President Obama: Goodbye, and good riddance

Dear Mr. President,

Even though I am a Republican, I had high hopes for your presidency. Those hopes were premature and I should have lowered my expectations.

Your ambition to be the first president to get universal health care passed should have been a no-brainer. You had a majority in both houses of the legislature, and a well thought out bill could have been produced. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have thought anything out.

You did not reach the goal of universal coverage; you produced a package that few people will be able to afford as more and more of the pieces of that bill kick in. The country will not be able to afford the plan as subsidies continue to increase and you have made it an easy target for the Republicans to pick apart. If they are smart, they will craft a package that actually is affordable and universal. At that point, they will claim universal health care as their legacy, not yours.

As far as your legacy as an environmentally-friendly president goes, you blew that, too. The Paris Agreement will be shredded by Donald Trump, who believes that global warming is a myth perpetrated by the Chinese. You had a chance to actually do something concrete by permanently pulling the entire Atlantic coast out of consideration for offshore drilling for oil and gas. The citizens of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia gathered support of the entire east coast to oppose offshore drilling and sent thousands of letters and signed petitions to your attention.

In case you did not notice, those citizens voted overwhelmingly Republican in the presidential election. And yet, those same citizens were opposed to offshore drilling. We handed you the south Atlantic on a platter, and you gave it away to appease the American Petroleum Institute and their hired help (the Trump Republican Cabinet) by only blocking drilling in the north Atlantic. Now the petroleum industry can dedicate all of its forces to get drilling permitted in the South Atlantic, then they can turn their attention to getting back the north.

So, on Jan. 20, you can leave the White House to make lucrative speeches to anyone willing to pay to hear you, and probably amass a fortune.

Thanks for nothing. Don’t let the door hit you in the backside on the way out.

This story was originally published January 6, 2017 at 7:34 PM with the headline "President Obama: Goodbye, and good riddance."