President Obama's achievements and failures must be evaluated by comparison to those chief executives who have come before him and not be measured against the prophetically moral voice of Martin Luther King Jr.

It's simply incorrect to call Dr. King a Republican.

With Barack, there's an emotional need to succeed, to win, to obtain victory. He always believes that he's the smartest person in the room.

Healthcare in the U.S. remains a dire mess, and the Obama presidency, unfortunately, didn't really address that.

The Barack who was so successful in Illinois in a Republican-controlled legislative situation for most of his time and who was a very outspoken progressive voice, that's not the man who we ended up having as president.

I'm a pro forma Bernie Sanders donor. In years past, when Michael Harrington was still alive, I was a very active member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Once you choose to run for president of the United States and succeed, your earlier life, your biography, is a major part of American history.

'Dreams from My Father' was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction.

Dr. King, if he were alive today, probably would simply be a minister, a pastor. His initial intent was, indeed, just to be a preacher. He didn't have any egotistical desire or need to be a public figure or celebrity. He got drafted - or, really, dragged into it - initially in Montgomery.

King would certainly be overjoyed by Barack Obama's inauguration, but we must avoid, and indeed reject, any careless claims that Obama's swearing in marks the fulfillment of King's dream.