good morning. my name is kevin gaines and it's a pleasure to welcome you to the

miller center for a conversation about the post-presidency of barack obama. in his farewell address, president obama spoke of threats to american democracy and called for an actively engaged and vigilant citizenry to preserve democracy. it falls to each of us, he said, to be those anxious, jealous, guardian of democracy, contemplating his future as a private citizen after the honor of serving his fellow americans. obama pledged, as he put it, that he will be right, right there with you. as a citizen, for all my remaining days, he urged young americans to believe in themselves and their ability to effect change. we know what happened next. the trump administration sought to undo the policies of his predecessor, and at every turn, trump sought to undermine the democratic norms that obama had extolled and defended.

adhering to political custom. obama remained largely silent for most of the one term trump administration. during the trump administration. obama's calls for civic and political engagement, especially among young people, were heated as seen in direct action protests, suits and demands of young people for climate justice. gun safety legislation. and for the preservation of reproductive rights. the affordable. the affordable care act. and the dakota program. in the face of right wing attacks. if voter turnout declined among democratic voters in the 2016 election, a surge in participation among guardians of democracy in the elections of 2018 and 2020 saw the rejection of donald trump at the ballot box and the election of president joe biden and vice president kamala harris. the years since the two term

obama presidency have been turbulent ones for the united states and for democracies all over the world. even after the violent january 6th insurrection, seeking to overturn biden's election, a well-organized and well-funded, anti-democratic movement backed by the republican party continues to imperil american democracy. in short, we're in uncharted territory, which inevitably frames our discussion of barack obama's post-presidency. what might obama's memoir, a promised land, and its reception, suggest about his concerns for the future of the united states? how is obama leveraged to status as former president to maintain his influence on democratic party politics? how can we understand obama's post-presidency initiatives and statements in relation to the unique challenges and constraints that he faced as the first black president?

how might we assess the impact of obama's presidency on african-american politics with voting rights and african-american citizenship under assault by many who are pursuing an anti-democratic, white, christian nationalist agenda? how effective are the obamas? high minded by bipartisan appeals to our better angels at a time of rampant ugliness, dishonesty and extremist ism in american politics. joining me today are two distinguished scholars who have written extensively about the obama administration and are thus well-placed to comment on obama's activities since he and first lady michelle obama departed the white house on andra gillespie and claude clegg. and we want you in the audience as well. and also viewing online to be part of the discussion to. we look forward to your

questions and to dialog with you. andra gillespie. entrepreneur gillespie is associate professor of political science and director of the james weldon johnson institute for the study of race and difference at emory university. her teaching and research are on african american politics, particularly the post-civil rights generation of leadership and political participation. she is the author of the new black politician cory booker. newark and post-racial america, which was published in 2012. and professor gillespie, most recent book is race and the obama administration substance symbols and hope. and her op ed pieces have appeared with many major news organizations since among her current projects is a forthcoming essay on michelle obama and race politics in the united states. claude clegg is lyles jones,

distinguished professor of history and african-american and african diaspora studies at the university of north carolina. chapel hill. his teaching and research focus on african-american history. us and southern history and social movements and the us presidency. he is author of avatar. i just want to do equal time here. he is author of the black president hope and fury in the age of obama, which was published last year by johns hopkins press. professor clegg is currently writing a biography of marcus garvey. so thank you so much, andra and claude for joining us here today and to take part in this discussion. let's begin, since you both have written about the obama administration, let's just begin by discussing the challenges that obama faced in the white house. and andrew, you have looked at the substance and the symbolism

of obama's policies and rhetoric and the extent to which they address the needs and interests of african americans. and you've written about obama's general stance of deemphasizing the issue of race as a candidate and as president. how is this both a strength and a liability for obama during his presidency? and do you think obama obama's approach to issues of race has changed since leaving the white house? thank you for that question, and thank you for having me. let me start by defining the racialization. it's a campaign tactic, tactic that was first proposed actually by charles hamilton, who co-wrote black power with stokely carmichael. and what it suggested to democrats was that instead of emphasizing civil rights in their campaign platforms, perhaps it should focus on demonstrate reading to voters how proposed policies would affect all people equally. and by doing so, you would get buy in. and it would actually help to subvert the southern strategy

that richard nixon employed in 1968. in 1972, in particular. so this campaign strategy was used by people like tom bradley when he became mayor of los angeles. it was used by doug wilder here when he ran for governor of virginia. and it is a policy that has been used in local races, but it's also been especially effective at helping blacks win the few statewide offices and the national offices that they've won. and so when you see a candidate de racialized, they tend to not talk about race. if they can avoid it. they talk about race and transcended terms. they may present themselves in a counter stereotypical fashion. and so that has implications for the types of policies that they support. so, for instance, since we're in virginia, when doug wilder ran for governor, he talked about how tough on crime he was because it is often an attack line against african-american candidates to say that they will be soft on crime. and it's been used against people like tom bradley, who were law enforcement officers before they became politicians. so obama certainly used the

