This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 20th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

For all his concerns about leaving a loaded weapon in the White House for its next

inhabitant, President Obama's last day

leaves behind an enhanced executive branch, at least in terms of its assumed powers.

Jean Healy, Vice President at the Cato Institute, comments.

What is the best thing about the Obama presidency that you can think of?

Well, I think the president did

tamp down some of the rhetoric, the crisis rhetoric surrounding the war on terrorism. He didn't do anything to

tamp down the level of military activity or the level of surveillance or other policies associated with the war on terror

but I think there was a positive change in playing

down this atmosphere of permanent crisis.

And outside of the policy realm, I think you can say that in his public conduct,

Barack Obama was generally a model of class and dignity and by way of contrast with the

incoming precedent that that contrast may be become sharper and sharper.

There's the great political scientist Theodore Lowy coined an axiom that says that every president

contributes to the upgrading of the reputation of his predecessor.

And I see no reason to think that that Lowy's law is going to, isn't going to operate going forward.

Now, when Barack Obama became president, he ran against the bad war, which was Iraq, and

talked said things about how we need to commit to the which was Afghanistan and if you look at the

good war which was Afghanistan and if you look at the data coming

back from 2016 the Obama administration dropped 26,000 and change bombs in seven countries on the

planet.

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