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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- American public opinion changed in significant ways over the course of Barack Obama's eight years in the White House, including on issues such as the economy, race relations, and the level of confidence the public has in different aspects or actors in the government. Many of these changes were the result of social and cultural forces that would have occurred regardless of who was president. Others can be more directly attributed to the Obama presidency.

But whatever their provenance, a look at how attitudes have shifted over the Obama years can be important. These shifts help explain the current political climate and provide a context for President Donald Trump's attempts to pursue his agenda now that he is in the White House.

In the following sections, we review changes since 2009 in five major areas of public opinion.

1. Views of the U.S. Government

In his farewell address, Obama said that widespread disillusionment with the political system can "weaken the ties" that bind the nation. And indeed, marking one of the most significant shifts in public opinion over the past eight years, Americans are losing faith in all aspects of their government, from its political leaders, to long-standing institutions, to many of the agencies that provide public services.

Several measures relating to the public's confidence in government recorded historic lows at some point over the Obama presidency, while others flirted with this landmark. These include:

Americans' trust in the nation's political leaders struck its lowest level in the final year of Obama's presidency, standing at 42%. In 2009, the figure was 49%.

Confidence in the Supreme Court and Congress sunk to record lows in 2014, at 30% and 7%, respectively.

Throughout the past eight years, Congress continuously received dismal approval ratings, dropping to a yearly low of 14% approval in 2013. By December 2016, little improvement had taken place, with approval standing at 17%.

Obama's job approval rating tended to fare better than that of Congress, as typically is the case when comparing the president to the Congress. But Obama's average approval rating over his two terms ranks among the lowest in Gallup history.

Though Obama often spoke of bipartisanship, the president was a highly polarizing figure. The difference in his job approval rating among Democrats and Republicans is the largest in Gallup polling history. This is the continuation of an in-progress trend; Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, was also the most polarizing president ever when he left office.

But Americans did not just lose confidence in elected officials -- they also lost confidence in the electorate. In 2016, prior to that year's presidential election, a new low of 56% of Americans said they had trust and confidence in their fellow citizens when it comes to making decisions in our democratic process. In 2009, 73% had such trust and confidence.

Bottom Line: Obama said many times before he left office, including in his last State of the Union address, that he regretted making no progress in reducing the divisiveness that has come to define American politics since at least the Bush presidency. The lack of confidence in political (and other) institutions helped contribute to Trump's victory, based on his positioning as a change candidate who consistently derided many government institutions as ineffective or corrupt. It seems Obama understood the problem facing American democracy but was unable to provide an immediate solution.

2. Social and Values Issues

The number of Americans who consider themselves "liberal" or "very liberal" on social issues rose markedly over Obama's eight years. In 2009, about a quarter of Americans saw themselves as liberal on social issues, a figure in line with those observed in past years. By 2016, closer to a third (32%) identified as socially liberal, the highest since Gallup began asking this question in 1999.

The broad acceptance of legal gay marriage is perhaps the best specific example of this shift to more liberal social positions. In 2009, 40% of the country said same-sex marriages should be recognized as valid throughout the U.S., while a majority (57%) -- including President Obama -- disagreed. By 2016, the year after the Supreme Court made its landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage, a clear majority of 61% believed such marriages should be valid throughout the country.

Additionally, Americans' views of a number of once-controversial behaviors as "morally acceptable" rose, especially with issues such as divorce, sex between an unmarried man and woman, having a baby outside of marriage, and gay or lesbian relations. Americans also became slightly more tolerant of sex between teenagers and suicide, although these behaviors remained morally unacceptable to a large part of the population.

In Obama's final year in office, a record 60% of Americans said marijuana should be legal. In 2009, by contrast, that figure stood at 44%. Among Democrats, the level of support nearly doubled over about a 10-year period.

Bottom Line: Whether directly related to his presidency or not, the Obama era saw a rise in social liberalism across a number of moral and values-related issues.

3. Economic Issues

The Obama administration, taking office at one of the worst economic times in U.S. history, focused heavily on measures designed either to prevent economic conditions from worsening or to strengthen the economic recovery when it came. By most measures, Americans' views of the economic situation improved significantly over the eight years of Obama's presidency.

In Obama's first year as president (2009), 23% of Americans said they were better off financially than the year before. In 2016, over four in 10 (44%) said so. This 21-point shift represents one of the largest shifts in public responses among all the questions examined in this review.

Gallup's measure of Americans' confidence in the economy via its Economic Confidence Index improved significantly over Obama's tenure, though unevenly. The index registered -54 in January 2009 when Obama took office and climbed to +9 by December 2016.

