Closed Minds Control Our Campuses. Obama's "The Raw Deal." Let's Hear It For North Charleston!

The street sign message to the P5 plus 1 and Iran, outside Netanyahu's Government Home  in Jerusalem.

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When I say it, it does not carry the same weight or get the coverage as when Victor Davis Hanson says it. (See 1 below.)

Also this op ed piece ("Eucation Does Reduce Inequality" by Dan Greenstein and Jamie Merisotis) appeared in Friday's WSJ supporting my recent comment that poor education is a factor in why our economic recovery has been paltry.

Maybe others are reading and agreeing with  what I write. Alas, I seriously doubt it.
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For those who do not understand why Yemen is important, Daniel Pipes explains.  (See 2 below.)

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Just add another Obama disaster to what is becoming a long, long list.  We  had the New Deal,

The Square Deal and now Obama has given us The Raw Deal!  (See 3 below.)
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Obama plans on teaching after leaving The White House.  Perhaps he should give some thought to learning something first.  I suggest he could start by reading The Constitution. (See 4 below.)

When Obama leaves The White House, I will have no regrets but to paraphrase what Nixon had to say, when he departed, regarding the press and media "they won't have me to kick around:" " Well, I won't have Obama to kick around." But then, think what a benefit that will be for what is left of our country. That's a sacrifice I will joyously endure.

And who knows, to paraphrase Professor Gruber: "voters may be stupid enough to elect 'Grand Ma' Hillary."
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No wonder we are losing the public relations war: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/mku27v/faith-off---easter-vs--passover 
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Recently a needless tragedy occurred in the small North Charleston community and the black family, whose member was taken from them, beseeched their fellow citizens to act appropriately, with dignified restraint and allow the justice system to work.

The city's white mayor and police chief acted swiftly and demonstrated  true compassion, unbiased leadership and the ugliness we have witnessed elsewhere was prevented.  Members of this same family also told Al Sharpton to stay away and neither have we heard rabble rousing encouragement from Atty. General Holder and President Obama.

Perhaps the historic and  tragic riots in Watts, Detroit and other places and the more recent one in Missouri, provided a guiding lesson of what not to do, what not to allow but rather how to respond. For sure, the collective members of the  aggrieved family acted with dignified instinct and cool heads and their actions and words provide a commendable beacon of light to those who incite, cause trouble and whose animal behaviour simply brings more pain  and destruction.

I am reminded of how the white mayor of Atlanta, Ivan Allen, immediately upon hearing of Dr. King's assassination, stood on a police car using a bull horn surrounded by a sea of black citizens bent on rioting, encouraged them to turn the other way and they did.

The contrast between ugly stirrers and calmers is stark for all to see.  Once again our president and his lackey appointees failed to show proper leadership and chose, instead, to engage in divisive racial politics, whereas, the family, who bore the brunt of the event, showed the nation, at large, how to throw water on a potential incendiary event.

No, they will receive no Medal of Honor for their courage and wisdom but every American owes them a debt of gratitude and respect as well as the entire community of North Charleston.

We are still free to act and those in North Charleston chose the more righteous path and they need to hear and be thanked from those who believe in obeying the law !

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Dick

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1)  Is the modern American university a failed state?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Modern American universities used to assume four goals.

First, their general education core taught students how to reason inductively and imparted an aesthetic sense through acquiring knowledge of Michelangelo, the Battle of Gettysburg, "Medea" and "King Lear,"Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and astronomy and Euclidean geometry.

Second, campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression -- and exposure to all sorts of weird ideas and mostly unpopular thoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodox pieties.

Third, four years of college trained students for productive careers. Implicit was the university's assurance that its degree was a wise career investment.

Finally, universities were not monopolistic price gougers. They sought affordability to allow access to a broad middle class that had neither federal subsidies nor lots of money.

The American undergraduate university is now failing on all four counts.

A bachelor's degree is no longer proof that any graduate can read critically or write effectively. National college entrance test scores have generally declined the last few years, and grading standards have as well.

Too often, universities emulate greenhouses where fragile adults are coddled as if they were hothouse orchids. Hypersensitive students are warned about "micro-aggressions" that in the real world would be imperceptible.

Apprehensive professors are sometimes supposed to offer "trigger warnings" that assume students are delicate Victorians who cannot handle landmark authors such as Joseph Conrad or Mark Twain.

