Traditionally
every American president spends his last months in office working on his legacy--how
he wants to be remembered and for what. The result of his effort, how he is actually
remembered, is not determined until years later. This is legacy as we
now know it: FDR is remembered for ending the Great Depression, Truman is
remembered for ending WWII via Hiroshima, and Reagan is remembered for ending
the USSR. Another way of viewing a president’s
legacy is to see how Americans today
view the future that he is leaving them in both personal and
national terms.
What
this means is that we don’t have to wait on “posterity” before considering the
legacy of President Obama. The Obama legacy can be found in the
impact on that his presidency has had on the attitudes of the people and this
can be spelled out right now. One way of doing this would be to spend
thousands of dollars to have a professional polling firm develop questions and
supervise interviewers who ask them of a scientifically drawn sample that represents
the opinions of the nation. If you can’t spare the thousands however, you could
write your own questions and have an internet pollster select, contact and quiz
say, 100 respondents for a couple hundred bucks. What you get is a survey, but
a Gallup or Pew survey it is not. What you get is a Mini Poll. This peep at the Obama legacy is based on a Mini Poll of
the attitudes of 100 respondents who were contacted and quizzed over the
Internet. The inquiry included hypothetical statements requiring an “Agree” or “Disagree” response and results from incomplete sentences designed
to identify their states of mind.
The Image of the Future
and Obama’s Legacy
Legacy is
the glue that holds society together by its connection to the past, the present
and the future. We spend the first years of our lives absorbing the stories of the accomplishments of those who lived
before us. We spend our middle years creating the stories of our own accomplishments
intended to be added to the current storehouse of human knowledge. Near the end
of our lives we confront the need to take stock of our contributions during our
time and initiate action to influence the way we are remembered when we have
passed on. Flippantly speaking, we all try to mess with mortality by living forever
(though in the hearts and minds of those we leave behind.)
The Image of the Future
and Obama’s Legacy
Legacy is
the glue that holds society together by its connection to the past, the present
and the future. We spend the first years of our lives absorbing the stories of the accomplishments of those who lived
before us. We spend our middle years creating the stories of our own accomplishments
intended to be added to the current storehouse of human knowledge. Near the end
of our lives we confront the need to take stock of our contributions during our
time and initiate action to influence the way we are remembered when we have
passed on. Flippantly speaking, we all try to mess with mortality by living forever
(though in the hearts and minds of those we leave behind.)
Legacy is
the remembrance of the stories of the past and present projected into the
future of forever. Our beliefs about the future are crucially relevant to the
creation of a legacy. Since we cannot study the future which does not exist, ever,
we study beliefs about it as they exist in the hearts and minds of those we who
will hopefully live through the present-future timeframe.
It was with
this in mind that we placed the Obama Presidency as the stimulus in the minds
of our panelists and recorded their responses about their images of the future.
One inquiry we made was:
Because of the impact of the
Obama Presidency the future of America is …
The open-endedness
of the question gave the participants an infinite range of ways to respond. Yet
the words they most frequently used
in their answers were “better” (15 times) or “worse” (5 times). In their responses where they referred to the idea of “better” or “worse” without
using the exact words, we added those to the “better” and “worse” categories in
the table below.
Obama Impact on America’s Future
Better Future 37
Worse
Future 37
Same
Future 11
Other
Responses 8
“I
don’t know” 7
More than
two-thirds of the respondents saw the impact of the Obama Presidency on
America’s future in making it “Better” or making it “Worse.” And most notably they divided their responses
37 to 37--right down the middle. Those
in the “Better” group said, for example, said that the future is “much more hopeful,” “better
than it was when George Bush left office,” “greater with more possibilities” or
simply that “it’s gonna be better.” Those with the opposite view saw the
country’s future as “declining,” ”
going in the wrong direction,” “frightening and unsure,”” more division of the
races,” “ and “more hateful than ever.” Those who did not see the country’s
future as either “Better” or “Worse” saw it as
“same as before,” “more or less the same,” “unchanged,” or ( if “Don’t know,”) “who knows?”
“Only God knows the answer to that.”
Because of the impact of the Obama Presidency my personal
future in this country is ,,,
This question was asked to check the reliability of the other responses when
asked about the nation’s future. Their willingness to see the future of the
country and their own futures as one,
more or less, signifies the degree to which they were “owning” their first opinions.
The
responses to the “personal futures” inquiry were subjected to the same analysis
as when asked about the nation’s future. The results are shown below.