American workers' reports of hiring and firing at their places of employment improved significantly over the eight years of the Obama presidency. This U.S. Job Creation Index stood at -3 in January 2009, and by December 2016 it had improved to +33.

The percentage of Americans mentioning any economic issue (e.g., jobs, the economy in general, etc.) as the most important problem facing the nation dropped from 79% in January 2009 to 29% in December 2016.

Bottom Line: Although Trump's campaign focused in large part on what he portrayed as an economically ravaged country, most tracking indicators relating to the economy showed marked improvement from 2009 to 2016.

4. U.S. Position in the World

Under the Obama presidency, more Americans came to believe that the U.S. is seen favorably by the rest of the world -- 45% thought so in 2009 compared with 54% in 2016. Americans, however, were no more satisfied with the position of the U.S. in the world under Obama than they had been in the late years of the Bush presidency. Less than four in 10 Americans (36%) were satisfied with the position of the U.S. in the world in 2016, essentially equivalent to the first reading in the Obama years (35% in 2011) and marginally better than the 30% in 2008, Bush's final year in office.

Americans' views of the military position of the U.S. deteriorated during the Obama years. In 2010, 64% said that the U.S. was the No. 1 military power in the world. By 2016, that number had dropped to 49%. In similar fashion, the share of Americans who said the government spends "too little" on defense climbed 13 percentage points to 37% from 2009 to 2016.

The public gradually lost confidence in the federal government to handle international problems over Obama's tenure. In 2009, 62% had confidence in the federal government's ability to handle international problems. This fell as low as 45% in 2015 before recovering slightly to 49% in 2016.

One of the most controversial aspects of Obama's foreign policy was his choice to engage in diplomatic relations with two nations with which the U.S. had officially been incommunicado: Cuba and Iran. With respect to Cuba, Obama and the Cuban government agreed to take measures to normalize relations between the two countries for the first time since 1961; Iran reached a deal with the U.S. and five other world powers regarding its nuclear program.

These efforts seem to have paid off for Cuba, in terms of that nation's image with the American people. In 2009, less than a third of Americans had a favorable view of Cuba. In 2016, a majority (54%) saw Cuba favorably.

But opinions of Iran remained largely unchanged after the 2015 deal -- 14% had a favorable view in 2016, compared with 11% the year before and 12% in 2009.

Other countries saw their images among the American people improve, but likely for reasons unrelated to Obama. France, once deeply unpopular for its decision not to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, saw its favorable rating zoom to a new high of 87% in 2016. France's favorable rating was 64% in 2009.

Meanwhile, two countries saw their images decline over the Obama years. In 2009, 28% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Iraq; in 2016, with American troops back in the country to advise Iraqi forces in their fight against terrorist groups, 15% had a favorable rating.

Russia, a country the Obama administration would come to accuse of interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign, saw its favorable rating decline 10 points from 2009 (40%) to 2016 (30%).

5. Race Relations

Former President Obama will occupy a place in history as the nation's first African-American president. But while his election would seem to signal that American society has overcome its past history of racial discrimination and tension, Americans' views of race relations in fact became far less harmonious during Obama's tenure in office.

In 2010, slightly more than one in 10 Americans said they worried about race relations "a great deal" (13%). By 2016, 35% of Americans said they worried about race relations, following a number of high-profile cases involving police officers shooting unarmed black men and several instances of white police officers being targeted by blacks.

More Americans over the past eight years came to believe that Obama's election and his presidency made race relations "worse" in the U.S. rather than better, with 46% believing the former in 2016 and 29% saying the latter. This represented a sharp reversal of opinion from 2009, when 41% of Americans believed Obama's election and presidency made race relations better and 22% said worse.

Relatedly, Americans became less certain about whether Obama's presidency in and of itself represented "one of the most important advances" for black Americans. In 2009, 71% of blacks and 56% of whites thought this; by 2016, the figure had fallen to 51% for blacks and 27% for whites.

Bottom Line: Many spoke of Obama's election ushering in a new "post-racial" period in America. But as even Obama himself admitted in his farewell address, this has not been the case. If anything, his presidency appears to have illuminated the previously hidden fault lines that still exist in U.S. race relations.

Andrew Dugan is an Analyst at Gallup.

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5 Ways America Changed During the Obama Years - Gallup

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Malia Obama joined a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday.

Looks like

The 18-year-old daughter of recent President Obama was praised by fellow protester, Shailene Woodley, who also attended the event at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

It was amazing to see Malia, the actress told Democracy Now.