"Safe spaces" are designated areas where traumatized students can be shielded from supposedly hurtful or unwelcome language that should not exist in a just and fair world.

One might have concluded from all this doting that 21st-century American youth culture -- rap lyrics, rough language, spring break indulgences, sexual promiscuity, epidemic drug usage -- is not savage. Hip culture seems to assume that its 18-year old participants are jaded sophisticated adults. Yet the university treats them as if they are preteens in need of vicarious chaperons.

Universities entice potential students with all sorts of easy loan packages, hip orientations, and perks like high-tech recreation centers and upscale dorms. On the backside of graduation, such bait-and-switch attention vanishes when it is time to help departing students find jobs.

College often turns into a six-year experience. The unemployment rate of college graduates is at near-record levels. Universities have either failed to convinced employers that English or history majors make ideal job candidates, or they have failed to ensure that such bedrock majors can, in fact, speak, write and reason well.

The collective debt of college students and graduates is more than $1 trillion. Such loans result from astronomical tuition costs that for decades have spiked more rapidly than the rate of inflation.

Today's campuses have a higher administrator-to-student ratio than ever before. Those who actually teach are now a minority of university employees. Various expensive "centers" address student problems that once were considered either private matters or well beyond the limited resources of the campus.

Is it too late for solutions?

For many youths, vocational school is preferable to college. Americans need to appreciate that training to become a master auto mechanic, paramedic or skilled electrician is as valuable to society as a cultural anthropology or feminist studies curriculum.

There are far too many special studies courses and trendy majors -- and far too few liberal arts surveys of literature, history, art, music, math and science that for centuries were the sole hallowed methods of instilling knowledge.

Administrators should decide whether they see students as mature, independent adults who handle life's vicissitudes with courage and without need for restrictions on free expression. Or should students remain perennial weepy adolescents, requiring constant sheltering, solicitousness and self-esteem building?

Diversity might be better redefined in its most ancient and idealistic sense as differences in opinion and thought rather than just variety in appearance, race, gender or religion.

The now-predictable ideology of college graduation speakers should instead be a mystery. Students should not be able to guess the politics of their college president. Ideally, they might encounter as many Christians as atheists, as many reactionaries as socialists, or as many tea partyers as Occupy Wall Street protestors, reflecting the normal divisions of society at large.

Colleges need to publicize the employment rates of recent graduates and the percentage of students who complete their degrees so that strapped parents can do cost-benefit analyses like they do with any other major cash investment.

A national standardized exit test should be required of all graduates. If colleges predicate admissions in part on performance on the SAT or ACT, they certainly should be assessed on how well -- or not so well -- students score on similar tests after years of expensive study.

Finally, the federal government should hold universities fiscally accountable. The availability of federal grants should be pegged to a college's ability to hold annual tuition increases to the rate of inflation.

At this late date, only classically liberal solutions can address what have become illiberal problems.


1a) The Closing of the Campus Mind

Schools of social work are silencing conservatives

By Devorah Goldman

 "I can’t have you participate in class anymore.”

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION, THE WEEKLY STANDARD

I was on my way out of class when my social welfare and policy professor casually called me over to tell me this. The friendliness of her tone did not match her words, and I attempted a shocked, confused apology. It was my first semester at the Hunter College School of Social Work, and I was as yet unfamiliar with the consistent, underlying threat that characterized much of the school’s policy and atmosphere. This professor was simply more open and direct than most.

I asked if I had said or done anything inappropriate or disrespectful, and she was quick to assure me that it was not my behavior that was the problem. No: It was my opinions. Or, as she put it, “I have to give over this information as is.”

I spent the rest of that semester mostly quiet, frustrated, and missing my undergraduate days, when my professors encouraged intellectual diversity and give-and-take. I attempted to take my case to a higher-up at school, an extremely nice, fair professor who insisted that it was in my own best interest not to rock the boat. I was doing well in his class, and I believed him when he told me he wanted me to continue doing well. He explained to me that people who were viewed as too conservative had had problems graduating in the past, and he didn’t want that to happen to me. I thought he was joking .  .  . until I realized he wasn’t.

