As President Joe Biden finds himself struggling with approval ratings that remain stubbornly resistant even to good economic news, Washington’s chattering classes have begun to resurrect a question that was prominent in 2020: Could former President Barack Obama be the magical healer Democrats need to reinvigorate disenchanted Democrats?
Or, as a recent Politico headline put it, “Is Barack Obama Ready to Reassert Himself?”
Last week, Obama filmed a 68-second campaign fundraising video alongside Biden in which the two former running mates laid out “five reasons to donate $5″ to Biden’s current presidential campaign. The contrast in age and vitality between the men was noticeable, but so was their bonhomie. (“Hey Barack.” “Hey Joe.” “Good to see you, man.”) Biden did most of the pitching for ordinary folks’ dollars. Obama laid out the administration’s accomplishments and looked seriously confined by the format, the task and the situation.
The video begged a recurring question. With seemingly endless opportunities and possibilities, what is the former president, who still looks energetic and eager enough at age 61 to have an ambitious agenda that ranges beyond Netflix documentaries and Audible narrations, going to do next?
Which in itself reminds longtime Obama watchers in Chicago of the “Who is Barack Obama?” questions that haunted his rise to the White House.
Obama hinted at his own enigmatic image when he began his bestselling memoir “Dreams from My Father,” with this quotation from the biblical Book of Chronicles: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.”
A “sojourner” is a person who travels from one temporary stay to another. The young author saw this as an appropriate description for himself and the globe-trotting African father he barely knew.
As author and columnist David Brooks pointed out, it intriguingly described the young “Barry” Obama’s life, too. After a boyhood in Hawaii and Indonesia and his college years in Los Angeles and New York, followed by Chicago for 23 years, including his studies at Harvard Law School, his life was spent largely on the move.
Unlike other presidents who could be firmly associated with a town, state, region, occupation, or racial-ethnic tribe of community, Obama never really joined the crowd at University of Chicago, the Illinois Senate or the U.S. Senate, where he was only beginning to serve his first term as he ran for president.
We can quarrel about the accuracy or fairness of it, but the tribal sense of being “not like us,” haunted his campaign enough to be exploited by his rivals, including Donald Trump’s pushing the baseless rumor that Obama was really born in Kenya.
Obama’s almost-chameleon-like personality, and his ability to fit in comfortably with the most diverse crowds, enabled him to rise through institutions in his life without having to fully engage with them. Even now, his power and influence notwithstanding, most Americans don’t associate Obama with any particular community or issue.
That said, Obama recently has shown signs of deeper engagement with a wider variety of communities and missions than the “sojourner” would indicate.
For example, after rarely taking much interest in counseling lawmakers during his presidential years, he has held a series of informal “no frills” get-acquainted discussions in his Washington office with the latest generation of Democratic lawmakers.
Also, while he has made numerous speeches and endorsements for Democratic candidates, he rarely has played the role of party power broker since leaving the White House or while serving in the Senate. He was known more widely for dipping a toe into institutions through which he rose but seldom allowing himself to be fully engaged.
In recent weeks, we’ve heard him praise new-generation lawmakers more frequently and enthusiastically. That fits in with his previous stated post-presidential goal as that of a “coach” developing a “whole new generation of talent” to help his team rebuild.
Of course, the Obamas already have set up busy lives for themselves with such post-presidency projects as the Obama Foundation, the planned Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, where construction is well underway, and the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, the organization Obama founded in 2014 to provide opportunities for boys and young men of color.
But whenever Obama surrogates are quoted in the media, they invariably use cautious, leveraging language with phrases such as “picking our moments,” Beltway speak for both maximizing impact and keeping a self-protective distance. In Biden’s upcoming campaign, Obama likely will function much like a celebrity pop-up event, ideally in unconventional and unexpected settings. That’s all designed to motivate young Democratic voters, of course, but it contributes to the sense of Obama as an elusive figure.
Time will tell whether or where the former president is ready to plant new roots after his lifelong sojourn. But there are plenty of places and people, beyond Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, who could use his fully focused help.
He’s building his Obama Presidential Center in one of them.
