So why did things go so wrong under the leadership of President Barack Obama? David Bromwich has written an informative and important critical article on the Obama presidency — critical, one might say, from the progressive point of view — titled “What Went Wrong: Assessing Obama’s Legacy,” which appears in the June issue of Harper’s.

Fundamentally, Bromwich sees Obama as a weak president who has consistently pursued the “path of least resistance” rather than the “path of courageous resistance.” He was, says Bromwich, a president who mistook talk for action, who avoided political conflict and struggle, and who missed opportunities that presented themselves, moments when he might have advanced a progressive agenda.

Obama came to the presidency, writes Bromwich, without any record of political struggle either as a community organizer, a state legislator, or a congressperson: “Obama came to the presidency as an unformed actor in politics.” Obama had no idea of how to fight for his ideas and no taste for doing so. He disdained politics and had no truck with Congress. He held few cabinet meetings. He did not “cultivate political friends or fraternize with comrades.”