Unimaginative. Short-sighted. Timid.

Not the words you would associate with one of the most charismatic leaders of our times.

But scratch the surface and that's what emerges.

Most of those in thrall of Obama's personality and airbrushed image forget that he badly mishandled the 2008 financial crisis, creating a space in which the right-wing populism of Donald Trump could flourish.

Obama' $800 billion package rescued Wall Street but did barely anything for the ordinary Americans who were hit hardest by the financial crisis. In thrall of the neoliberal dogmas of his time, Obama made the terrible blunder of letting market forces take care of the problem facing Main Street.

Instead of a follow-up stimulus to revive growth and create jobs, he opted to keep federal spending in check to make Republicans happy and appear bipartisan.

The result was wider inequality, moving wealth upwards and out of reach for many. According to economist Emmanuel Saez, the top 1% of American households received 52% of the economic gains during the Obama years, while everyone else only recovered two-thirds of what they lost in the great recession.

A terrible record for a president who called inequality "the defining challenge of our time".

Obama is aware of his botched handling of the crisis and has admitted that "there was an embrace of market solutions... that wasn't entirely justified".

Americans have had to pay a heavy price for Obama's naivety and incompetence.