Obama Impact on Personal Futures
Better
Future 31
Worse
Future 31
Same
Future 19
“Don’t
Know” 10
Other
Responses 9
Almost
two-thirds of the respondents saw their future as either becoming “better” for
them personally, or becoming “worse.” Those who thought their futures would be
“better” said “because of Obama [my personal future] “will be looking bright,”
“taking a bigger role in equality and
bettering the human condition,””better than it was under Bush,’ [it will] “include
healthcare outside the county ER.” Those who saw their future as in “worse “ said the future was “worst than it could have
been,” “dismal—can’t see it improve
unless we change directions in many areas,” “precarious,” “declining” and “fearful.” A fifth of the respondents saw the “Same
Future,” saying it was neither better nor worse because “the most important aspects
of my life are not significantly affected by Obama,” “unchanged because it will soon be in the
hands of Trump.” ‘the same,” “the same,” “the same.” Those who didn’t know said
they didn’t know and among the “Others” were the ones who said
“My personal future is not affected by Obama,” “Obama has created the “I want and I will get”
class of minorities,” and “Since I’m white, not much has changed for me
personally.”
Expected Future of the
Obama Legacy
The most
significant finding of this Mini Poll on Americans’ expectations of the future
as affected by the Obama Presidency is that they elected to view it in terms of
being better or worse because of Obama and, most notably, they
viewed that future between “better and “worse” exactly down the middle (37/37
and 31/31). There was no “majority”: or “minority” opinion on the question of
America’s future---the division they saw could not have been more definitive:
Americans are evenly divided in their expectations of the future as either
“better” or ”worse” because of the impact of the Obama Presidency.
To Confirm or Deny the Hypotheticals
About the Obama Legacy
The Confirm or Deny process of identifying a
legacy in the society could require a national referendum for each and every
claim made. Such referendums would be centered on the opinions and attitudes of
all the citizens with particular attention paid to students who are deeply
involved in the study of the nation’s history.
Decision making
by referendum is important for settling a small number of the issues that
define residential legacies. The way we “settle” an issue is via opinion
sampling, or polls, (including Mini Polls!). To do so we put forth opinions as “the truth until proven otherwise by the facts,” called the hypothetical.
The results of the poll “settles” issues with a sampling error of five percent
or less ( if you are talking about a Gallup or Pew poll, with 1,000 or more
respondents.) In the case of the Mini
Poll, with 100 or so respondents and an error rate of blah blah blah, what you get is the percentage of the respondents
who “Agree” and thus “Confirm” the hypothetical or you get the percentage of
the respondents who “Disagree” and thus “Deny” the validity of the
hypothetical. Without pretending to be
“statistical,” you ignore the undecided ones (“Neither Agree or Disagree”} and
subtract the lower from the higher number of “Agrees” and “Disagrees,”
to get the “decision” in the opinions of these respondents. The higher
the resulting number, the more seriously you take the decision.
Here, then,
are a few hypotheticals representing some of the opinions of the author
subjected to the “acid test” of the Mini Poll.
The Obama Presidency changed how Americans see America.
Agree Neither Agree or
Disagree Disagree 63% 33% 4%
The Obama Presidency
changed how Americans view other Americans who are different from themselves.
Agree Neither Agree or
Disagree Disagree
51% 34% 15%
The Obama Presidency made America a more democratic society.
Agree Neither
Agree or Disagree Disagree
25% 36% 38%
The Obama Presidency changed how Americans see themselves.
Agree Neither
Agree or Disagree
Disagree 44% 43% 13%
Do you feel that you
have more say about how the country is run today than you had eight years ago,
or do you feel that you have the same or less say today?
About the same say today 49%
Less say today 30%
More say today 21%
By simply
applying the rules for Confirming or Denying
hypotheticals (subtracting the lesser from the greater values of the
Agree/Disagree responses) we are able to identify the structure of this peep of
the Obama legacy (according to this author and this Mini Poll).
The Obama Presidency…
“…changed how Americans
see America.”
CONFIRMED by 59% “Agree” majority.
“…changed how Americans view Americans who are different from
themselves.”
CONFIRMED by 36% “Agree” plurality.
“…changed how Americans
view themselves.”
CONFIRMED
by 31% “Agree” plurality.
“…made America a more
democratic society”.
DENIED by 2% “Disagree”
minority.
“…made Americans feel they had greater say in how the county
is run.”
DENIED BY 9% minority who
said “Less say today”.
This peep at
the Obama legacy suggests that he will be remembered for the positive influence
he had on Americans’ attitudes towed themselves, toward Americans different
from themselves and toward the Nation as a whole. The Obama influence however,
was not enough to prevent the stark divisions Americans hold toward the future
the country and for them personally. Americans who changed how they saw
themselves did not necessarily see such changes in the future of the country.
This dichotomy was most evident by their denial of the hypotheticals claiming that
the Obama Presidency made them feel that they had a “greater say in how the
country is run,” or that “the Obama Presidency made America a more democratic
society.”