The article says many nice things about President Obama and some of them sound true. In foreign policy however the failure is evident vis a vis a rampant Russia and with the tremedous loss of effectiveness and prestige suffered by the US in the Gulf, the Middle East and North Africa. And in Europe, too, despite the strictly personal popularity of Barack Obama and his family. It seems to me that the first weaknees of Obama's foreign policy was the worst one: the lack of ideas, and perhaps of interest for what is going on in distant areas. But nothing is distant nowadays. At home, it does not look to me that in the US there is great and widespread satisfaction, in spite of the official data about gdp, jobs and earnings. People's mood is very similar to what you can ear in several European countries. So you ended up, we ended up, with Donald Trump. How can a successfull president leave the White House to somebody who got elected promising to change everything?

Uhm. Ray Small invites Giovanna Vinci to be concerned about italian banks and leave Britain to the British. Uhm. Not very polite. Brexit is a euro-british issue, so Giovanna has a full right to speak her mind. Italian banks are a huge problem, but no bigger than RBS was in 2008-2009. Besides, here we are talking Brexit, I gather. Jose Araujo too takes some issue against Giovanna when he says that in recent history (last 100 years, I suppose) England has always been on the right side and the English and Welsh (I would not say the all of Britain who does not see, evidently, eye-to-eye) know what they are doing, choosing brexit. So, Giovanna, why are you concerned, better think about your Mediterranean peninsula. Perhaps. Clearly, Chris Patten does not share this optimistic view about a supposed British proved superior ...instinct, that's the unmistakable message he gives with this article, so Jose should criticize him too, not only Giovanna. Just to stay with History, I remind that past achievements are not a guarantee against present and future blunders. Even if the opposite is true: past blunders make future ones more likely.