Barack Obama has remained relatively silent as President Donald Trump has systematically attacked America’s multiracial democracy — and the former president’s legacy.
One can only imagine how this must all feel for Obama, not to mention the near superhuman strength and discipline it requires for him to maintain his composure and adhere to the informal rule that American presidents generally do not publicly criticize their successors.
Obama, as I have written, occupies a singular place in American culture in history. As the country’s first Black president, he bears a heavier burden than others in being forced to hide his feelings, and particularly his anger.
But Trump’s escalating threats to American democracy, which have included threats to invade and occupy Democratic-led cities like Chicago — Obama’s hometown — and to invoke the Insurrection Act, have compelled the former president to speak out.
But Trump’s escalating threats to American democracy, which have included threats to invade and occupy Democratic-led cities like Chicago — Obama’s hometown — and to invoke the Insurrection Act, have compelled the former president to speak out. Unfortunately, it may be far too late. American democracy is rapidly collapsing.
In a surprise appearance last week on the final episode of comedian Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, Obama warned that America’s democracy is in peril, even as he insisted that it is still possible to organize and resist. “We’re not at the stage where you have to be like Nelson Mandela and be in a 10-by-12 jail cell for 27 years and break rocks,” he said.
But he was clear-eyed about what has happened in the last nine months since Trump returned to office. “[T]here is no doubt that a lot of the norms, civic habits, expectations, institutional guardrails that we had, that we took for granted for our democracy, have been weakened deliberately,” he said.“I don’t think they’ve been destroyed, but they’ve been damaged and [the administration has] been systematic about it.”
Obama called out elite institutions — such as law firms, colleges and universities, and businesses — for capitulating to Trump’s power grab, and he was blunt in his alarm that Trump’s plans to deploy the military in blue cities across the country are an authoritarian move. “When you see an administration suggest that ordinary street crime is an insurrection or a terrorist act, that is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy, that was understood by Democrats and Republicans.”
Fox News and right-wing media, he said, are partners in Trump’s bid for autocracy, even as they claim to embrace the Constitution and freedom. “If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, ‘You know what? A lot of problems in Dallas, a lot of crime there, and I don’t care what Gov. [Greg] Abbott says. I’m going to kind of take over law enforcement, because I think things are out of control,’ it is mind-boggling to me how Fox News would have responded….”
This is a very different tone from Obama’s first conversation with Maron in 2015, when he was more hopeful.
But Barack Obama is no longer the same man, and the United States is no longer the same country.
In a recent discussion in London with young pro-democracy leaders from Hungary and Poland, Obama showed that he is done being quiet about Trump’s threats to democracy in America and around the world. “We’re seeing politicians target civil society, undermine freedom of the press, weaponize the justice system,” he said. “And no one is being spared. Even countries that thought they were immune from wholesale assaults on democracy now understand that we’re all part of one struggle.”
As the crisis worsens, Obama is feeling more pressure and obligation to speak out about Trump’s abuses. Although the president has threatened Obama with charges of “treason” and prison, or worse, Obama knows he is likely safe from any real danger of arrest or other punishments for these non-existent crimes. But as a patriot, as the country’s first Black president and the child of the Black Freedom Struggle and civil rights movement, he knows he has a unique moral obligation to speak truth to power — especially as one of the most powerful and popular people in the country.
A new poll from Marquette University shows that 42% of Americans view Trump favorably. The same poll shows that a much higher percentage, 57%, have positive feelings toward Obama. Other polls have consistently shown that he continues to be the most popular of all the living presidents.
It’s important to remember that Obama is also a constitutional law scholar. He can clearly see and understand the existential, unprecedented peril facing the country from the erosion of its democracy and civil society.
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And then there is the serious matter of a rudderless Democratic Party that, nearly a year after the presidential election, lacks a unified message and strong national leadership.
NBC News recently reported how practical necessity has drawn Obama back into the national spotlight following talks with trusted friends and advisers over how and when to weigh in about Trump’s policies and behavior. According to one confidante, “[Obama] picks and chooses his spots wisely… You won’t see him shadowing this president. He didn’t do it the first four years. There was a lot of crazy then. More crazy now. He’s not going to be a president who spends his time throwing shade on another president, but he’ll certainly lean in when he sees injustices.”
In such a fraught and dangerous period, the pro-democracy movement needs new leaders from a younger generation. But it also needs the leadership of established public voices like Obama. It remains an open question if the former president will be able to mobilize fence-sitters and politically disengaged people to rally in defense of democracy and freedom — and such expectations are too much to ask of one man or leader. As we witnessed with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign, celebrity politics will not slow down Trumpism, nor will it quell the rising authoritarian tide. Like other successful pro-democracy movements, the beating heart of resistance will be everyday people.
During an event earlier this year at Hamilton College — one of the country’s historically Black colleges and universities — Obama felt comfortable enough to “drop the mask” and signal how Trump’s authoritarian project is fueled by white racism and racial animus. In conversation with sociologist and Hamilton University President Stephen Pepper, Obama, ever the master rhetorician, said:
Imagine if I had done any of this. I just want to be clear about this. Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the White House press corps. You’re laughing, but this is what’s happening. Imagine if I had said to law firms that were representing parties that were upset with policies my administration had initiated, that you will not be allowed into government buildings.
We will punish you economically for dissenting from the Affordable Care Act or the Iran deal. We will ferret out students who protest against my policies. It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my predecessors.
The audience laughed and clapped because they deeply understand the absurdity of racism, the color line, the double standards and the higher expectations unfairly placed on Black and brown people in America, and around the world.
Social scientists and other experts have repeatedly shown that racism is closely connected to authoritarian values and hostility to democracy.
Barack Obama, both the man and the symbol, is the personification of these white racial fears and anxieties. Donald Trump harnessed that animus — along with his personal obsession with America’s first Black president — to propel himself to the White House not once, but twice.
This is the damage that the irrational hatred of one Black man has done to our country in such a short amount of time.
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