Laura Ingraham: Obama ‘squandered a lot of opportunities’ as president

Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham said Tuesday night that President Barack Obama’s farewell address in Chicago was a “well-produced event,” but failed to disguise the fact that his policies “do not work.”

“Personally, he’s very popular, that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Ingraham told “Hannity” following Obama’s speech. “[But] he has laid waste to our productivity, this idea of a vibrant economy, to a foreign policy that has some semblance of pragmatism. He’s laid waste to all of that.

“The bottom line is, is the country stronger, freer, is the United States more influential? Are we better off economically than we were in 2008? I think a lot of opportunity was squandered.”

Ingraham said that many Americans were “led to believe” in Obama during his first successful run for the White House in 2008, including many white working-class voters who supported President-elect Donald Trump eight years later.

“[The Democrats] were able to conjure up emotion about this idea of hope that was untethered to the reality of the day,” Ingraham said. “But it was fantasy because we can’t afford it. It’s a different landscape.

“Barack Obama had a great opportunity to change the country for the better,” Ingraham added. “I think sadly … he squandered a lot of those opportunities as a partisan [and] as an ideologue. 

Ingraham conceded that Republicans could learn from Obama in terms of matching the outgoing president’s emotional appeals to voters. 

“I think there’s a lot of theatrics here … Trump is actually good at the theatrics,” Ingraham said. “You have to produce events to produce emotion.”