Obama’s Hawaii Legacy: Reflecting the best of isles’ progressive tradition

“You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawaii.”

Michelle Obama’s famous observation about her husband, the 44th president of the United States, rings true for most of us fortunate enough to live in his hometown. Obama’s ease around people of diverse backgrounds and his pragmatic leadership are reminiscent of Hawaii’s most effective policymakers.

But the president has championed another local value during his eight years in the Oval Office that gets far less attention: A belief in the power of government to dramatically improve the lives of working people.

The Hawaii of Obama’s youth was a place of hope and determination where legislators supported innovative policies to correct for the injustices of the territorial period. With the adoption of legislation like the 1974 Prepaid Health Care Act, innovative planning experiments like the Commission on the Year 2000, and the watershed 1978 Constitutional Convention, Hawaii became the most progressive state in the nation.

Obama’s own presidency was a test of whether we are still capable of this sort of transformative policymaking.

“We do big things,” the president remarked in his 2011 State of the Union Address. “From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future.”

For many of us, these words sound overly optimistic — even a bit naïve — six years later.

Certainly not all of his achievements are secure, and parts of his legacy will undoubtedly be undone by the incoming Trump administration.

Essential components of the Affordable Care Act are likely to be dismantled or at least dramatically restructured. Undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children may no longer have protection from deportation. Many of his executive orders are likely to be reversed.

But one thing should not be in doubt. When Obama leaves the Oval Office at the end of the month, he will have done more than any president since Lyndon Johnson to make the United States a more just and equal nation — and many of us here in Hawaii should be grateful.

The much-maligned Obamacare, for example, plugged some of the remaining holes in our own health care system. Data from the Department of Health and Human Services show that the uninsured rate in the Hawaii has fallen by 49 percent since 2010. That means 54,000 local residents receive coverage who didn’t have it before.

Many of us will benefit from new rules on overtime pay. Even conservative estimates suggest that nearly 4.2 million more workers became eligible for overtime, with salaried workers eligible who earn up to $47,476, doubling the previous cutoff of $23,660. And millions more who are already eligible for overtime gained further protections from being forced to work without just compensation.

Obama also made great strides in transforming the federal government into a model employer. Most federal contractors are now required to pay at least $10.10 an hour. Contractors who violate labor laws risk losing future federal funding. In Honolulu, where we have one of the highest concentrations of federal workers in the nation, this policy has undoubtedly improved the economic situation of thousands of families.

Others were helped by the president’s uncompromising position on civil rights. Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community received long-overdue rights that protect their families and their jobs. It is worth remembering that before Obama took office, few gay couples could take family or medical leave to care for a spouse. Today, many of these policies have been reversed, and federal contractors are forbidden from discriminating against LGBT workers who can no longer lose their jobs simply because of their sexuality or gender identity.

Here in Hawaii, the president’s most concrete legacy may be the expansion of two massive national monuments that provide unprecedented protections for marine life.

Through powers granted to him by the Antiquities Act, Obama increased the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument so it now covers an area that is nearly twice the size of Texas.

The recently expanded Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is now the second-largest protected area in the world, providing a permanent refuge for 7,000 marine species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world.

Like all presidents, Obama’s legacy is a complex one that is full of achievements and disappointments. But his eight years in office will likely be remembered as a time when the president employed the full powers of the government to improve our lives and protect our planet. He learned this value as a child in Hawaii: A small state that did big things.