Barack Obama was never going to have an easy presidency. He bore the historic weight of being the first African-American to hold the nation's highest post, and all the now naively optimistic predictions of a "post-racial" society that came with it.

Upon taking office, Obama faced his first crisis: an economy falling faster than a jet with two bad engines. Housing market, automobile industry, banking industry — all were plummeting, and the nation seemed on the verge of a second Great Depression. Obama's policies helped avert that, and did much to soften the blow of the crushing recession that set back so many. He bailed out the major American car companies, which have since repaid their loans and are back to enjoying strong sales. His recovery act spared many homeowners from foreclosure. The stimulus package began the massive job of rebuilding the nation's aging infrastructure while providing jobs. His extension of unemployment benefits allowed millions of long-term unemployed Americans to stay out of poverty while they searched for new jobs. Badly needed financial regulatory reform curbed the worst of Wall Street excesses.

Each of these programs was flawed, to be sure. They fell short, were plagued with bureaucratic snafus. That is the nature of such efforts, particularly when action must be quick. The Trump administration will also inherit troubling levels of income inequality, slow GDP growth and $20 trillion in U.S. debt.

Then there's health care — an audacious reach that carried a heavier cost than Obama ever envisioned. The Affordable Care Act reshaped health care in this country, wiping away the terrible burden of preexisting conditions and bringing coverage to an unprecedented 95 percent of Americans. It also began to collapse under the weight of its own ambition and, in part, the steadfast refusal of Republicans to help it succeed by making the improvements needed for any major government program, from Social Security on down. Obama also suffered from an inability to sell the merits of his own plan, allowing opponents to seize the narrative and frame it as a costly disaster, even though the latest polls show a majority of those covered are loathe to give it up.

The herculean effort needed to pass health reform also crowded out other items that might have had a better chance of success early on, especially with a Democratic Congress. Comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship was among the victims, and the backlash against immigrants is now on the rise.

Obama took other risks, too, becoming the first president to come out strongly in support of same-sex marriage and later transgender rights. Despite deep partisan division on climate change, he invested heavily in wind, solar, biofuels, stricter emissions and fuel standards, and stronger environmental protections. The Paris climate accord was a landmark agreement among nations to reduce the factors contributing to global climate change.

Much of that work is in jeopardy now, and may be reversed. Obama was never able to forge a bipartisan coalition for much of his agenda, and often resorted to executive order. The inability to work with even a decidedly hostile Republican majority may mean that even his more significant achievements could be undone. Race relations proved particularly thorny terrain for Obama, with his every move on the subject triggering a backlash. Sadly, the president who famously said "there is not a black America, a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America — there is the United States of America" leaves office with a racial divide sharper and more contentious than when he took office.

There were other weak spots, too — largely in foreign policy, where the debacle in Syria resulted in a tidal wave of refugees and hundreds of thousands of deaths. It may have been beyond U.S. power to prevent that, but a different course might have mitigated the harm. Obama ended the Iraq war, took out Osama bin Laden and struck a deal to end Iran's nuclear weapons program. But on his watch the Islamic State rose up, and the Middle East remains in turmoil. He was slow to acknowledge aggression from a Russia that has become increasingly bold.

But a president is more than his policy stances. For eight years, Obama fought hard to create a more inclusive nation that offered opportunity to all and attempted to live out its ideals. He provided principled, thoughtful leadership, two terms unmarked by scandal and a family that served as a role model for the nation.

Larry Jacobs, a professor and director at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs, said of Obama that even for those who disagreed with his policies, "a fair-minded person would say this was a patriot who cared about his country and conducted himself with honor."

History will remember Obama for more than that. When confronted with big problems, he attempted big solutions. He lived out the ideal set by poet Robert Browning, that "a man's reach should exceed his grasp." This was a president who reached high, and Americans can ask no more of their leaders than that.