Just as important have been the roads nottaken.
context:
More generally, Mr Obama has run a competent, disciplined yet heterodox administration, with few of the snafus that characterised Bill Clinton’s first year. Just as important have been the roads nottaken.
This is a reference to one of the most famous poems in American literature. It’s called The Road Not Travelled" by Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
Robert Frost
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference…”
It means that at some point he had to make a decision. One choice was the easy way, the decision that almost everyone else makes, the one with guaranteed results and little risk. The other was choosing the unknown. Deciding to go for something that was not guaranteed success and that was perhaps as likely to bring him ruin as it was riches. But he did choose to do something out of the ordinary and to take a risk, and his life has been all the better because of that decision.
Thank you very much for your elaborate explanation. It helps a lot.