To witness a human being and a woman coming in to her own outside of her family and outside of the attachments that this country has on her, but someone whos willing to participate in democracy because she chooses to, Woodley said. Because she recognizes, regardless of her last name, that if she doesnt participate in democracy, there will be no world for her future children.

Reading this on your phone? Stay up to date with our new, free mobile app. Get it from the Apple app store or the Google Play store.

Malia left her familys Caribbean vacation to attend the festival, before starting her internship for producer Harvey Weinstein in February, according to the New York Daily News.

Woodley has been a mainstay at the protests, even getting arrested at one point.

Id like to see someone try arresting Malia with her Secret Service detail standing there.

The proposed pipeline would cross a river near Native American land and opposition is concerned it could contaminate the drinking water and damage Native American cultural sites.

President Obama halted the project until an alternate route could be found. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order allowing the construction to move forward as originally planned.

The rest is here:
Malia Obama joins Dakota Access pipeline protest at Sundance - The Mercury News

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Caption: Barack Obama gives his farewell address in Chicago on January 10, 2017. Jon Lowenstein/Redux

It was 10:15 am on Inauguration Day, and John Paul Farmer was beginning to lose hope.

The former Obama White House staffer had spent the last night at his sisters apartment in Washington DC, working the phones and emailing any sentient being hed met during his years in Washington. Farmer was trying to find someone, anyone, who could get the Tested Ability to Leverage Exceptional Talent Actthe Talent Act, for shortto President Barack Obama. The bill would make law a program to give technologists temporary tours of government duty.

It had received bipartisan support in the House and Senate that week, but it still needed the presidents signature to become law. If he signed, it would take another act of Congress to dismantle.

But with roads closed throughout Washington, security checkpoints causing even more gridlock, a shoestring staff left at the White House, and less than two hours to go in Obamas presidency, odds seemed slim that the physical piece of parchment on which the law was printed would get to the 44th president before there was a 45th.

Farmer, who co-founded the so-called Presidential Innovation Fellows program, the centerpiece of the bill, wasnt sure they were going to make it. Neither was Matt Lira, a senior advisor to House majority leader Kevin McCarthy whod been instrumental in McCarthys decision to introduce the bill. Lira hoped the Talent Act would show that bipartisan consensus is possible in Washington, particularly when it comes to technology. But it was starting to look like the opportunity would pass.

Over the last week, its become clear how much of a presidents legacy can be erased with a signature. On everything from immigration to the Dakota Access Pipeline, President Donald Trump has begun the work of erasing the last eight years. But this isnt a story about that. This is the story of how a band of technophiles from both sides of the political aisle joined forces in the last minutes of the Obama administration to ensure that President Obamas efforts to modernize the government would survive his term of office.

The Presidential Innovation Fellows launched in 2012 as a sort of Peace Corps for programmers. The idea was to make it possible for technologists to take on temporary projects within government, from simple tasks like building user-friendly websites to quite complex ones, like saving the broken Healthcare.gov website.

Fellows worked on Vice President Joe Bidens cancer moonshot, building tech tools to fast track patients through clinical trials. They helped build the Blue Button Initiative, an effort to make peoples health records readily available to them. And they designed elements of the Veteran Affairs offices online employment center, making it easier for vets to find job opportunities. More than 100 fellows have cycled through the program since 2012.

Whats more, the success of the program inspired the launch of the United States Digital Service, a more permanent, but separate, tech agency within the White House, as well as 18F, a sort of consulting firm inside the General Services Administration that deploys technologists to various government agencies.

But the Fellows only ever existed because of an executive order signed by President Obama. So, last summer, in hopes of codifying it into law, McCarthy introduced the Talent Act of 2016. It passed the House almost unanimously. But the Senate didnt go as well. It got caught up in election year politics, Lira says.

We thought, Well thats it,' Farmer says. President Obama is leaving office and a new Congress is coming in. Wed have to do the whole process over again.

When the 115th Congress was sworn in in January, McCarthy reintroduced the billnow the Talent Act of 2017. This time, three days before the Inauguration, it passed the Senate unanimously. The last stepas any Schoolhouse Rock fan knowswould be for President Obama to sign.

Thats hard enough even when half of Washington hasnt already turned in their Blackberries. Its the oldest school of old school processes, Lira says. It has to be printed on a certain kind of parchment and everything.

Which brings us to Friday morning. By around 8 AM, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Orrin Hatch, president pro tem of the Senate, had signed that piece of parchment. It was sitting in the House clerks office, ready to be delivered to President Obama. But no one, it seemed, knew how to get it to him.