strategy. he certainly provided a transcendent appeal. if you think about his 2004 speech before the democratic national convention, where he's like, there's no black america, white america, red america, blue america. there's the united states of america that very much fed into that ethos and tone and and also sort of in 2008, there were a lot of people who were like, well, if the first black man gets elected president of the united states, then clearly we're no longer where we are in terms of having a seat deep, serious problems with race. obama knew that that wasn't true. we talk a lot about how that wasn't true in african-american politics, but just recall the public discourse around that time. the concern with the racialization and it's been articulated by scholars such as joseph mccormick and charles jones and others, is that people who attempted to transcend race may in fact be making an implicit bargain with non-black voters who may choose to support them. they may want that descriptive representation of saying that they voted for a black person, but they don't actually want to

deal with the issues that african american communities are dealing with that are the result of racism in america. and so the question and the concern that people have is that black issues will get short shrift. and then in an instance where this racialized, black elected official then has to take a side on on a racial issue that their coalition may fall apart. so, for instance, this happened to david dinkins in new york when there were tensions between green grocers and blacks. when he takes a side. his multiracial coalition falls apart. and that's, you know, one of the things among many that helped rudy giuliani beat him when he ran for reelection in 1993. so, you know, the challenge is keeping the coalition together. and the challenge is actually talking about race. and so if he didn't promise to do things on race, should we expect him to do things on race? and then once in the office is he going to wink and nod and then actually quietly do things behind the surface? and so what i find a lot in my book is that there are a lot of

quiet things that were being done behind the scenes that weren't necessarily heralded a whole lot. but that certainly. evans the fact that that that president obama recognized his role and that he was trying to do small incremental things that would certainly improve the lot of african-americans. great. claude, you've written a lot about how obama navigated the treacherous waters of race during his presidency. how did how did obama respond to critics who wanted him to be a more forceful advocate for african-americans and their interests? and many critics, he had and on that score, obama's typical response to those who would say that in the midst of this great recession, as we now know it out of and eight, 2009, where you have whole communities at the bottom of it in terms of every metric unemployment, foreclosure on houses, poverty rates and so

forth, the moral principle, poor thing to do according to this argument would be to help those who are in the most dire straits. you're the president of united states. you see this suffering. you see whole communities, whether it's african-americans with those urban communities, with that latino communities or hispanic communities suffering worst of all, do something you've been called upon. these people came in in case of an african-america community and voted for you. 96% of their vote. so if ever there was a community that you owed something to and again outside of the percentage of the vote that they attribute or gave you in 2008, and then again in 2012, there is a duty for you as president of united states, as a person who's received that much of a group's vote and as a feeling human being to do something about it. the degree of that suffering president obama was not immune

or hostile to that critique. however, he his response was, i'm the president of the entire united states. so it wasn't the case that i was just voted president of black america, but i was voted the president of the united states and my coalition. and if you look at it, a majority of the voters who voted for me are not black voters. so i'm responsible to the voters across the coalition. having said that, again, he in private and i think in a few public instances said that he wanted to do something for those who were most in need. his policy prescriptions tend to be race neutral on the face of them, but he would argue that those policies would have a disproportionately favorable effect on the most vulnerable. the affordable care act is one example of that, in which you have a policy that required or mandated people to get insured, and the government would help people get insured. those who could not afford it. and also a medicaid expansion

component for those who were in most dire straits in terms of not being able to afford health care. the opera of the policy or the the policy itself was constructed in a race neutral way, but it would disproportionally benefit people who could not afford health care, and that would be african-americans, low wealth americans and so forth. that was his poor preferred way of doing this. that is, to construct a broad brush policy in which no particular group was targeted, especially racial minorities. but a policy that would proportionately favor or help those who were in the in the most dire situation among americans. so the affordable care act, i think, is the sort of quintessential policy that that exhibits that kind of impact. barack obama, his political dna is that of the pragmatists. it is that of the politician who

believes, first and foremost. in the possible. he's a realist. he admits that in his writings and in his pronouncements. he's the guy who will take half a loaf or even a third of a loaf, as opposed to no loaf at all. and call that a good day. there are those who have problems with that. but that's his political dna, i think, in terms of how he operates, their strategic minded. very, again, pragmatic as a politics person. and again. at the end of the day, he has a clear eyed understanding of how he got to the office in 2008. and he has a clear eyed understanding of what it will take to get reelected and his understanding is that he could not certainly sort of become the president of black america between 2008 and 2012. he understood that much of his support among some voters, particularly white voters, will

