The latest installation of the long duel between Barack Obama and Donald Trump explicitly highlights the stark contrasts in personal and political temperaments of the two defining White House residents of this time. And it took its rivalry to a level not seen before in the modern history of the presidency.
Trump meanwhile, back at the White House, was in real-time rage-tweeting in hot caps, cursing wild accusations and lies that, if anything, provided timeless evidence of the gloomy warnings of his predecessor.
In 2004, Obama made his name with the youthful, exaggerated – and often naive – hope of his address to the DNC. Sixteen years ago, a grim Obama warned the older Americans that they should expect a “president to be the guardian of this democracy.”
“We would expect the president, regardless of ego, ambition or political faith, to preserve, protect and defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched on and went to prison; fought for and died for,” he said.
Obama, now a private citizen, has no formal power and no mandate to speak to the American people as he did Wednesday night, at a virtual convention that served in its crowd-free isolation to underscore the bad nature of his message.
But he carries the authority of his historic status, the moral weight of two terms of the White House and continued popularity in half the country in revolt through Trump’s abuse of power, divisive racial politics and constant cultivation of his own ego.
And Obama’s breach of etiquette for retired presidents was preceded by years of Trump attacking him in ways never seen before by a U.S. presidential successor, with Trump routinely, baselessly accusing Obama of treason.
The former president presented himself as the protector of democracy, borrowing from 243 years of constitutional norms and authority from the masses who were not imposed by a strong male leader from above.
“Do not let them take away your power. Do not let them take away your democracy,” Obama said in a plea that was much deeper than repudiating a political leader of the legacy that destroyed his predecessor’s policies.
“Now make a plan for how you will vote and vote. Do it as early as you can and tell your family and friends how they can vote,” Obama said, accusing the Trump administration of suppressing ‘ the mood and count on the cynicism of the people to guarantee another four years.
“What we are doing is echoing through the generations,” Obama said, referring to what is probably the most-watched lecture on America’s constitutional heritage in history.
A long-awaited salvo
Democrats have waited four years for Obama to speak in such a way. But had he made a daily comment on Trump’s outrages, the former commander’s earlier warning on Wednesday would have failed to make an impact, as would the stock of political capital that had built his retention among sympathetic voters.
He dismissed Trump in astonishingly explicit terms for a member of the presidential club – a fraternity the current commander in chief suspects.
“I never expected my successor to embrace my vision or pursue my policies. I hoped, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump would show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might lose weight.” the office and discover some respect for the democracy that was placed in his care, “Obama said.
“But he never did. For almost four years he has shown no interest in the work; no interest in common ground; no interest in using the astonishing power of his office to help everyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency if all but show one reality that he can use to get the attention he desires.
“Donald Trump has not grown to the job because he can not.”
Obama’s comments did not come in a vacuum. Just hours earlier, Trump had supported everything but the cult-like and nonsensical conspiracy theory QAnon from the White House stage. The president is spreading false allegations of mass fraud in postal voting. He sought to force a foreign power into destroying the nomination of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, for which he was impeached.
In many ways, Trump’s entire presidency has evolved as an attempt to erase Obama – whom he relentlessly attacks in a racist bureaucratic conspiracy that built his political movement – from the pages of history. On Wednesday, for example, he made another attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear deal, which is the key achievement of Obama’s foreign policy.
The Trump presidency can also be seen as a backdrop to the social change on issues such as LGBTQ rights, the introduction of an almost universal health care system and the reality of a Black president in the Obama years.
A battle that will define an era
Wednesday’s exchange underscores how this election will decide if the dominant political strain in America’s populist demagoguery and cultural White movement is offered by Trump as the multicultural aspirational crusade of Obama Democrats addressing an ever-diverse nation.
The president’s first reaction to the speech was to falsely accuse Obama of spying on him in 2016, after a new report by a Republican-led House committee confirmed multiple contacts between his campaign and Russia in 2016.
“HE SPEAKS ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GOES!” Trump tweeted, turning the actual record over those previous elections.
The president’s response was a reminder of how he has based his entire term on a tide of collusion, misinformation and demonstrable untruths.
But it also gave rise to a potential weakness of Obama’s argument, one that was made in less favorable terms throughout the Democratic convention.
Speaker after speaker has said that Trump is a bad president and lacks the emotional and cerebral qualities as the sense of national well-being and civic responsibility needed for the presidency.
Obama got it half right when he said Trump did not even try.
But that’s the whole point of Trump’s presidency. He came to power determined to destroy the American status quo. Norms, laws, traditions mean nothing to him, because the presidency is just another stage to pursue his personal goals and dominate the airwaves and national life.
His abuse and unconstitutional behavior that those who agree with Obama find shameful and threatening to the republic itself is the reason why millions of his followers – angry at the elites who they believe are overhauling a political system that ‘ t ignores and despises them – are dedicated to him.
But Obama denied defeatism over democracy, saying the ancestors of modern Americans repeatedly had the same doubts – from the Dust Bowl farmers, to Italian and Irish immigrants, and Latinos and Jews and those who were oppressed by Jim Crow segregation in the south – but had decided to work the American system.
“Every chance of success” now depends entirely on the outcome of these elections, he said.
“This administration has shown that our democracy will drown if that is what it takes to win,” he said, asking for a large vote of support for the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
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