Every president has to confront how history will view him and his time in office. Reelection provides some solace and an advantageous starting position for historical assessment, but it is no guarantee. Just ask Richard Nixon.
Presidents need not be great historical figures in order to be considered successful. There are successful presidents that bend circumstances to achieve their goals and those who successfully adapt and navigate the political currents they face while putting their own stamp on the results.
Whichever of these two paths are most psychologically congenial, presidents have essentially three specific ways that they can be "successful" and establish a solid historical legacy.
A president can be faced with crucial national interest challenges, either domestically or internationally, that he successfully addresses. Franklin D Roosevelt's responses to the economic depression would be an example of the first; George W. Bush's responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks would be an example of the second.
A president can also secure his legacy by passing major historical legislation that helps to successfully resolve important, long-standing public issues. Lyndon's Johnson's successful effort to pass major civil rights legislation during his presidency would be a case in point.
A somewhat weaker version of this legacy route is passing what the president's supporters will hail as "major" legislation, whose legacy claim rests on that adjective. Thus, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" legislation was "major" in the sense of what it attempted to do — address the causes of poverty, and the resources devoted to it, but not in the success of its efforts. Its intended and unintended effects were so equivocal that the whole effort can be characterized as good policy intentions gone awry, rather than a successful effort to accomplish its purposes.
Third, a president can secure his legacy by successfully meeting a number of the country's domestic and international challenges that, while not "historic", are nonetheless important. He can add to his legacy's luster by also governing the country in a successful and effective way. Harry Truman's successful effort to put into effect the international strategy to contain an expansionist Soviet Union is one case in point. Bill Clinton's generally moderate and successful economic and welfare policies, with the help of a Republican Congress, are another.
President Obama has none of these roads to a strong historical legacy open to him and that is a central, personal, and political conundrum that faces him regarding the current immigration debate.
On assuming the presidency, Obama faced no dire, catastrophic circumstances either at home or abroad. Yes, he took office during a substantial, but not severe, recession. However, the potentially catastrophic economic liquidity crisis that preceded it was met by a commitment of massive federal funds during the waning days of the George W. Bush administration.
Nor did President Obama face dire strategic circumstances abroad. There was no equivalent of an expansionist Soviet Union challenging the United States worldwide. The devastating 9/11 attacks that occurred years before he took office resulted in the development of national security architecture put in place by then-President George W. Bush, that President Obama uses to this day.
President Obama did achieve what can truly be called "major legislation", in the first two years of his first term by signing into law a major effort to fundamentally change America's health care system. However, the Affordable Care Act, passed on a 100 percent partisan basis by a Democratic Party-controlled Congress has failed to gain public support in the years since its passage; indeed a recent poll found that 77 percent of the public wanted its core element, the individual mandate, delayed or repealed.
It is not al all clear that the president's health care plan will enjoy the same historical stature as Johnson's civil rights legislation or FDR's alphabet agencies response to the Great Depression.
Other than that, the president really has no major international or domestic legislative achievements under his belt. The Dodd-Frank bill, to further regulate Wall Street economic initiatives, is a complicated regulatory bill, whose core elements are still being debated and yet to be defined and implemented.
It's a meager record for a president who sees himself as a major historical figure.
And that's why the president will ultimately sign almost any reasonable immigration bill.
The Republicans, and those Democratic members of the House and Senate who want an immigration reform bill that truly is in the national interest, rather than a bill in which self-dealing interest groups divide the legislative and policy spoils and call the result "reform", have much more leverage than they think.
Next: Aiming for Greatness: President Obama's Accomplishment Gap
