Per custom, the president who pressed an 8-year regulatory siege against the US oil and gas industry is scripting his legacy.
"By so many measures," President Barack Obama wrote in a Jan. 5 letter to Americans, "our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started-a situation I'm proud to leave for my successor."
Aided by 13 happily trending charts, Obama claimed credit for improvements in the economy, in foreign and domestic policy, and in other matters of national concern, including oil imports.
All outgoing presidents do this. History grants them license to boast of popular developments coinciding with their terms in office-even when, as with oil imports, progress occurred in spite of their policies.
No one expects Obama to confess to breaches of Executive Branch authority. No one expects him to applaud the boom in unconventional oil and gas development-persistently resisted by his administration-that held the economy afloat as it struggled to find steerageway in a regulatory swamp.
The office itself entitles Obama to his triumphalism.
But the political record can't be ignored.
In a Jan. 4 research note, Cowen & Co.'s Chris Krueger writes: "Three of the past four election cycles have seen smashing GOP victories with a heavy Tea Party tailwind (2010 House flip, 2014 Senate flip, 2016 Trump sweep).
"In 2009, after [Obama's] historic swearing-in, Democrats claimed 257 seats in the House, 60 senators, 28 governorships, and total control of 27 state legislatures.
"When Trump is sworn in, the Democrats will have 194 seats in the House, 48 senators, 17 governorships, and the GOP has total control-governors and state legislatures-of 24 states."
Concerning Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, designated heir to Obama's aggressive liberalism, Krueger says it's "hard to see how this election is not a seismic repudiation."
Prominent in the Obama legacy, therefore, is the demonstrated refusal of Americans to be forced into leftist utopias, including centrally planned energy economies with no limits on cost.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Jan. 6, 2017; author's e-mail: [email protected])
