Mother Jones
Over the past few weeks, you might have noticed a renewed flare-up in a yearslong liberal freakout: Where is Barack Obama?
That was the headline of a provocative essay in the Atlantic, which concluded that Obama had entered “the fierce lethargy of semi-retirement.” Cue the discourse: articles, interviews, TikTok clapbacks, and everything in between. Everyone seems to have an opinion on what the 44th president of the United States should be doing to defend democracy—just as they have, periodically, since Trump succeeded him in 2017.
So, I asked him about it—directly.
Last month, I sat down for an exclusive interview with the former president to talk about the 10-year anniversary of a tumultuous week near the end of his time in office. But, of course, I couldn’t help but ask him about the growing calls for him to do more. His response was simple:
“I’m out here!”
Obama went on to acknowledge the unease that many Americans are feeling right now.
“You know, look, times are challenging,” he told me. He said that during his presidency, Americans “had a sense of things maybe being a little more stable,” and warned, that now, “for a lot of people, there’s a sense that anything can happen.”
In his post-presidency, Obama has been picking his spots strategically if rarely, careful to avoid diluting his voice in the fast-paced media environment. But behind the scenes, this argument goes, the former president and first lady have been focused on something far less headline-grabbing, but arguably more enduring.
“One of the things that I spend most of my time now doing is working through the Obama Foundation,” he told me. “Our goal is to train the next generation of leaders, to recognize the power they’ve got and the voice they have and to use it strategically—not just sink back in despair or cynicism but say, you know what, I can have an impact. I can have a difference.”
More recently, Obama used a fundraiser in New Jersey to scold Democrats, telling them to “toughen up,” arguing that “it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions.” He called out allies he sees as being “cowed and intimidated and shrinking away from just asserting what they believe.”
It was the kind of fighting language that many of Obama’s critics have been clamoring for. But the truth, in my opinion, is that Democrats who want more from Obama may misunderstand what they need from Obama.
In my new video, I contend that what Democrats need now, if anything, is the kind of broad political and cultural infrastructure that conservatives have been perfecting for decades: leadership pipelines, an influential media apparatus, and international allies. The stuff that takes time, in other words, that isn’t flashy and rarely trends, but wins in the long run. At least, that’s the goal.
From the outside looking in, it seems the Obamas are trying to play exactly that kind of long game. The question that remains—one Obama himself acknowledged recently—is whether democratic institutions can hold off autocracy long enough for that long game to play out.
Watch my longer interview with Obama here.
