 had meaning. It's his presence in power that lacks purpose. The gap between rich and poor and black and white has grown while he's been in the White House, the prospects for immigration reform remain remote, bankers made away with the loot, and Guantánamo's still open. It's true there's a limit to what a president can do about much of this and that Republican intransigence has not helped. But that makes the original question more salient not less: if he can't reunite a divided political culture, which was one of his key pledges, and his powers are that limited, then what is the point of his presidency?
This should not deny his achievements. He scaled down one major war, is winding down another, and helped save the US car industry. If he's on the hook for growing inequality, then he can take credit for the deficit shrinking and unemployment falling. But together, this amounts to an extended period of triage before sending the patient back out into the world without any plan for long-term recovery. The underlying impulses, policies, priorities and structures that made the wars and economic collapse possible are still in place.
Finally, there's healthcare reform. The brouhaha over its botched rollout will scarcely be remembered a few years hence. But with roughly 31 million people set to remain uninsured and little changing for many, its undeniable benefits are not likely to be remembered as transformational. All in all, there's precious little that Obama has done that any of his primary opponents would not have done.
Occasionally, he either gives a lead – like after the shootings at Newtown when he advocated for gun control – or follows one, as in his support for gay marriage or preventing the deportation of young undocumented immigrants, which helps to set a tone or establish a moral marker. But these interventions are too rare, and their remedies too piecemeal, to constitute a narrative.
"If you're going to be president, then I guess you obviously want to be in the history books," said Susan Aylward, a frustrated Obama supporter in Akron, Ohio, shortly before the last election. "So what does he want to be in the history books for? I don't quite know the answer to that yet." Sadly, it seems, neither does he.