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Being president of the United States is first and foremost an acting job. The job description has been valid since the first legendary television debate in 1960. The broken heavyweight Nixon lost to an unknown, inexperienced and irresistible Kennedy.
Woody actors like Jimmy Carter and George Bush the Elder were eliminated after a period, despite other qualities. The charisma club Reagan, Clinton, Bush the youngest was re-elected by acclamation, despite the mistakes.
The exception that proves the rule is the reelection of Nixon in 1972. At a time when the Cultural War accentuated the silent majority, the popular rigidity and restrained aggression of the president were right.
The parallels with the character of “Donald Trump” are clear, although the dramaturgy has been elevated to the absurd. Without the pandemic, Trump likely would have regained confidence. The dark spectacle had continued for a few more years and ended in a Watergate theatrical scandal.
Curtain, but not yet. Trump received 73 million votes, the second-most in history, for playing the evil president. Who has been the best playing the good president?
Newly elected President Donald Trump and outgoing President Barack Obama will meet in the Oval Office in the days following the 2016 election.
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais
The award goes to Barack Obama. Even Hollywood veteran Ronald Reagan wasn’t close to Obama’s audience and design. Much has been written about this – how there was no room for error on the part of the White House’s first black tenant – and now it is Obama’s turn.
The moment of publication of the memoirs is at the optimum moment, like everything else with this man. The presidential election decided, interest in politics at the boiling point, the serious Obama-Biden administration resurrected after four years of vanity fireworks.
That the 44th president of the United States writes like a god is no surprise. Obama’s breakthrough twenty-five years ago came with a book, the finely tuned family history “My Father Had a Dream.” Now the style has matured even more and the self-knowledge has deepened, in addition, there really is something to tell. Think of Lars Norén but on the contrary.
“A committed country” is exciting reading cover to cover, despite the inevitable tweaks here and there. The details of processes such as health system reform are perhaps more for those who are particularly interested, but even there politics becomes alive, humane.
The most interesting is how Obama reflects on himself. Keep playing the role of autopilot and analyze it at the same time. One is surprised to realize that the Trump uprising may have been aimed at this intellectual style rather than skin color, gender, or politics.
High expectations of the first African American in the White House – Yes, we can! – they were impossible to fulfill
Barack Hussein is well versed in all situations. Chew unreasonable insults in Congress. But when outgoing George W Bush meets rising protesters, Obama gets angry. It is “tactless and unnecessary.”
When the news comes that you have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the reaction is: “What for?” It is true that you have given a couple of excellent talks on reconciliation. But what does it say about our world that acting talent outperforms results? Obama suspects that he has ended up in bad company. The Peace Prize to Abiy Ahmed from Ethiopia and Aung San Suu Kyi from Myanmar was also rushed, to put it mildly.
Illustration: editorial by Albert Bonnier
The whole presidency is stagnant in the same trap. The high expectations of the first African American in the White House – If we can! – were impossible to fulfill. The social disintegration in the United States and the assassination in Syria did not listen to the rhetoric, much less the irreconcilable Republicans. The autobiography draws poetry out of the gap, striking a tone between hope and melancholy that is, after all, comforting. If not the reader, then the author.
For Obama, doubt is more natural than boasting. The only area it is taking home to is the economy and the boom after the financial crisis. A nod to the successor, who did not miss any opportunity to ride inherited stock rises.
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Photo: Everett Collection / NTB
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Photo: Pari Dukovic
Obama presents himself as the reluctant ruler, more bohemian and thoughtful than political. It returns to the fact that the presidency “despite all the pomp and circumstance is just a job.” A lie in the Trump class, albeit humbly packaged. There are no other jobs where you keep your finger on the nukes button or constantly perform in front of photographers.
Obama’s photos The White House is an orgy of love, between the presidential couple and their daughters, the visitors, the dogs, the flowers in the garden, the United States. Barack Obama has the warmth, the sense of the ball, the musicality. He has everything that Donald Trump lacks, and the contrast is not a coincidence. The men represent two faces of the American character, screwed up as if they were Netflix characters:
“White trash” of the richest upper class: the black underdog as the noblest aristocrat.
If Trump’s performance is based on improvisation, Obama combines classic British technology and the Stanislavsky method. Maximum clarity and credibility at the same time. The text in the center, but interpreted with such perfect empathy that it almost becomes suspicious. No one seems to doubt the way more than the former president himself.
The memoirs are a retroactive script of the highest class. More than the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama deserves the prize for literature. Winston Churchill could do it, why not? Or if an Oscar is a better fit.
Read more:
Barack Obama: everything we share means more than our differences
Jamaica Kincaid – I’ve lived in a snow globe, now someone finally crushed it
Björn Wiman: the world’s little triumphs come and learn from the tyrant’s technology
