Writing recently in The New York Times, Timothy Egan praises the “accomplishments” of the Obama administration, and laments that Barack Obama has not been a sufficiently effective cheerleader for his own “successes.” Conversely, Egan berates the American people for their inability to see Obama’s brilliance, mainly because “[m]uch of the country is now more openly intolerant, quick to hate and nasty … a home for xenophobes, defeatists and alarmists.”

Get that? The same people who once voted for Obama, cheered for Obama, gave money to Obama and praised his election as “historic” and “transformational” are now racists and hate-mongers because they expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Obama’s record has fallen far, far short of his rhetoric of Hope ‘n’ Change™.

Yes, Obama’s presidency has been “consequential” all right, in a “you’ve been a very bad boy and now you will suffer the consequences” kind of way. Egan notes the unemployment rate under Obama is down to 5%, lower than it was under Ronald Reagan, which is true as far as it goes, but he fails to note that it is only that low because tens of millions of Americans have given up looking for work and no longer count against the U-3 “headline” unemployment rate. He also fails to note that the workforce participation rate is the lowest it has been since the Carter malaise, or that median family income is down almost $5,000 since Obama took office, or that the economic recovery under Obama is the worst since the Great Depression. Part-time and temp jobs have skyrocketed because of the ObamaCare mandates and his anti-business, anti-growth policies. In 2013, fully 77% of all new jobs were part-time. More than 45 million Americans are now on food stamps, a stunning 63% increase since the peak of the recession.

The article notes that Obama was handed a bad economy, which is true, but Egan fails to note that it got worse after Obama’s policies were implemented. Obama said that without the passage of the so-called “stimulus” package, unemployment would top out at 8%. Yet after the nearly $1 trillion stimulus package was passed, unemployment jumped to 10% and averaged 9.2% over his first term.

The article also talks about the deficit, as if Obama has worked wonders here. He ignores the fact that the smallest deficit under Obama has been larger that the largest deficit under spendthrift George W. Bush (and Bush’s largest deficit came under a Democrat-controlled Congress). Obama once called Bush “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” for racking up $4 trillion in new debt, but Obama has far more than doubled that. The national debt will have nearly doubled by the time Obama leaves office, with precious little to show for it other than the expansion of government.

Moreover, it’s laughable to claim that Obama has tried to sweep away racial barriers. He has stoked racial fires at every opportunity. Egan is dead-on when he says that “Obama "was never very good at hiding his condescension for Republican leaders,” yet he ignores his own statement and blames the GOP for the non-existent working relationship. It was Obama who refused to work with the GOP from the start, telling them that they had to ride at the “back of the bus,” refusing to meet with GOP leaders for the first two years because he didn’t need their votes.

It’s likewise laughable to brag that Obama has done anything to improve health care, much less has “given” it to 17 million people, when the reality is that ObamaCare has forced millions out of private health care and into Medicaid. It has caused a sharp rise in premiums and deductibles, a sharp drop in accessibility as thousands and thousands of doctors refuse to take ObamaCare plans, and even the much lauded exchanges have seen more than half of them go bankrupt.

The global “climate change” pact is meaningless and non-binding. It’s a feel-good piece of nothingness that won’t change the world’s thermostat at all.

We had the strongest military in the world before Obama slashed hundreds of thousands of military jobs, canceled weapons programs, and turned it into a grand social experiment for the sexually deviant and biologically confused, rather than as a finely tuned fighting machine.

Egan praises Obama for his honest introspection during his final State of the Union, where Obama expressed that one of the greatest regrets of his presidency is that the “rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” but Egan failed to note that Obama then engaged in mockery, condescension and denigration toward those who oppose his policies for the entirety of the speech. This has been Obama’s habit from his first day in office.

In short, Obama’s presidency has been an utter disaster by any objective measure, and the only transformations he’s responsible for have made our country poorer, weaker and more divided. Obama stayed true to his word that he would “fundamentally transform” America, but it is doubtful that the vast majority who were so inspired by Obama’s feel-good but empty platitudes — the nonsensical “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” declarations — could have envisioned the devastation that would be the result of his foolish policies.

New York Times writers may still engage in such delusions, but Americans have shown that they are no longer buying what he is selling.