On Wednesday Barack Obama gave his last press conference as US President, and began with a remark of appreciation for the assembled journalists and the press in general.
He answered questions on a range of topics, including his recent decision to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning, anti-Russian sanctions and his successor Donald Trump.
Professor Robert Guttman, an expert in American politics from Johns Hopkins University who was at the press conference, told Radio Sputnik that the outgoing President was keen to focus on the positives of his presidency.
"It was a President who's been President for two terms trying to justify everything for history. Everybody tries to think about their legacy, their last year in office," Guttman said.
In contrast to more than 60 Democratic members of Congress who have said they will boycott the inauguration of Donald Trump on Friday, Obama said that he will be attending the event. He declined to comment on the Democrat absentees, and said that he has held "cordial," "fairly lengthy and substantive" conversations with President-elect Trump.
"He was gracious, he thanked his staff, he ended up talking about his two daughters, thanking his wife, and I think he showed he's leaving with a 60 percent approval rating which is quite high. People will be able to contrast his calmness and more intellectual bearing to our new President, who's quite the opposite," Guttman said.
The analyst thinks that Obama will be better remembered for his domestic rather than foreign policy achievements.
"Obama is worried about his legacy. His legacy is already that he was the first African-American President, and healthcare reform… and killing Osama bin Laden. Those are the things that history is going to record."
"He's done a bombing in Libya yesterday that was just announced. He's trying to show he's a little tougher in foreign policy than maybe he was," Gottman said.
"Obviously at 12.01 tomorrow, Trump is going to show that his view of making America great again is to dismantle quite a few things that Obama's done … the Republicans now not only control the White House but both branches of Congress."
"For the first 100 days they're going to try to show that they have something new to prove. But I think under Trump, from what I've seen, he's more America first. He's not one to go abroad and slay dragons and do things. Other than getting rid of ISIS (Daesh) and being friends with Russia he really hasn't said that much about foreign policy except economic-wise, keeping jobs in America."
"The reason why Trump got elected, a huge upset, was because underneath all his weird talk and saying all these different things, his core message was jobs, jobs, jobs, and people voted for him for jobs. He's going to be re-elected or dismissed based on keeping jobs in America, putting people back to work, that's what he promised people."
"So I think he's not going to be a foreign policy President. Obviously events will happen in the world, that will have to focus (attention) on foreign policy. George W. Bush was going to be a compassionate conservative and worry about domestic policy, 9/11 happened and he became a wartime President."
"We have some of the cabinet people saying they are more skeptical of Russia than the new President-elect, but Trump said the other day he likes a cabinet of officers to have different opinions. Of course, he's the final opinion."
"His message is, 'let's work with Russia, we both want to destroy this terrorist organization.' I think he'll probably meet with Putin in the first few months, if Putin will meet with him, and it'll be a change in American and Russian foreign policy, hopefully for the better."
"Obama's trying to save a legacy and Trump's trying to create a legacy," Guttman said in conclusion.
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