It was laughable in its own way, though. My school was ostensibly all about freedom of expression. In our mandatory 5-hour diversity awareness training, we were each asked what pronouns we prefer to use when describing ourselves. We could dress and identify sexually virtually any way we wanted, though some fashion choices and sexual identities were more celebrated than others. We talked about how to approach clients whose gender identities were difficult to pinpoint. There was a special gender-neutral bathroom on the fourth floor that seemed rarely used. We were allowed to differ; we could not disagree.

That was the great and strange paradox about Hunter College. Our identities and opinions existed in two separate, unequal planes. Identities were required—the more unconventional and downtrodden the better. During diversity training, we were told to stand up whenever a category that applied to us was read by our presiding teacher. (I stood when the category “working class” was called out, naïvely not realizing that there were nonworking classes in America. I realized my mistake when most people stood up for the “middle class” category. I was impressed by the few “upper classers.”) The categories included a seemingly endless variety of religions, ethnicities, races, nationalities, and educational backgrounds. In that same training, we were also asked to indicate how things like weight, skin color, and a host of other criteria affected our lives by moving to one side or another of a circle (I mostly stayed in the center).

Another professor asked my class to separate by race, with one concentric circle composed of self-identifying white people and another of self-identifying “people of color.” After briefly considering declaring that I “felt black inside,” I politely refused to participate. I asked the teacher why she felt it necessary to reinstitute a practice of racial sorting that had been abolished decades ago. She gave no concrete answer, though she dropped the idea when other students protested as well.

These and other “identity exercises” were run-of-the-mill at school, the reasons behind them always vague and flavored with sugary social justice. But in a separate class given by the “circles” professor, two women engaged in a respectful discussion were abruptly stopped. One, whom I shall call Tanya, objected to the idea that as a successful 22-year-old graduate student, she should be viewed as “oppressed” simply for being African American. The other woman insisted that, far from being demeaning, identifying as an oppressed minority was part of receiving one’s due for injustices done. The teacher, rather than fostering the discussion, interrupted to point out that, though we had just begun talking about race, we were “already having trouble understanding each other.”

Sadly, my teachers all seemed to take their cues from the same playbook; they were very nice people with frightening messages. In my teacher’s mind, two adults could not hold two different opinions. Any dissent was simply due to a lack of comprehension on one or both of their parts.

That was why my social welfare and policy teacher felt entirely justified in asking me to stop sharing my opinions in class. She was not allowed to discriminate against me—it would have been wrong to ask me to stop speaking for being gay or a woman or black. She was discriminating against my thoughts, which were not an intrinsic part of who I was. Not important. Identities, with the exception of straight, white, religious male, could not be banned. Beliefs could.

This approach is not unique to Hunter: Two hundred thirty-five master’s programs in the United States are accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), which requires schools to “advocate for human rights and social and economic justice” and to “engage in practices that advance social and economic justice” as part of their curricula. As Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), points out, the CSWE standards act as “an invitation for schools to discriminate against students with dissenting views.” 

Lukianoff discovered the abusive culture fostered by CSWE after several students complained about their treatment in social work programs. Emily Brooker, a Christian student at Missouri State University’s School of Social Work in 2006, was asked by her professor to sign a letter to the Missouri legislature in favor of homosexual adoption. When she explained that doing so would violate her religious beliefs and requested a different assignment, she was subjected to a two-and-a-half-hour interrogation by an ethics committee and charged with a “Level Three Grievance” (the most severe kind). Brooker was not permitted to have an advocate or a tape recorder with her at the ethics meeting, during which she was told to sign a contract promising that she would “close the gap” between her religious beliefs and the values of the social work profession. At the risk of having her degree withheld, Brooker acquiesced

Bill Felkner, a student at Rhode Island College’s School of Social Work, was instructed to lobby the Rhode Island legislature for several policies he did not support. In addition, RIC’s policy internship requirements for graduate students included forcing students to advance policies that would further “progressive social change.” When Felkner accepted an internship in the policy department of Republican Rhode Island governor Don Carcieri’s office, he received a letter from Lenore Olsen, chair of the Social Work Department, informing him that he had violated their requirements and could no longer pursue a master’s degree in social work policy. 

Brooker’s story arguably ends on a happier note than Felkner’s: After sitting through weekly “consultations” that served as a follow-up to her review by the ethics committee, she graduated and sued the school. In response, Missouri State University launched an outside investigation of the social work school, dismissed several of her professors, and awarded her a settlement. Felkner, on the other hand, never graduated, despite multiple attempts to negotiate with his professors. They never forgave him for, as one of his professors wrote in an email to Felkner, opposing the “socio-political ideology about how the world works and how the world should be” that defined social work for them. 

