If the U.S. Congress had not imposed a two-term limit on the presidency in 1947 after Franklin D. Roosevelt's record four electoral victories, President Barack Obama would be a safe bet for a third term next November. He inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression, and now the United States has the healthiest economy of all the major powers, with unemployment back down to 5.5 percent.
But Obama can't run for president again, so the time has come for the pundits to start delivering their assessments on the success or failure of his policies. First up is Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, with a lengthy article called "The Obama Doctrine" on the man's conduct of American foreign policy over the past seven and a half years.
As you would expect when discussing a man whose basic rule is "Don't do stupid shit," Goldberg's piece is mostly an examination of what Obama didn't do, not what he did. He didn't go to war with the Assad regime in Syria. He didn't get into a new Cold War with Russia over Ukraine. He didn't bomb Iran, instead making a political deal to block its nuclear weapons ambitions. He didn't attack North Korea even when it did test nuclear weapons.