch his hair.

President Obama bends low in front of his Oval Office desk to let Jacob Philadelphia, then 5, touch his hair so the boy could see “if my hair is just like yours.” The image has become an iconic one from Obama’s presidency.
President Obama bends low in front of his Oval Office desk to let Jacob Philadelphia, then 5, touch his hair so the boy could see “if my hair is just like yours.” The image has become an iconic one from Obama’s presidency.Read morePETE SOUZA / The White House

The White House photograph has become an icon: President Obama bending low in front of his desk in the Oval Office so a 5-year-old African American boy could touch his hair.

"I want to know if my hair is just like yours," Jacob Philadelphia asked in 2009, as he and his family gathered for a picture with the president.

"Why don't you touch it and see for yourself?" Obama said, lowering his head. "Touch it, dude!"

As Obama arrives in Philadelphia on Wednesday to speak to the Democratic National Convention, the debate on his legacy is well underway. Has he been a consequential president, a disappointment, or something in between? How will history rank him?

In a sense, though, the impact of the first black president cannot be measured in the usual tallies of policy wins and losses and economic data - as the iconic Oval Office head pat shows.

"My three little sons - the irony is, they've all grown up with an African American president," said Shay Cathey, 43, a Democratic convention delegate from Texas. "So they think that's the norm."

Beyond that undisputable moment in history, it could take years - as it does with most presidents - to sort out the legacy of the skinny, under-experienced senator from Illinois who won in 2008.

Among the elements of the Obama legacy, here, briefly, are some that are ripe for dispute:

The economy

The outlook has improved dramatically since Obama took over in January 2009 at the slough of the recession. Unemployment, which peaked that year at 10 percent, is about 4.5 percent, and the economy is growing - though not as robustly as some would like. Middle-class wages are stagnant, and income and wealth inequality have widened. Polls show many people nervous about their economic futures.

But many analysts say Obama does not get enough credit for actions he took during the crisis to keep the recession from worsening - actions they say set the stage for recovery.

First was the stimulus package, which pumped $831 billion into infrastructure, education, health, renewable energy, federal tax incentives, and expansion of unemployment benefits and other social-welfare programs. The wildly unpopular package was called a wasteful intervention, but the consensus of economists is that the money improved consumer spending, which boosted the economy.

"He moved the economy when the future was really uncertain, and it was perilous," said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University. "We got out of the financial crisis, and the economy stabilized. There are still problems, but we are far ahead of where we were."

Government bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors saved those companies and their jobs - but also the jobs of people working for hundreds of suppliers, from stereo manufacturers to steel and rubber producers. When the bailout ended in 2014, the federal government had lost $9.2 billion on its temporary takeovers.

Depending on your political point of view, either Obama, faced with a bad situation, did what he had to do, or the bailouts were part of a federal power grab.

In 2013, the Center for Automotive Research, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., estimated that the United States would have had 2.6 million fewer jobs in 2009 and 1.5 million fewer jobs in 2010 if the two auto companies had disappeared. The study also estimated that the government "saved or avoided the loss of" $105 billion in foregone taxes and increases in social-service expenses, such as food stamps, unemployment benefits, and medical care.

There was a high political cost.

Those interventions, coupled with the enactment of a massive health-insurance program the same year, sparked a political backlash that cost the Democrats their House majority in 2010. Gridlock became the order of the day, and the Senate was lost in 2014.

Obamacare

Up to 16.4 million uninsured people have gained coverage since 2010, according to a study on the health-care law by the New England Journal of Medicine.

From 2010 through 2013, per capita U.S. health-care spending increased at 3.2 percent annually - compared with an average of 5.6 percent a year over the previous decade, the study found. And health spending has stabilized at about 17 percent of the gross domestic product. Expenditures in the Medicare program also have declined.

Some Americans believe the law, by requiring all residents to have insurance, has intruded on individual freedoms, and, with its federal regulation of some private health insurance markets, has infringed on the prerogatives of states. And premiums are rising for millions.

Foreign policy, national security

Critics, including this year's Republican candidates, say the United States is vulnerable to terrorism and the forces of the Islamic State because of Obama's reluctance to use military power. Rarely mentioned any more is the 2011 Navy SEAL mission that found and killed Osama bin Laden.

Policy analyst Derek Chollet of the German Marshall Fund, argues that Obama is playing a "long game" that redefines American strength from a reflexive use of military power to a more nuanced approach. He is skeptical that force solves every problem and believes "ISIS is a real danger, but not an existential threat. . . . The U.S. is flawed but indispensable, and must remain clear-eyed about its limits," Chollet, who spent six years in the Obama Defense Department, argued in an essay earlier this year in the Atlantic.

Race relations

As a candidate and as president, Obama often has avoided discussing race - unless compelled by events.

He had to confront the racially incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor during the campaign, for instance, and he responded to the 2013 not-guilty verdict in the trial of a neighborhood watchman for shooting to death an unarmed black teenager in Florida. "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago," Obama said.

He has mourned the killings of African American males at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., and beyond, yet he has implored people to respect investigations and the courts, saying it is not proper for any president to interfere. Earlier this month, Obama attended a memorial service for five police officers slain in Dallas after a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. He condemned those who think police are all bigoted or use violence against them. "We ask police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves," Obama said.

Critics on the left say he could do more to help explain and improve the black experience, while many conservative critics consider his remarks and policies on diversity divisive.

"Obama has often been loath to lift his voice on race lest he be relegated to a black box, although his reluctance has kept the nation from his wisdom and starved black folk of the most visible interpreter of their story and plight, an interpreter who also carries the greatest political clout in the nation's history," Michael Eric Dyson writes in his new book, The Black Presidency.

Obama as symbol

Dyson says that he does not mean to minimize the monumental achievement, but emphasizes that the first black presidency "has hardly put a dent in the forces that pulverize black life: high infant mortality rates, high unemployment, atrocious educational inequality, racial profiling, and deadly police brutality."

Presidential historian James A. Thurber of American University took a different view: "We all take it for granted now, but it's a very important signal for the world and for us that we have a black president. It shows how our democracy is growing, reaching for its promises."

Historians will have much to hash out.

tfitzgerald@phillynews.com

215-854-2718 @tomfitzgerald

www.philly.com/bigtent

Staff writer Samantha Melamed contributed to this article.