In response to these and similarly outrageous cases of abuse at social work schools, FIRE approached the federal Department of Health and Human Services for help. In a 2006 letter, FIRE, along with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, asked HHS to reconsider its policy of only hiring social workers from CSWE-accredited schools, arguing that “CSWE’s Educational Policy .  .  . effectively requires social work programs to impose ideological litmus tests on their students as a condition of accreditation.” A 2007 FIRE letter would go on to say that “HHS’ exclusive relationship with CSWE” poses a “threat to freedom of conscience” and serves to encourage the highly politicized standards set by CSWE for the social work field.

While nothing seems to have come of FIRE’s letter to HHS, it demonstrates the power that CSWE has in influencing the way social work is taught and practiced all over the country, including the federal government. Doubtless, Brooker, Felkner, and my own teachers thought they were acting in good faith on CSWE-inspired principles. While CSWE is not an official government agency, it might as well be, since virtually all U.S. social work schools must receive its accreditation to be considered legitimate and to give their students a chance of being hired. Since its inception in 1952, it has worked, largely successfully, to transform a profession into a belief system.

I was not familiar with CSWE’s policies or publications (including such gems as Conservative Christian Beliefs and Sexual Orientation in Social Work: Privilege, Oppression, and the Pursuit of Human Rights) during my time in school. I also had not yet read Milton Friedman’s warning about the dangers of overly restrictive licensing organizations in his book Free to Choose, in which he says that “altruistic concern for .  .  . customers” is rarely the primary motive behind “determined efforts to get legal power to decide who may” join any given profession. 

And so I sat, zombie-like, through the strange and sad reality that is groupthink for two long years. In a publicly funded school in America’s greatest city, I was censored, threatened, and despised by my teachers. I left school after graduation feeling that something had been stolen from me. I wanted to go back and argue with my teachers some more, ask them, for example, whether a description of Reagan’s economic policies as “nightmarish” in a textbook could be considered unbiased in any context. I wished I had stood up more often for my white male friends in class, asked people if they really believed that Band-Aids that were not exactly fair and not exactly dark in color were racist. Realizing that I had been awarded a diploma in part because I kept my opinions to myself was deeply unsatisfying.

I never practiced social work after school, but I still wanted my school to change. But that is the problem—accredited social work schools are remarkably averse to actual change, and embrace only those aspects of their students they view as immutable. As long as what makes you different is something you have no control over—your heritage, skin color, or economic background—it is acceptable to CSWE and its dependents. Celebrating a lack of control is celebrating a lack of freedom, and is extraordinarily infantilizing. My friends at school were protected from my opinions, but not from the insidious idea that some opinions do not deserve to be aired. Our training suffered for it. Along with being taught to tolerate everything but disagreement, we were told that people, including our clients, could not make meaningful choices in life. That is bad for social work, bad for education, and, as a reflection of modern liberalism, dangerous for society.

Devorah Goldman is senior health care analyst at Capital Policy Analytics, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C

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2)--  Why Yemen Matters

by Daniel Pipes

The Middle East witnessed something radically new two days ago, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responded to a plea by Yemen's president and led a 10-country coalition to intervene in the air and on the ground in the country. "Operation Decisive Storm" prompts many reflections:

Saudi and Egypt in alliance: Half a century ago, Riyadh and Cairo were active in a Yemen war, but then they supported opposing sides, respectively the status-quo forces and the revolutionaries. Their now being allies points to continuity in Saudia along with profound changes in Egypt.

Arabic-speakers getting their act together: Through Israel's early decades, Arabs dreamt of uniting militarily against it but the realities of infighting and rivalries smashed every such hope. Even on the three occasions (1948-49, 1967, 1973) when they did join forces, they did so at cross-purposes and ineffectively.

How striking, then that finally they should coalesce not against Israel but against Iran.

Arab leaders have a long history of meeting but not cooperating. From the right: King Hussein of Jordan, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Yasir Arafat of the PLO, and Muammar Qaddafi of Libya in September 1970.

This implicitly points to their understanding that the Islamic Republic of Iran poses a real threat, whereas anti-Zionism amounts to mere indulgence. It also points to panic and the need to take action resulting from a stark American retreat.

