Who is President Obama? Every time I think I have him figured out he manages to puzzle me all the more. Most confounding was when Edward Snowden patriotically revealed that Obama’s idea of how to best protect our freedoms was by using unconstitutional surveillance worthy of any totalitarian governance.

He came into office as an almost unimaginable personification of positive change. That is, for most of the electorate. For others that personification was their worse nightmare. “Hope and Change” came up hard against the deep seated fears of those that set great store by things as they have been, despite how unfair that status quo might be for others.

The guy who might have truly brought leadership that all Americans could benefit from became a fixation of those who thrive on divisiveness. For all the inspiration he passionately and eloquently conveyed to those that longed for America to finally arrive at fulfilling its collective promise, the color of his skin, rather than the content of his character, provoked even more fervent opposition to the democratic values he literally embodied. “Obamanation” was the term they immediately coined to further a disunited America.

The very fact that we finally had a president “of color” was an amazement to both sides of the political spectrum. Hope and change were plain for all to see and aspire to, or to tear down. That one party proceeded one way and its adversaries the other was not decided by a coin toss, but by a long standing historical impasse on America’s fundamental pursuit of equality.

That Republicans candidates eyeing 2016 now have such hopeful diversity is change that was unlikely to arrive on its own without Barack and Hilary bringing about such a push come to shove.

Obama is the first president since Eisenhower to capture 51 percent of the vote twice. Read that again. Who would ever think that, given the never ending reportage of his low polling numbers. More remarkable still, his opposition was then elected to a legislative majority. Obama is nowhere near as inscrutable as Americans themselves.

Just before Ireland’s staggering 62 percent endorsement of marriage equality an actual rainbow appeared over Dublin. Google fact. No such meteorological omen has yet appeared over our Supreme Court, but June may well provide such a photo op for some hope and change that Obama only finally got on board with. Like his first campaign’s position on nuclear energy, I thought that was just political theater, however disappointing such deferment of needed leadership on such issues may have been. Ditto his protracted reluctance to just flatly curtail our increasingly pointless military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. If ever he had a clear mandate, it was to do so, yet even now he appears confused as to what he himself defined as “just wars” rather than “dumb wars.”

His extricating ourselves from our longest war remains close, but no cigar. Afghanistan still “needs” extended American military hand holding while Iraq re-explodes in even worse radicalism. Obama remains at an absurd poker game where, though “doubling down” repeatedly didn’t work, he still can’t walk away from unbeatable odds.

The up side of all that is that it has finally made him rethink an even more reckless interventionist gamble with Russia. Putin, only the other day our demonized excuse for escalating a fresh cold war showdown over Ukraine, is now abruptly being courted as an ally in stabilizing the Near East as Syria deteriorates even further and IS brings about a more and more destabilizing influence regionally. Iran, another for sure enemy, is also suddenly of strategic use to whatever our own actual game plan might, day to day, be. In all of this, Obama continually vacillates between polarized agendas of the Left and Right. Never was a moderate judged less moderate.

At a recent Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overhauling Poverty, Obama spoke about his bootstrapped rise, accomplished through religious faith and personal exceptionalism, while breaking with his own familial past of single parenting to responsibly father two daughters.

Bill Bennett would be hard pressed to find better example of once touted conservative values, but from predictable quarters Obama’s religiosity itself was immediately attacked, challenging whether he is in fact even a Christian.

What the summit did make abundantly clear is that, whoever Barack Obama is politically, he is of rare intelligence within politics. Deftly fielding multi-layered pointcounterpoints, he displayed a strikingly compassionate social conscience, at once pragmatic yet unyielding. Sadly, much of the truth he expounded isn’t championed by the many compromises his administration makes to the very interests that perpetuate so many ongoing inequities.

“Do what I say, not as I do.” is not exactly the directional change hoped for. Hoping that positive change can come about, but only incrementally, and that the eventual end justifies a compromised means, is a sadly unexciting vision.

Whether foreseen as disappointing, or overall favorable, Obama’s legacy so far will hopefully be outshone by what he brings about post-presidency. Think Jimmy Carter. Then, unfettered by constant partisan embattlement and political trade-offs, maybe a consistently visionary Obama will reveal himself.

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.