An Obama reminder: Conservatives have feelings
When Barack Obama’s first major speech since his presidency decried today’s “utter loss of shame among political leaders,” did anyone not know whom he was talking about?
When this country’s the first African-American president made that point July 17 during the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg honoring the 100th anniversary of the former South African President’s birth, there was no need for Obama to name names — or, in this case, name the name.
When Obama decried the unexpected revival of “strongman politics,” rising assaults on “every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning” and the “utter loss of shame among political leaders” who, when caught in a lie, “just double down and they lie some more,” you could tell from the jolly crowd reactions that everybody knew who he was talking about.
President Donald Trump, after all, stands alone among presidents for having made more than 3,200 false or misleading claims by the end of May, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker’s running count.
Obama defended the importance of facts, science, free press, intellectualism and other virtues we used to take for granted more than we have since this nation’s current president took over.
But in a statement that drew an intriguing mix of praise and criticism from conservative critics, Obama’s defense of democracy jabbed exclusionary identity politics, the kind that seek to exclude voices who were not born into the aggrieved group.
“Democracy demands that we’re able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view,” he said. “Maybe we can change their minds, maybe they’ll change ours. You can’t do this if you just out of hand disregard what your opponent has to say from the start. And you can’t do it if you insist that those who aren’t like you because they are white or they are male, somehow there is no way they can understand what I’m feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.”
It was on this point that prominent conservative critics, who approved of many of his other comments, charged Obama with hypocrisy.
“This is good and true,” tweeted conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. “I wish he had said it throughout his presidency instead of relying on identity politics to coalition-build.”
Actually, as someone who covered Obama off and on since his days in the Illinois state senate, I have heard him make similar statements ever since his come-together keynote address at the 2004 National Democratic Convention that launched him into the national spotlight.
“The 44th president has consistently touted norms of speech consistent with Enlightenment liberalism,” noted the libertarian Reason’s associate editor Robby Soave, citing his 2016 Rutgers University commencement address.
Still, “identity politics” is in the eyes and ears of the beholder.
But, as Donald Trump’s unexpected Electoral College victory demonstrated, a voice that is a loud and forceful advocate for what voters want can score major political gains.
We live in a politically divided nation that needs to move from shouting to healing, as Obama suggests. Democrats seeking to get back to power in Republican-dominated Washington need to expand their reach to attract more persuadable swing voters.