Obama’s full-frontal assault on successor Donald Trump

WASHINGTON >> When Barack Obama took the oath of office as president in 2009, George W. Bush wished him well and left the political stage, determined to never publicly criticize his successor. It’s a vow he kept for the entire eight years of Obama’s presidency. Indeed, Bush has given only one political speech since leaving office — for his brother Jeb in 2016.

Even when Obama attacked him repeatedly from the presidential bully pulpit and reversed many of his policies, Bush kept silent. “I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former president undermine a current president,” he said. “I want the president to succeed. … He deserves my silence.” Bush adhered to the grace and decency all former presidents should show.

For a while it seemed Obama — the beneficiary of Bush’s grace and decency — would follow the 43rd president’s example. But Obama broke his silence in a speech to students at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, where he declared he had fully intended “on following a wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage” but changed his mind because “this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us as citizens of the United States need to determine just who it is that we are.” (With all due respect, this is exactly how many conservatives felt about his time in office.)

Rather than rallying Democrats around principles without attacking the sitting president, Obama launched into an unrestrained, full-frontal assault on his successor. President Trump, Obama warned, is a “threat to our democracy” who rose to power by “tapping into America’s dark history of racial and ethnic and religious division.” He castigated not just Trump but all Republicans. “The politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican party,” he declared. Republicans are “subsidizing corporate polluters,” “weakening worker protections,” “shrinking the safety net,” “attack voting rights” and “cozying up to Russia” — all while campaigning on an “appeal to racial nationalism that’s barely veiled.”

It was the most hyperpartisan speech delivered by a former president in modern memory. If Obama were concerned that Trump’s behavior is beneath the dignity of his office, why did he join him?

Moreover, Obama’s charge that racist dog whistles put Trump in the White House is a calumny against the millions of decent, patriotic Americans who voted for Trump. If all these Trump voters are driven by racism, then why did so many of them vote for Obama? The American National Election Study found 13 percent of Trump voters in 2016 backed Obama in 2012.

These Obama-Trump voters aren’t racists. They’re largely working-class voters — both white and minority — who are struggling. They bought into Obama’s promise of hope and change but never got it — so they gave Trump a chance.

And their bet has paid off. Under Trump, the economy’s finally improving for many of these forgotten Americans.

“When you hear how great the economy’s doing right now,” Obama said, “let’s just remember when this recovery started.” Ironically, that was precisely what drove Obama voters to Trump in 2016. Polls show that in 2016, half of Obama-Trump voters said their incomes were falling behind the cost of living. Yet Democrats kept saying how well the economy was doing. Well, now their lives are finally improving.

Democrats like to talk about all the hallowed presidential norms Trump’s breaking. But now it’s Obama who’s breaking presidential norms.