I'm not really a big fan of trying to quantify something so complex and important on a scale of 1 to 10.
Obama's better than Bush. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And he's better than McCain or Romney would have been. He's ended DADT, and I think the Affordable Care Act is an improvement over the existing system.
But I don't think there's any ignoring the disturbing extent to which he's continued some of Bush's worst policies. He hasn't just continued the practice of warrantless domestic surveillance and cracking down on whistleblowers, he's EXPANDED it. It's not just that Guantanamo Bay is still open and the practice of extraordinary rendition is still ongoing; I think any reasonable person should balk at the idea that the Executive Branch can justify the assassination of citizens simply based on saying
"imminent threat" means whatever they want it to.
He hasn't reformed the financial system in any significant way either; we're still at the mercy of investment bankers.
Aside from the good and the bad, there's a whole lot of mediocre. There are cases where it really looks like he wanted to do the right thing -- like close Gitmo -- but couldn't get any traction from Congress. Now, part of that really IS that Congress fights him tooth and nail on everything -- but I also think that's a failure of leadership on his part. He's talked a good talk about things like immigration reform, but talk, as they say, is cheap. I think the bottom line is what he actually accomplishes, not just what he says he wants to accomplish. (Clearly the Nobel committee does not agree.)
So there are cases where he's had the right idea and been stopped by Congress. There are also cases where he's had the wrong idea but been stopped by public outcry (SOPA). And there are cases where he didn't really do anything but sign a bill that landed unexpectedly on his desk (ending DADT). And then there are cases where he completely fucking sold us down the river -- I will never forgive him for dropping the charges against Arpaio, and of all the reasons I did not vote for him a second time, that one was the tipping point.
Part of it, too, is that we're still right here in the middle of it -- it's hard to tell what his legacy's going to be considering that his signature accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, hasn't even been fully implemented yet.
Stab in the dark? The ACA will be normalized within a generation, and as accepted as social security. (Hopefully it'll be improved upon, too, because frankly I still think the whole "Let's force everyone to buy private insurance" idea is bullshit.) The expansion of executive power...well, a lot of that's going to come down to the Supreme Court, I think. And we've currently got a Supreme Court that favors the expansion of executive powers but isn't terribly impressed by warrantless surveillance, so it's not easy to predict how they're going to rule. I fear that, one way or another, there's going to be a lot more government spying coming our way, and it too will be normalized over time.
I think a lot of how we look back at him will be defined by what happens to the Republican Party in the coming years, too. I'm still very much of the opinion that they're going to have to back away from the craziest elements of their party, but even the ostensible "moderates" like Boehner are pretty far right. The Boehners will ultimately cave on gay marriage (yes, go ahead and giggle) and immigration reform but there are plenty of other social issues they can still fight against, and our fiscal policy at this point is fundamentally Republican (and was even during the Clinton Administration).
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