President Obama inherited all of those "bad" things you mention. The real problem with all of those things is that they are politically impossible to roll back

President Obama inherited all of those "bad" things you mention. The real problem with all of those things is that they are politically impossible to roll back, unless the perceived cost exceeds the perceived benefit. Until your best friend ends up on a kill list, that isn't going to happen. Imagine the following scenario: President Obama ends NSA spying, kills the drone problem, gets rid of kill lists (and presumably also killing), and stops torture (the one and only useless thing on this list). Following that, any terrorism-related incident occurs. The right destroys him for weakening our country (as they are already doing regardless). The left destroys him for weakening our country. And the trick is, predator drones, kill lists, and presumably NSA spying (which will be even more useful with the newly announced inter-agency collaboration) all do help achieve our foreign policy goals (mostly dead terrorists). They also help achieve our domestic policy goals, which partially include not having lots of deployed soldiers dying. We can't even roll back the TSA, which is widely known to be useless, despite long waits, missed flights, thefts, bizarre restrictions, and all the other things people love about post-9/11 air travel. For better or worse (mostly for worse), "the American voter" does not care in the slightest about scary brown people being killed (usually deservedly) in a desert half a world away. President Obama is doing what the American people want, and right now that means commuting sentences, spying, and killing people in the desert.