soft support. there's an instance in july of 2009 in which a harvard professor by the name of henry louis gates gets locked out of his house. the door was jammed. he sort of shoulders his way into the house. his neighbors call the police. apparently, his neighbors did not know he lived there. so they call the police. this is in broad daylight, late. so they call the police. and the police come and the professor has words that the police say pulls out his license and throws it is it's his house, but he still gets arrested. and president obama, when he heard this, is he gave a statement. i think it was his actual true self speaking as opposed to his political self. and he said a number of things that this kind of things still happens in america. we're not in a post-racial moment and so forth. and he said that the cambridge police, cambridge, massachusetts police acted stupidly in arresting professor gates from

that moment through the rest of his presidency. his polling among his polling, his approval ratings among white voters never reached 50% again. in the rest of his presidency. he took that lesson and he took it seriously. that, again, there was a good amount of self support for him. race was a tricky high wire act for him. he would address it if he had to, but as soon as he addressed it, put it aside. the whole promise of obama was that and i will say is that he would help us think optimistically about the country, optimistically about race, its possibilities, this whole narrative about this guy, in his words, with this funny name, born in the middle of the pacific to a single mother, his father left when he's very young. is a is a dramatic is this barring story becomes president united states that that's obama he and his campaign want to

center and that's to obama. i think that that was so inspiring to me. first time voters who went out and voted for him race and too much talking about race focus on race fractures that narrative a possibility he understood it well better than anyone and and again he didn't think that the country is in a post-racial moment. but he did think that the country could be in a post-partisan moment, although he was wrong on that score as well. but the whole premise of obama was that he was going to help us stay optimistic about the country. the whole hope and change and yes we can was about that. they think they can transcendent ways about our connectedness as americans, as and as human beings to talk about race again sullies that that vision of of the country and his potential as a president. you know, you mentioned obama as a pragmatist. and i think that segways to our

our next question, which i hope we can have some discussion of obama's role as an elder statesman in the democratic party. joe biden, of course, is the leader of the democratic party. but it's clear that barack obama has stayed deeply involved in democratic party party politics. and i'll give one example. i mean, he very notably spoke out against the slogan defund the police as a flawed and potentially damaging form of political messaging for democrats. so could you describe obama's evolving influence on democratic party politics? sure. sure. again, his premise is to be cautious. his i think his ethos is methodology of governing. and as a public figure is want to do no harm, kind of as a doctor. so i'm not going to harm one.

his own legacy or president biden or nancy pelosi or the party and so forth. so do no harm to the party and its prospect. he's a long term or long view person. he thinks big picture. i think that generally serves him him well. much of what he put on the table as policy as a governing methodology, vision is still in the dna of the democratic party. and a lot of it was in the dna before he showed up. the affordable care act, expanding health care. green energy or reform of the criminal justice system, a more fair tax code, some other things. that was a sort of staples of the democratic party and a democratic message. and and he was very much in line with that when he was president. i think that the center of the party has shifted leftward in

recent years to make obama, who would have characterized himself as progressive in 2008, 2012 to look more moderate and has achievements to look more moderate. the affordable care act looks more moderate now, i think, than it did in 2008. i think what obama would have had to say about what he said about criminal justice reform, that's more moderate than some of the things coming from the left in regard to defund the police. now, that would have horrified him if he would if it were something that come up during his time as president and he would have repudiated this idea of defund the police less he and the democratic party be painted as soft on crime. and crime is being loaded. loaded term in terms of how we think about crime and where crime takes place and who the criminals and so forth. so in that way, the party has not left him behind, but the party has certainly edged a bit leftward to the point that joe

biden could say things that obama could never say. i can remember in terms of race as one. joe biden in this is a sort of irony that a septuagint, korean catholic, polish democratic politician from scranton, pennsylvania, could say something such as the after the election of 2020, the black community has always had my back and i'm going to have theirs. i could not imagine barack obama saying that he might think there and certainly in private quarters he might say something like that. but for him to own it in that sort of way, again, race operates in a funny way in our political sphere. the first black president could not own his his his blackness or his connections to a black constituency. and that sort of way, as opposed to his vp or his former vp, joe biden, a white president who could, you know, in a full throated way, own or own up to

what he he wanted to do in terms of race and so forth. so obama is still very much involved in american politics, but behind the scenes, it's really his style. he's tried to not he's tried not to become a foil for the right that is a foil for mr. trump and his allies about being overexposed, allowing himself to be used as a distraction from some of the things that were going on in the trump administration. and so he was very careful not to be outspoken in that way. and also, that's a tradition of american presidents. george bush did that for him. george bush simply, i think, in a tradition of american presidents post-presidency, simply faded away. and as barack obama ran against george bushes, his his presidency and his legacy and so forth, mr. bush was, you know, sort of a generally gentlemanly agreement. you don't you don't as former