Thats when Farmer and Lira, as well as former US deputy CTO Nick Sinai, former head of the fellowship program Garren Givens, and his wife (and a former Senate staffer) Alexandra Reeve Givens, sprung into action. They called the clerks office, the White House, and every Senate staffer they knew. At around 10:15, after reaching one of the Presidents senior advisers, they figured out how to get the House clerk into the Capitol holding room where President Obama would spend a few private moments before watching Trump take the oath of office.

At this point, we go dark, Givens says. He was negotiating all of this via his mobile phone, from a trampoline park where he and his wife were babysitting their nephews. Theres no one else to call. Theres no one else to ask.

I watched the president get out of the car and walk into the Capitol, says Farmer, and I knew wed done everything we could.

A hundred miles away in Charlottesville, Virginia, Lira was watching, too, and was just as tense. Would the clerk make it in time? It was this Argo-like moment, he says.

To be fair, Lira had faith the Trump administration would pass the bill even if Obama couldnt. Givens and Farmer didnt. More than that, though, Farmer felt the bill would be a fitting coda to President Obamas tech legacy. It was foundational to so much of the progress his administration made, he says.

At this point, we go dark. Theres no one else to call, no one else to ask. Garren Givens, former head of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program

At some point after 11 AM, the House clerk entered the holding room where President Obama was waiting and presented him with the bill. Obama paused. This, then, would be his last official act as president. Obama looked at the parchment, and signed.

The group gathered around the soon-to-be former president applauded, and at 11:07 AM on January 20, 2017, the Talent Act became law. It was like the ending to a great movie, Lira says. The good guys won.

The Presidential Innovation Fellowship may be one of the few slivers of the Obama presidency that endures the next four years. In another small consolation to Obamas tech legacy, the White Houses new chief digital officer also recently tweeted that the US Digital Service is here to stay in the new administration. Period.

That may not comfort Obamas admirers, who are watching the signature accomplishments of his presidency quickly slipping away. But its as clear a sign as any that the role of technology in government should never be a partisan issue. And that it doesnt have to be.

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The Race to Pass Obama's Last Law and Save Tech in DC - WIRED

All along I've felt sorry for the daughters of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but never sorrier than I felt Thursday while reading Amy Blagojevich's letter to former President Barack Obama.

The 1,516-word letter, posted to her mother's Facebook page, is bitter, recriminatory and, most of all, sad.

Amid her lashing of Obama for not commuting her father's 14-year federal prison sentence she called him "selfish and spineless," wrote "you are either a horrible parent or a horrible person" and added "I can see the blood on your hands" Amy, now 20, paints a picture of an innocent young woman wrecked by circumstance.

She was 12 when her father was arrested on public corruption charges at the family's Ravenswood Manor home and her world began to fall apart. She was 15 when he reported to prison in Colorado.

"I am shocked at how bitter and full of hate I have become," she wrote to Obama "I've dealt with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and aspects of PTSD. I've had days where I couldn't pry myself from bed, days where I can't stop crying or feeling the pain that has been inflicted continuously, and days where the fear of another eight years (with my father in prison) consumes me completely."

Neither she nor her younger sister, Annie, ever deserved any of it. They are innocent victims.

Victims not of a callous former president or a justice system gone wrong, but of their father's criminal venality and stubbornness. As governor, he was caught on tape repeatedly trying to use his official power for personal gain.

Among the reasons not to commit such crimes or any crimes, for that matter is that, if you're caught, your loved ones will also have to pay the price. The fact that Blagojevich, 60, put the happiness of his daughters at risk every time he abused his office aggravates his offenses in my mind.

And the fact that he refused to accept and acknowledge that he committed numerous felonies and refuses to this day! is almost certainly the reason he's still in prison.

He made things far worse for himself and for Amy and Annie by choosing to fight the charges in court and mounting a nationwide public relations campaign in which he chirped about his innocence and impugned the motives and integrity of the U.S. attorney's office.

As he was headed to prison, he told reporters that he has a "clear conscience," and his more recent appellate briefs have attempted to explain away his illegal scheming as merely the acts of "an overly zealous politician seeking to advance his political goals."

No.

A guilty plea along with a genuine confession not the dodgy "The jury decided I was guilty" statement he offered at his original sentencing or the vague apology for "mistakes" he offered at a hearing last summer would likely have resulted in a plea bargain for a far shorter sentence.

