Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched down in the US on Thursday for his second visit in his first 16 months in office just as US President Barack Obama begins the last 15 months of his "lame duck" term. The new dispensation will take charge in January 2017 of a country that is in far better shape from the crisis-ridden one Mr Obama inherited in January 2009. To put it in a nutshell: the economy is growing faster (a projected three per cent this year against a 2.8 per cent contraction in 2009), he has created more jobs - six million - than George W Bush did in his two terms, he pushed through, against entrenched, moneyed lobbies, a medical insurance plan that has covered 18 million more Americans, took the US out of two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, that his predecessor began and cost more than $ 3 trillion for no appreciable gain, took the courageous decision that saw the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist till then, and ended decades-long enmities with Iran, with a breakthrough nuclear deal, and Cuba thus earning his Nobel Peace Prize in retrospect.
In a country where media scrutiny is intrusively intense, he has suffered no scandals so far - personal, political or monetary (the Obamas' net earnings actually fell after he became president). Few US presidents can claim so many significant achievements; Mr Obama, the country's first African-American president, has done so in the face of unprecedentedly vicious and intense opposition. A Republican-controlled Congress is one element of that and it is a risk many presidents have run before; but Mr Obama has had the added pressure of parrying ingrained racism as exemplified by the "birther" controversy, which endured into his second term, and regular taunts about being Muslim from such unedifying personalities as Donald Trump. Yet the egregious Mr Trump, who hopes to secure the Republican nomination for the presidency, would have been one of many beneficiaries since Mr Obama took office.
Naturally, for a job as complex as the US president's, the performance is not flawless. For instance, though the unemployment rate may have fallen to 5.6 per cent from 7.8 per cent, when Mr Bush relinquished charge, long-term employment remains a challenge. More Americans live in poverty than they did in 2009 and Mr Obama's effort to spend his way out of recession has meant federal debt at $13 trillion has grown more during his term than all US presidents combined - it could be the cause of yet another Republican-orchestrated government shutdown in October. In foreign policy, his strategy against ISIS in West Asia has lacked conviction, nor has he been able to reassure Japan and Pacific Rim countries against China's belligerence. It is unclear how much he could have achieved here; Mr Obama, who set new standards of public probity with his crowd-sourced campaign funding, has an acute understanding of the limits of American power. Under Mr Bush, America looked to be in terminal decline. Thanks to Mr Obama, America will enjoy its superpower status for a while longer in the best possible way.
