Here is a retrospective on Barack Obama's presidency. The best comment I saw is this one:
[History books] will probably read something like: "Americans, seeking to show that they are not racist, twice elected a glib half-black junior senator as their president. At the end of his eight-year term, the Democratic party was left in a seriously diminished condition. His policies—many having been forced through by irregular and partisan means—were almost completely rolled back by the subsequent administration."
That pretty well sums it up.