Amy Blagojevich's letter to Obama indicates that her father is still inflaming his family's sense of grievance. She wrote of the "horrific lies" told about the case. "You've betrayed the concept of justice like many other heartless individuals have done before you," she wrote. "You know as well as anyone, that my father is guilty of nothing. He made mistakes he's human, after all but nothing was illegal. ... you failed to release an innocent man."

She concluded, "You were a bystander to a completely un-American act of injustice. You're just as guilty as those who created it in the first place."

Such grievance can only enhance the pain of her father's absence

Yes, his sentence is unusually long. But his devious, selfish, remorseless violations of the public trust from the highest seat of power in Illinois were unusually flagrant, and his lack of repentance has been unusually galling.

I don't imagine that Amy's letter will cause Obama to regret his decision not to act in his final days in office on the former governor's commutation request.

But I'm not sure it was really intended for Obama, who no longer has any power in the matter. The family's hopes now lie in President Donald Trump, and by posting the letter to her Facebook page, Amy's mother, Patti, may be hoping to pique our impulsive, vindictive new chief executive with an opportunity to appear more merciful and kind than his predecessor.

After all, Trump knows Blagojevich from Blagojevich's 2010 pre-trial appearance as a contestant on Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" reality show.

Trump referred to Blago as "a guy with great courage," and praised him for not "fold(ing) like a tent" after getting into trouble.

Whether Trump lunges at this bait or not, I'm sure I join everyone, even the "selfish spineless heartless" Obama, in wishing the Blagojevich girls nothing but the best. After what they've gone through, they deserve nothing less.

Re:Tweets

Before I reveal the winner of the most recent Tweet of the Week poll at chicagotribune.com/zorn, a word about the renewed importance of the Twitter micro-blogging platform.

It's not, as you know, simply a medium for 140-character quips, career suicide and self-promotion. It's a major, unfiltered megaphone for our new president, who rode it to the White House and continues to use it to communicate directly if intemperately with the public.

But both sides can play at the direct-access game. And in response to the Trump administration's crackdown on the official Twitter accounts of many federal agencies and departments, numerous unofficial insider accounts have sprung up.

The most prominent so far is @AltNatParkSer, billed as "the unofficial resistance team of U.S. National Park Service," which acquired nearly 1.3 million followers a week after Team Trump brought the hammer down on the park service's official account for displaying photos that revealed the comparatively small crowds at Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

Others include @viralCDC, an unofficial information feed from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("Actual facts, not alternative facts"); @RogueNOAA from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; @AltUSEPA and @UngaggedEPA from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and, along the same lines, @Alt_FDA, @ResistanceNASA and others.

I suggest following them if only to show solidarity with their determination not to be muzzled.

Now, admittedly, it's hard to be sure which of these feeds are run by genuine insiders, because the account operators are, naturally, anonymous.

More:
Amy Blagojevich's letter to Obama is sad, sensational and a plea to Trump? - Chicago Tribune

President Trump doesn't lack for self-confidence at least not outwardly. Everything is the best and the greatest, and everybody is always talking about how fantastic is that thing Trump did or said.

And in a new interview, he may have taken this to a whole new level.

Speaking to Fox News's Sean Hannity in an interview airing Thursday night, Trump reflected on his relationship with President Obama, and he said he thinks his predecessor has actually come to like him.

What amazed me is that I was vicious to him in statements, he was vicious to me in statements, and here we are getting along, we're riding up Pennsylvania Avenue, talk we don't even mention it, Trump said. I guess that's the world of politics. But I was tough on him, he was tough on me, and I like him, he likes me. I think he likes me. I mean, you're going to have to ask him, but I think he likes me.

For those who need a little history refresher, when you look up the birther movement on Wikipedia or seek old news stories about it, there's one man whose name appears almost as much as Obama's: Donald Trump. Trump for years led the effort to question whether Obama was even qualified to serve as president.

Here's a sampling of what Obama has had to say about Trump over the years.

And for good measure, here are some things Trump has said about Obama:

Is it possible Obama has truly come around to liking this man who for years wielded one of the most notorious political conspiracy theories in U.S. history against him? Sure. Anything's possible. Trump, after all, has shown an ability to win over Republicans who have said awful things about him.

But those Republicans have to deal with Trump over the next four years, just like Obama had to deal with Trump during the transition. Andin Obama's case, there is a certain protocol that says an outgoing president should avoid meddling in the affairs of his successor. It's called being diplomatic.

When the two start hanging out a la Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, then we'll talk.

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President Trump says of Obama, whose legitimacy he questioned for years: 'I think he likes me' - Washington Post