In his first public remarks since last month’s election, former President Barack Obama on Thursday largely avoided direct mention of Donald Trump’s presidential victory and instead focused on the need for bridge-building and accommodation among a public whose sharp divisions have been sown in the Trump era.
“You see, it’s easy to give democracy lip service when it delivers the outcomes we want. It’s when we don’t get what we want that our commitment to democracy is tested,” Obama said as he keynoted the third annual Obama Foundation Democracy Forum at a South Loop hotel.
“And at this moment in history, when core democratic principles seem to be continuously under attack, when too many people around the world have become cynical and disengaged, now is precisely the time to ask ourselves tough questions about how we can build our democracies and make them work in meaningful and practical ways for ordinary people,” he said.
During his speech, Obama did not mention Trump by name, his Republican successor in the 2016 election who retook the White House by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5. And Obama’s talk was a far cry from the partisan attacks he leveled against Trump at the Democratic National Convention, the last time Obama was in Chicago for a public speaking engagement.
At the convention in August, Obama ridiculed Trump and warned that his returning to the White House would lead to “four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos.”
But on Thursday, it was Obama the lecturer who spoke, echoing the forum’s theme of “pluralism” and calling for people to engage with others from differing viewpoints and backgrounds in order to help maintain democracy.
During his speech, Obama acknowledged that in previewing to friends the forum’s planned subject matter he “got more than a few groans and eye rolls” since “as far as they were concerned, the election proved that democracy is pretty far down on people’s priorities.”
“But as a citizen and part of a foundation that believes deeply in the promise of democracy — not only to recognize the dignity and the worth of every individual but to produce free and fair and more just societies — I cannot think of a better time to talk about it,” he said.
“This idea that each of us has to show a level of forbearance toward those who don’t look or think or pray like us, that’s at the heart of democracy,” he said. “But it’s especially hard in big, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious countries like the United States.”
Obama noted that in America in the decades after World War II “democracy seemed to run relatively smoothly with frequent cooperation across party lines and what felt like a broad consensus about how interests were shared (and) differences should be settled.”
“The biggest reason that American pluralism seemed to be working so well may have to do with what was left out,” he said, noting that even in 2004 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate he was its only Black member. “It’s fair to say that when everyone in Washington looked the same and shared the same experiences … cutting deals and getting along was a whole lot simpler.”
But starting with the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, “historically marginalized Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, women, gays and lesbians, disabled Americans demanded a seat at the table,” Obama said. “Not only did they insist on a fair share of government direct resources, but they brought with them new issues, more than their unique experiences, that could not just be resolved by giving them a bigger slice of the pie.”
“In other words,” he said, “politics was not just a fight about tax rates or roads anymore. It was about more fundamental issues that went to the core of our being — how we expected society to structure itself.”
Those issues, however, also opened the door to “politicians and party leaders and interest groups (who) take a maximalist position on almost every issue,” Obama said.
“Every election becomes an act of mortal combat, which political opponents are enemies to be vanquished. Compromise is viewed as betrayal and total victory is the only acceptable outcome,” he said. “But since total victory is impossible in a country politically split down the middle, the result is a doom loop — gridlock, greater polarization, wilder rhetoric and a deepening conviction among partisans that the other side is breaking the rules and has rigged the game to tip it in their favor.”
Obama, a former senior lecturer of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, has spoken frequently in his post-presidency of a need to restore civility and the need for compromise despite the nation’s political divisions.
His comments Thursday took on an added dimension in the post-election climate given the history of Trump’s first term and the promises the president-elect made throughout the campaign.
“I am convinced that if we want democracy, as we understand it, to survive, then we’re all going to have to work toward a renewed commitment to pluralist principles,” he said, adding that “it’s important to look for allies in unlikely places,” not “assume that people on the other side have monolithic views” and believe that they “may share our beliefs about sticking to the rules, observing norms.”
The alternative is “an increasing willingness on the part of politicians and their followers to violate democratic norms, to do anything they can to get their way, to use the power of the state to target critics and journalists and political rivals and to even resort to violence in order to gain and hold onto power,” he said.
“In those circumstances, pluralism does not call for us to just stand back and save our breath,” Obama said. “In those circumstances, a line has been crossed and we have to stand firm and speak out and organize and mobilize as forcefully as we can.”
But, in nodding to the fact that such change can’t happen quickly, he also called a restoration of “habits and practices that so often we’ve lost, learning to trust each other,” is “a generational project.”
