There is no mystery about Barack Obama's greatest presidential achievement: He stopped the Great Recession from becoming the second Great Depression. True, he had plenty of help, including from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and from the top officials at the Treasury and Federal Reserve. But if Obama had made one wrong step, what was a crushing economic slump could have become something much worse.
In the coming weeks, we'll be swamped with analyses of Obama's legacy. His foreign policy will be critiqued, as it is already. Once in the White House, Donald Trump may trash some of Obama's favorite policies: the Affordable Care Act, the program on climate change, the Dodd-Frank law on financial regulation. All this may wrongly foster the notion that Obama accomplished almost nothing.
Put this down to partisanship, selective memories or both. It is Obama's unfortunate fate that the high-water mark of his presidency occurred in the first months, when the world flirted with financial calamity. The prospect of another Great Depression — a long period of worsening economic decline — was not farfetched.