His detractors will argue that, despite the promise of his 2008 campaign, he hasn't been a transformational figure like Mahatma Gandhi, Kennedy, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. But martyrdom, which in Mandela's case took the form of decades-long imprisonment, is the core aspect of their narratives, elevating them from politicians to quasi-saints.
The comparison with the similarly charismatic JFK is instructive. While Kennedy inspired a generation, he also contributed to the scarring of a generation by initiating the Vietnam misadventure. He managed not to start World War III during the Cuban missile crisis but the Bay of Pigs was a historic blunder that reverberated for half a century and may have done so for another 50 years if Obama hadn't acted as circuit-breaker.
And while the assiduous curators of the Camelot myth were portraying the Kennedys as a picture-perfect modern family, Kennedy was regularly engaging in conduct unbecoming, including sharing a mistress with a Mafia boss.
In my view, Obama is one of the five most significant figures in democratic politics of the past 50 years, the others being Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Paul Keating.
Thatcher fought battles that had to be fought and some that didn't and revelled rather too much in her Iron Lady persona. She dominated British politics for a decade but few tears were shed when she was rendered obsolete by her own party.
Reagan restored American optimism eroded by Vietnam and Watergate and, working with Gorbachev, made historic advances in arms control. However his lack of intellectual rigour and distaste for policy detail created a climate in which a criminal conspiracy - Contragate - was run out of the White House.
Gorbachev euthanised Soviet communism but couldn't control the forces he unleashed - yet again the revolution devoured its own. Now an ex-KGB apparatchik lords it in the Kremlin and it's as if the Cold War never ended.
Keating was the political and intellectual engine of the reformist Hawke government and dominated Australian politics much as Thatcher dominated Britain's. But he was inclined to recklessness - he characterised his approach as "downhill, one ski, no poles" - and his relish for partisan rough and tumble made him a divisive figure.
Obama has also struggled to transcend party lines although he's had to deal with the relentless negativity of the right wing news/entertainment machine and a Republican Party whose philosophical retreat to God, guns and greed has led it into a cul-de-sac of misogyny, dog whistle racism, economic irresponsibility and obstructionism.
He has done great things: rescued the economy, wound down two wars, Obamacare, the Iran nuclear deal, to name but a few. His flaw, supposedly, is that he's too dispassionate, too rational. The obvious response is that you can't have too much of a good thing.
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