That Obama economic legacy alone takes us a great distance in explaining how a man famous for his business successes would naturally rise following eight years of such egregious economic mismanagement.

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Regardless of one's position on the Trump phenomenon, it's important to rebut a convenient, self-serving, but false claim by Barack Obama, the Clinton campaign and the political left that Donald Trump is somehow a reflection only of maladies ailing the Republican party or the conservative movement. 

Here is what Obama recently claimed, exhibiting the classic psychological signs of denial:  

"I have been blamed by Republicans for a lot of things, but being blamed for their primaries and who they are selecting for their party is novel.  I don't think that I was the one to prompt questions about my birth certificate, for example.  I don't remember saying, 'Hey, why don't you ask me about that?' or 'Why don't you question whether I'm an American, or whether I'm loyal or whether I have America's best interests at heart?'  So what you're seeing within the Republican Party is, to some degree, all of those efforts over a course of time creating an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive." 

Please.  When was the last time in this presidential campaign that Obama's birth certificate was even referenced, let alone highlighted as some sort of issue in this race? 

Just as Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion dictates that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, Donald Trump is an equal and opposite reaction to the Obama-Biden-Clinton presidency. 

Since World War II, every successful presidential candidate - with one notable exception - constitutes an opposite reaction to his predecessor.  Think of John F. Kennedy following Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon following Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter following Nixon, Ronald Reagan in response to Carter.  Then came the notable exception of George H.W. Bush, which only serves to highlight the incredibly successful presidency of his predecessor, which spurred American voters to want what amounted to a third Reagan term.  Then Bill Clinton was an inverse reaction to Bush, George W. Bush was an inverse reaction to Clinton and Obama an inverse reaction to Bush. 

But that historical pattern is particularly pronounced in the current case of Trump and Obama. 

Look no further than Trump's trademark campaign slogan:  "Make America Great Again."  How could such a slogan obtain such instant and enduring currency, but for the fact that eight years under Obama has left Americans believing that we're no longer great? 

And what legacies characterize Obama's tenure?  As we noted recently, Obama is the first president in recorded U.S. history under whom economic growth never once reached 3% (the post-World War II annual average has been 3.3%).  We endured the longest stretch of unemployment in excess of 8% in U.S. history.  We witnessed four consecutive deficits in excess of $1 trillion, when the largest deficit before Obama was $450 billion (and even under Bush, typically far below that amount).  We've seen the percentage of Americans holding jobs fall to levels not seen since the mid-1970s, when women had not yet fully entered the American workforce.  The number of federal welfare recipients ascended to unfathomable new highs.  Median American incomes continued to decline even years after the last recession officially ended in June 2009, again for the first time in recorded U.S. history. 

That Obama economic legacy alone takes us a great distance in explaining how a man famous for his business successes would naturally rise following eight years of such egregious economic mismanagement.  How a man without any political experience could naturally rise following eight years under a man whose resume consisted of almost nothing other than political experience. 

Beyond the domestic economic realm, consider what has occurred beyond our borders during the Obama presidency. 

There is not a single significant nation in the world, and no theater of the world, that is better off today or in a situation more favorable toward American interests than the day Obama entered office.  Not a single one. 

Along comes Trump, who promises a return to a foreign policy under which America will thrive rather than suffer. 

In that foreign policy sense, Trump not only represents a break from Obama, but also his Secretary of State and Trump's likely general election opponent Hillary Clinton. 

In these specific ways, Obama, Clinton and the political left cannot maintain that they've somehow been innocent bystanders in Trump's rise.  Instead, Trump highlights the American people's concerns over the economic, domestic and foreign policy failures of the Obama-Biden-Clinton presidency, and they are not trivial.