In a new global ranking from the Legatum Institute of London, the U.S. has fallen to 21st in terms of personal freedom worldwide.

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In 2008, Barack Obama boldly suggested that he could be a transformative president in the manner of Ronald Reagan, as opposed to the comparatively non-consequential Bill Clinton. 

That suggestion rightfully draws laughter today, as Obama's legacy begins to congeal. 

Reagan's leadership and policies quickly revived our economy, rebuilt our military, restored our confident gait and won the forty-year Cold War before the close of the decade.  In contrast, Obama's signature "achievement" is a healthcare monstrosity that has remained broadly unpopular since inception and continues to unravel in courts and in practice.  

That said, Obama has unintentionally managed to achieve something Reagan himself could not.  Namely, he has reduced faith in the government's competence and beneficence to record lows.  Reagan may have famously said that "government isn't the answer to our problems, government is the problem," but Obama's performance has cemented that belief in the American mind.  Just six years after his election, Republicans now dominate the federal, state and local political landscape to a greater degree than at any time since the 1920s. 

Unfortunately, Obama's emerging legacy also includes trends far more negative for the nation's welfare. 

For example, as we've noted, the U.S. has fallen in the annual Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom every single year of the Obama presidency.  For the first time in the history of the Index, America now no longer stands in the top ten most economically free nations in the world.  And because economic freedom correlates directly with a nation's economic welfare, that means we move further and further away from the basis of lasting prosperity each year with Obama as president.  That tragedy is ironically compounded by the fact that worldwide economic freedom in other nations has actually increased overall during Obama's tenure, exacerbating our comparative decline. 

And now this week, we received another survey providing similarly alarming news. 

In a new global ranking from the Legatum Institute of London, the U.S. has fallen to 21st in terms of personal freedom worldwide.  As with the annual Index of Economic Freedom referenced above, the U.S. decline has continued throughout Obama's tenure, as noted by The Washington Examiner: 

"'This is not a good report for Obama,' Legatum Institute spokeswoman Cristina Odone told the Washington Examiner.  In the 2010 report, which relied on data gathered in 2009, the U.S. was ranked ninth in personal freedom, but that ranking has since fallen to 21st, with several countries, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom passing the U.S.  The nation's overall personal freedom score has declined by 17 percent since 2009, with a 22 percent drop in combined civil liberty and free choice contributing to that decline." 

America's National Anthem concludes with the soaring lyric, "the land of the free and the home of the brave," yet we now trail such nations as Uruguay, Costa Rica, France, Malta, Germany, Canada and Portugal in terms of personal freedom.  And in the Institute's overall Prosperity Index, we've fallen down to 10th. 

Meanwhile, objective measures of American economic well-being continue to stagnate. 

For instance, the share of our population with jobs has fallen to lows not seen since the 1970s, which was prior to women fully entering the workforce.  We have also amassed several consecutive years of deficits exceeding $1 trillion, when the largest deficit prior to Obama was $450 billion, and typically far below that number.  Unemployment under Obama remained above 8% for the longest stretch of consecutive months in recorded U.S. history, and the number of Americans living in poverty is now higher than at any point since the Census Bureau began measuring it.  For the first time in recorded history, median American income has declined during a recovery from a previous recession, which in this case began all the way back in June 2009.  That is a particularly tragic manifestation of the unprecedented economic malaise in the Obama Era. 

And all of that is not coincidental.  Quite the contrary, America's continuously declining standing in terms of economic and personal freedom during the Obama presidency are a causal factor in our persisting economic anemia.  Accordingly, that reality has become perhaps the most defining mark of Obama's emerging legacy. 

There is still time to begin a turnaround.  But that will require an unlikely and dramatic turnaround in his policies and presidential demeanor. 

There's always hope, however.  Perhaps obvious voter dissatisfaction, new Congressional majorities and additional rebukes from the judicial branch will provide some of the push he so obviously needs.