When he ran for office in 2008, America was bogged down in a crisis of confidence, tired of Bush and the party of Reagan, wounded by the Iraq debacle and dispirited by financial crisis. Obama brought hope and change, an ­infectious optimism, a cool temperament, stirring rhetoric and a personality free of meanness or ugliness.

At home, Obama’s great achievement was to restore confidence in the economy after it ­suffered its greatest economic downturn since the Great Depres­sion. He brought unemployment down from almost 8 per cent in 2009 to about 4 per cent.

If asked whether they feel better off than they did eight years ago, many Americans would surely say yes. But many would not. For all the talk about the economic expansion, it was the most sluggish recovery since the 1940s. Wages for ordinary people ­remain stagnant and income ­inequality has widened during his tenure.

Obama hails his national healthcare scheme and the Iran­ian nuclear deal as great achievements. But neither is likely to survive the next four years. As for his immigration reform, it has led to a profound backlash culminating in Donald Trump’s decision to toughen border protection and build a wall between Mexico and the US.

Obama will always be remembered as the first non-white president in history, who came to power pledging to bridge America’s racial divide. Yet race relations have deterio­rated drama­tically during his tenure. Last year, an ABC/Washington Post poll showed that only 32 per cent of Americans believed race relations were generally good — down from 66 per cent in 2009.

Foreign policy also produced profound disappointment.

It is true Obama inherited a mess in the Middle East. Bush initiated an unsuccessful war in Iraq that cost America dearly in blood, treasure and credibility. It also ­destroyed the regional balance of power and helped create the Sunni jihadists that morphed into Islamic State.

But a closer look at his successor’s foreign policy record suggests Obama himself has also bequeathed a bloody legacy across the region.

In Libya, he helped bring down the Gaddafi regime, which produced a failed state and a wonderland for jihadists. In Syria, his administration, backed by US Gulf allies, supported the Sunni rebellion and called for regime change in Damascus, which helped prolong the civil war.

In Asia, he has rightly maintained US leadership in the ­region. But critics complain that he has pivoted away from the pivot.

Certainly, its economic centrepiece — the Trans-Pacific Partnership — is damaged goods. Neither Trump nor congress will support it. History will show Obama failed to sell its benefits to an increasingly sceptical public: he hardly mentioned the TPP in his State of the Union addresses.

In Europe, under his leadership, Washington and Brussels precipitated a crisis with Russia by trying to peel Ukraine away from Moscow’s traditional sphere of ­influence. Not surprisingly, the Kremlin fiercely resisted the West’s efforts to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s doorstep. As a result, Ukraine is now engulfed in a civil war.

Meanwhile, Obama’s nuclear non-proliferation efforts failed.

On the environment, he claimed his victory in the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 marked “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. Yet even when Democrats dominated both the House and Senate in 2009-10, he failed to pass an emissions trading scheme.

Obama then sidestepped congress and used executive authority to regulate carbon emissions, decrees that the incoming president will also repeal. There were more than 50 per cent fewer ­electric cars on the road by 2015 than he had predicted. And taxpayer handouts to green energy initiatives produced the $530m bankruptcy of Solyndra, the politically connected manufacturer of solar panels.

The Paris climate deal was hailed as a groundbreaking ­global agreement to slash emissions. But it is not enforceable and verifiable. Nor is it legally binding. If it were, the deal would have ­required two-thirds Senate ratification.

On all this, he has sorely disappointed some of his constituents and earliest supporters.

But perhaps Obama’s biggest disaster is his short to medium-term party political legacy. He came to power promising to transform the ideological landscape in a more liberal direction.

For some time, it looked like he would become what he had long yearned to be: a “transformational” president. I was among many writers who believed that, for ­better or worse, the centre of American politics was moving to the left in the Obama era, much as it had shifted right during ­Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

But although he restructured the financial sector, bailed out the car industry and helped ensure that same-sex marriage equality will outlast his presidency, Obama has left his party in a weakened state.

In 2009, the Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate and the House of Repre­sentatives. Today, it’s the Repub­licans who hold the presidency and both branches of congress. As a result, the Supreme Court will probably become more conservative in the next generation.

A close look at the numbers from 2009 to 2017 highlights Democratic turmoil. According to National Review’s Deroy Murdock, Democrat Senate seats slipped from 55 to 46 (down 16 per cent). House seats fell 256 to 194 (down 24 per cent). Governorships slid from 28 to 16 (down 43 per cent). State legislatures (both chambers) plunged from 27 to 14 (down 48 per cent). And trifectas (states with Democrat governors and both legislative chambers) cratered from 17 to six (down 65 per cent).

In recent years, many Democrats and left-liberal pundits have argued the dire state of the ­Republican Party would guarantee Democratic hegemony in Washington and a more left-­liberal US in the next generation. But although the US conservative movement remains divided, it is the Democratic Party that is in much bigger crisis. And that has happened on Obama’s watch.

Tom Switzer is a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.