Five days before his election in 2008, President Obama made this statement in a speech in Missouri: “After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

What did Candidate Obama mean by “fundamentally transforming” America, and did he succeed?