Why Obama Nostalgia Matters
Why Obama Nostalgia Matters
President Obama, for all his faults and our disagreements with him, challenged us to rise to our better natures.
By Neal Gabler | January 18, 2017
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Whatever his failings as a politician and president, whatever diffidence he displayed in taking on those who attacked the powerless, he was unfailingly graceful, dignified, intelligent, idealistic, hopeful, incorruptible, and preternaturally calm in the middle of the raging storm — the characteristic that had once driven me crazy. (Yes, I know: black people, and especially a black president, don’t have the license to get angry. That is for whites only.)
Obama has said that he would have defeated Trump had he run against him. He is probably right, given his favorability ratings, and in spite of the contagion of hostility Trump has unleashed and legitimized. He would have won not because he was an effective president but because he made us proud. He reminded us, once again, of who we are supposed to be. For a long time, he kept the worst in us at bay. In a way, he shamed us. How important was that? Well, we now know how important that was. Obama has a quality that is in increasingly short supply. He has character.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that his opponents on the right see his commitment to others as a form of deviltry. Obama is evil, the most outspoken of them say, using a word that has gained political currency. (Hillary Clinton was evil, too. Even Satanic. How did God leave “Thou shalt not email” out of the Ten Commandments?) Some on the left also have borrowed that characterization for Trump.
I don’t think the word has much descriptive value when it comes to politics. Nor do I think it useful. I prefer the word “cruel.” We live in a worldwide torrent of cruelty. The election of Trump is one of its American manifestations. The repeal of Obamacare, leaving 20 million people without health insurance — and don’t fool yourselves; there will be no satisfactory replacement — is another. I have a strong feeling we will be seeing a lot more cruelty in the four years ahead, open and ugly. Cruelty has become a Republican mainstay on the pretext of… of what? They don’t even need a pretext any more. It is cruelty for its own sake.
As years pass, Obama’s warts may be exposed, just at Kennedy’s were. The purists on the left will hammer away at drone strikes and deportations. Those on the right will insist he was an inconsequential president, just a felicitous speaker, and they will do their best to undo his achievements. And as time passes, I am afraid that the forces of faux populism that Trump rode to office, and the instant technologies that elevate novelty above competence and that erode belief in authentically good leaders, will have us electing a lot more Trumps before we elect another Obama. So it may not sound like much of a compliment, certainly not as much of a compliment as I suspect it will be even a few months from now, but Barack Obama was never cruel, and he tempered the inchoate cruelty of the nation he governed.
This is what we need to remember, how we had a man of grace and decency in the Oval Office, and the example he provided is what his real legacy may be, just as JFK’s legacy was. Put simply: He is consequential because he is good and because he asked that we be good, too. History will judge his presidency. But we can already judge his character, and it is sterling. He showed us who we are supposed to be. He articulated what this country is supposed to be, too, and while we joke about our new president’s tweets, this is no joke. The difference between Obama’s soaring, inspiring rhetoric and Trump’s 140-character eruptions is the difference between a nation aiming high and one aiming low, a country suppressing its baser instincts and one exulting in them. Like “Hyperion to a satyr,” Hamlet said, comparing his late father to his scheming uncle. It is a pretty good description of the current transference of presidential power. We had a Hyperion. Many of us shall miss him terribly. But we must not forget him, especially now.
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