Yemen at the center of attention: Yemen played a peripheral role in the Bible, in the rise of Islam, and in modern times; it's never been the focus of world concern – until suddenly now. Yemen resembles other once-marginal countries – the Koreas, Cuba, the Vietnams, Afghanistan – which out of nowhere became the focus of global concern.

The Middle East cold war went hot: The Iranian and Saudi regimes have headed dueling blocs for about a decade. They did combat as the U.S. and Soviet governments once did – via contending ideologies, espionage, aid, trade, and covert action. On March 26, that cold war went hot, where it's likely long to remain.

Arab leaders understand that the Islamic Republic of Iran poses a real threat, whereas anti-Zionism is mere indulgence.

Can the Saudi-led coalition win? Highly unlikely, as these are rookies taking on Iran's battle-hardened allies in a forbidding terrain.

Islamists dominate: The leaders of both blocs share much: both aspire universally to apply the sacred law of Islam (the Shari'a), both despise infidels, and both turned faith into ideology. Their falling out confirms Islamism as the Middle East's only game, permitting its proponents the luxury to fight each other.

The Turkey-Qatar-Muslim Brotherhood alliance in decline: A third alliance of Sunni revisionists somewhere between the Shi'i revolutionaries and the Sunni status-quotians has been active during recent years in many countries – Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya. But now, in part thanks to diplomacy initiated by the brand-new King Salman of Saudi Arabia, its members are gravitating toward their Sunni co-religionists.

Isolated Iran: Yes, a belligerent Tehran now boasts of dominating four Arab capitals (Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sana'a) but that's also its problem: abrupt Iranian gains have many in the region (including such previously friendly states as Pakistan and Sudan) fearing Iran.

American diplomats meet again with their Iranian counterparts to capitulate on yet another difference.

Sidelining the Arab-Israeli conflict: If the Obama administration and European leaders remain obsessed with Palestinians, seeing them as key to the region, regional players have far more urgent priorities. Not only does Israel hardly concern them but the Jewish state serves as a tacit auxiliary of the Saudi-led bloc. Does this change mark a long-term shift in Arab attitudes toward Israel? Probably not; when the Iran crisis fades, expect attention to return to the Palestinians and Israel, as it always does.

American policy in disarray: Middle East hands rightly scoffed in 2009 when Barack Obama and his fellow naïfs expected that by leaving Iraq, smiling at Tehran, and trying harder at Arab-Israeli negotiations they would fix the region, permitting a "pivot" to East Asia. Instead, the incompetents squatting atop the U.S. government cannot keep up with fast-moving, adverse events, many of its own creation (anarchy in Libya, tensions with traditional allies, a more bellicose Iran).

Impact on a deal with Iran: Although Washington has folded on many positions in negotiations with Iran and done the mullah's regime many favors (for example, not listing it or its Hizbullah ally as terrorist), it drew a line in Yemen, offering the anti-Iran coalition some support. Will Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i now stomp out of the talks? Highly unlikely, for the deal offered him is too sweet to turn down

In sum, Salman's skilled diplomacy and his readiness to use force in Yemen responds to the deadly combination of Arab anarchy, Iranian aggression, and Obama weakness in a way that will shape the region for years.
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3)-- The Iran deal: Anatomy of a disaster
By Charles Krauthammer

“Negotiations . . . to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability. . . ”

— Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, the Wall Street Journal, April 8

It was but a year and a half ago that Barack Obama endorsed the objective of abolition when he said that Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, its plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor and its advanced centrifuges were all unnecessary for a civilian nuclear program. The logic was clear: Since Iran was claiming to be pursuing an exclusively civilian program, these would have to go.

Yet under the deal Obama is now trying to sell, not one of these is to be dismantled. Indeed, Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure is kept intact, just frozen or repurposed for the length of the deal (about a decade). Thus Fordow’s centrifuges will keep spinning. They will now be fed xenon, zinc and germanium instead of uranium. But that means they remain ready at any time to revert from the world’s most heavily (indeed comically) fortified medical isotope facility to a bomb-making factory.

In an agreement that he called "a long time coming," President Obama announced that the U.S., Iran and other countries have reached a historic framework to curb Iran's nuclear program. (AP)

And upon the expiration of the deal, conceded Obama Monday on NPR, Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear bomb will be “almost down to zero,” i.e., it will be able to produce nuclear weapons at will and without delay.

