@jumbanho yeah. i should talk more about ObamaCare / Affordable Care Act and also about foreign policy. but this was just a quick response to Yglesias, those would each be long discussions. ACA is I think quite mixed, net good relative to status quo ante, also very flawed, also politically corrosive at the time, even as it has now become politically untouchable. on foreign policy i think the verdict would be less mixed and pretty bad.

@jumbanho (re the superlative, obviously a bit hyperbolic, i don't want to be in the business of comparing Obama to Pol Pot and claiming Obama more destructive. there's an implicit "of what?" i wanted to push back hard on the Yglesian erasure of what Obama's choices did to the consensus surrounding the legitimacy of the United States' core institutions. That's where "most destructive" is arguable, though again, i think it prima facie hyperbolic and not really a "thesis" to defend.)