And then there’s cheating. Not to worry, says Obama. We have guarantees of compliance: “unprecedented inspections” and “snapback” sanctions.

The inspection promises are a farce. We haven’t even held the Iranians to their current obligation to come clean with the International Atomic Energy Agency on their previous nuclear activities. The IAEA charges Iranwith stonewalling on 11 of 12 issues.

As veteran nuclear expert David Albright points out, that makes future verification impossible — how can you determine what’s been illegally changed or added if you have no baseline? Worse, there’s been no mention of the only verification regime with real teeth — at-will, unannounced visits to any facility, declared or undeclared. The joint European-Iranian statement spoke only of “enhanced access through agreed procedures,” which doesn’t remotely suggest anywhere/anytime inspections. And on Thursday, Iran’s supreme leader ruled out any “extraordinary supervision measures.”

The IAEA hasn’t been allowed to see the Parchin weaponization facility in 10 years. And the massive Fordow complex was disclosed not by the IAEA but by Iranian dissidents.

Yet even if violations are found, what then? First, they have to be certified by the IAEA. Which then reports to the United Nations, where Iran has the right to challenge the charge. Which then has to be considered, argued and adjudicated. Which then presumably goes to the Security Council where China, Russia and sundry anti-Western countries will act as Iran’s lawyers. Which all would take months — after which there is no guarantee that China and Russia will ratify the finding anyway.

As for the “snapback” sanctions — our last remaining bit of pressure — they are equally fantastic. There’s no way sanctions will be re-imposed once they have been lifted. It took a decade to weave China, Russia and the Europeans into the current sanctions infrastructure. Once gone, it doesn’t snap back. None will pull their companies out of a thriving, post-sanctions Iran. As Kissinger and Shultz point out, we will be fought every step of the way, leaving the United States, not Iran, isolated.

Obama imagines that this deal will bring Iran in from the cold, tempering its territorial ambitions and ideological radicalism. But this defies logic: With sanctions lifted, its economy booming and tens of billions injected into its treasury, why would Iran curb rather than expand its relentless drive for regional dominance?

An overriding objective of these negotiations, as Obama has said, is to prevent the inevitable proliferation — Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf states — that would occur if Iran went nuclear. Yet the prospective agreement is so clearly a pathway to an Iranian bomb that the Saudis are signaling that the deal itself would impel them to go nuclear.

You set out to prevent proliferation and you trigger it. You set out to prevent an Iranian nuclear capability and you legitimize it. You set out to constrain the world’s greatest exporter of terror threatening every one of our allies in the Middle East and you’re on the verge of making it the region’s economic and military hegemon.

What is the alternative, asks the president? He’s repeatedly answered the question himself: No deal is better than a bad deal.

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4)  It Begins: The Shaping and Selling of Obama's Legacy

By Alexis Simendinger

Perhaps it’s the field of potential and actual candidates who claim to want his job, or thoughts of a presidential library where two terms of Barack Obama history will get tucked away, or the accumulating West Wing farewell parties for close advisers who are moving on.

When two of President Obama’s top aides Tuesday used the “L” word – legacy – and the president on Thursday confided his hopes to do some teaching after he leaves the White House (in a brief exchange with a university chancellor in Jamaica), “the fierce urgency of now,” to borrow an Obama phrase, sounded more like “then” and “when.”

The president is in Panama championing U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba, a centerpiece of this week’s Summit of Americas, where Obama and President Raul Castro are expected to make history by speaking to one another. At the same time, Obama, against tough odds, is trying to explain the merits of a nuclear deal with Iran before it can be completed by the end of June. He’s also nudging U.S. and international climate change commitments forward, and talking up a strengthening U.S. economy. Eyeing states he has not visited as president, Obama flew to Utah last Friday, and will likely complete his visits to all 50 (get ready, South Dakota) soon.

The president’s to-do list remains long, including promises dating to his 2008 campaign that remain incomplete. Meanwhile, the White House has launched a “fourth-quarter” scoreboard for the plays Obama has already run.

“Legacy” is a word with such a rear-view-mirror meaning that many two-term presidents openly chafed when they heard it used prior to their final year in office. But in a modern messaging era (and with a president who authored two books about himself before becoming president), getting even a slight jump on history with an effort at a comprehensive summary is thought to be savvy, especially when so many others inside the Obama administration seemed to get their books out while the president was in office.

For that reason, it was notable Tuesday when Ben Rhodes, Obama’s national security adviser for strategic communications, and Josh Earnest, his White House press secretary, separately used “legacy” to describe the president’s achievements in Central America, and with energy policy.

“I think if you look at the opening to Cuba and the process of normalizing our relations; the Central American initiative that we’ve committed $1 billion to now; the Colombian peace process, [at] which we have designated a special envoy to represent the United States; our focus on energy security; and our 100,000 “Strong in the Americas” initiative, together with the broader economic and export promotion efforts that we’ve undertaken over the last several years, the president has a clear legacy that he is aiming to build in the hemisphere,” Rhodes told reporters.

Hours later, when asked about critiques of Obama’s energy and climate change policies as something of a “mixed bag” in the eyes of environmental experts and advocacy groups, Earnest defended the administration’s “all of the above” energy achievements.

“We can get you some more details about the legacy of this president when it comes to fighting the causes of climate change and making America independent of foreign energy,” the press secretary said. “But there is no doubt that because of the investments that this president championed very early on in his presidency that we have made tremendous progress when it comes to energy efficiency.”

It wasn’t the list of accomplishments Earnest offered that was new. It was the shiny bow he tried to attach using “legacy.”

Looking back at some of Obama’s predecessors as they governed in their final years in office, it was easy to detect when their thumbs pressed the scales to define their administrations’ lasting achievements. And on some topics they simply gave up, knowing that time and events – not their own sales pitches – would control how their decisions and reputations measured up.

In the spring of 1999, after weathering impeachment, President Clinton was asked at a news conference to describe to young people his “legacy” when it came to lying. “How important do you think it is to tell the truth, especially under oath?” a reporter asked.

“I think that what young people will learn from my experience is that even presidents have to do that, and that there are consequences when you don't,” he replied.

“I also think that there will be a box score, and there will be that one negative, and then there will be the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times when the record will show that I did not abuse my authority as president, that I was truthful with the American people,” he added.

That “box score,” as he called it, expanded into Clinton’s list of legacy achievements, which he enumerated in speeches before leaving office, always adding how much there was to keep working on, and noting the work Hillary Clinton had shepherded. His assessment of his presidency began with an account of a strong economy and ended with his focus on benefits for American families.

“We have the fastest economic growth in more than 30 years, the lowest unemployment rate and the smallest welfare rolls in 30 years, over 20 million new jobs, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, the lowest murder rate in 30 years, the first back-to-back surpluses in our budget in 42 years, the highest homeownership in history,” he told a university audience days before George W. Bush was inaugurated.

Eight years later, awaiting Barack Obama’s inauguration, Bush defended his record, knowing that his Iraq war policies, Hurricane Katrina, and a financial meltdown had driven his public approval ratings into a deep ditch. Interviewers did not ask him about the Bush administration’s now-acknowledged achievements fighting AIDS and malaria in Africa, and the president didn’t bring it up because he and his advisers understood that public perceptions of his presidency ran counter to the narrative of aid to Africa.  

“I am proud of the accomplishments of this administration,” Bush told an interviewer in the Oval Office days before returning to Texas. “I know I gave it my all for eight years. And I did not sell my soul for the sake of popularity. And so when I get back home and look in the mirror, I will be proud of what I see.”

Bush said as president he had defended freedom, kept Americans safe, heeded the Constitution, and he calmly denied ordering the torture of captured and accused terrorists.

With his father, President George H.W. Bush, seated beside him, Bush predicted his record as president would not hamper the political prospects of the Republican Party, even if the 2008 election had swept Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress.

The GOP’s principles were on target, he argued, even as the party’s leaders would have to change.

“We may want to change our messaging. We definitely want to change messengers. We need a new group of leaders,” Bush said. “And we should be open-minded about big issues like immigration reform, because if we're viewed as anti-somebody -- in other words, if the party is viewed as anti-immigrant -- then another fellow may say, `Well, if they're against the immigrant, they may be against me.’ We've got to be a party for a better future, and for hope.”

Asked who he had in mind as a new leader for his party, Bush didn’t pause.

“That would be Gov. Jeb Bush,” he said.

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