president, you don't come back on stage and criticize and critique the current president, even if the current president is dragging you through the mud. mr. trump is not been held in check by that that previous protocol and barack obama has been careful not to give mr. trump, former president trump, the option or the the many opportunities to change the subject from impeachment or ukraine or russia or january six to barack obama. he's been very careful and strategic about that. but again, he has been involved in in the political the democratic party. i think he is probably outside of michelle obama, probably the most popular democrat in the country in terms of polling strategically. he he comes out and he'll give a stump speech on behalf of a politician that might be

running. he's a cultural influence. so now, quote unquote, he is 120, 130 million twitter followers. he he released his book lists of things that he thinks we should read or music lists of things that we should we should listen to. i think he just won an emmy or something for narrating a documentary on appearances on netflix and he has a netflix deal with michelle obama. so he's comfortable with that sort of cultural icon feel. it's very conscious about brand. he's very conscious about legacy as well. he's also very conscious that he's still on stage and there are those on the right and on the left who would like to drag him for their whatever reasons, to central center stage for their own for their own bidding. so he's still very much involved, but i think in a very, you know, typical strategic way that avoids the kind of overexpose measure that he would say that some of the presence of

allowed them selves to experience. yeah. you know given what you were talking about, you're describing obama's strategic reticence on issues of race. andre, how do you think obama's relationship to the black lives matter movement will, you know, influence, shape his legacy? it's complicated. i don't think black lives matter emerges if obama had not been president. so i view the outspokenness and the boldness and the courage that so many people who are affiliated with and adjacent to black lives matter have had because of the obama presidency. so i see it as a moment of a political opportunity kind of thinking along the lines of doug macadams when there's a black president, i think these young black activists thought that they had a right to be heard. so sometimes they're holding him to account for things that they thought should have happened that didn't. but they may have been more reticent to do that if george w bush had been president. and so they've just been emboldened in the trump

administration and beyond, because just it's an existential issue. and so people care about it and their lives and their bodies are on the lines for whether they want it to be or not. but, you know, i don't think we would have seen blm emerge when it did in obama's second term had he not been president of the united states. and i think they actually thought that they might have a chance of being heard in some way, shape or form. there are strategic differences between obama's approach and the approach of black lives matter. i think that's to be expected. we are talking about generational differences, and historically it's not unusual for young people to be impatient and to want to push the boundaries a little bit in terms of being provocative and making their point. i think we all forget now because of the ways that we misappropriated martin luther king. but he was considered a militant in the 1950s for daring to engage in nonviolent protest. and so i think with some perspective, we can look at black lives matter and see that. i think the critiques of some of the strategic differences are coming from the place of an

elder statesman, and they may not resonate as much, but they probably resonated better than, say, andrew young did when he called people brats for lying out on the interstate highways. right. that that required some correction after the fact. and i think in particular, the one of the things that i think about a lot with respect to racialization is its continued utility. so this idea of racial transcendence seemed really apropos in the mid 2000 in the age of black lives matter, when we have seen so many high profile police killings of unarmed black people, when we have gone through the trump administration, where we had a president who was perfectly willing to race bait and clearly egged on mob violence and a resurgence in white nationalist. then you can't not talk about race anymore. and so, as we have seen the parties kind of shift to the extremes ideologically speaking, because we don't have the same

type of moderation in terms of liberal republicans and conservative democrats anymore. we've seen black politicians also make that move to shift. and so i think what counts as being racialized versus racialized is actually different. and so in my most recent journal article, i talk about this, i think voting rights in particular is a racialized issue. it's an out democrats of all races believe that voting rights is important. they support the efforts that have stalled in congress that democrats have tried to put forward to try to protect the voting rights. so that's not an issue. and i think it's safe where you see the differences, how far people want to go with respect to things like criminal justice reform and reparations. and so they're the people who are clearly for this. and then they're the people who want to study it with respect to certain forms of policing. you have people who are outright for abolishing our current police structure and rebuilding a new. and then there are those who want to take a more moderate approach. and so obama certainly represents that more establishment, moderate view. and so he's going to come in to

conflict. but i think the other thing that's also really important is, as much as i view black lives matter as a grassroots movement and a leader form movement, as they've intentionally tried to be, they've also been influenced by elites like college professors. so they've heard the theories of and, you know, things that are pretty axiomatic at this point, like democratic electoral capture and the constraints and the challenges that blacks have within the democratic party of the democratic party needing those votes. and then not always being responsive to their interests. and they've heard the critiques of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and sixties. they've also heard the critiques and the failures of black leadership. and so they're really confrontational about those things. that doesn't necessarily translate into national public opinion in the african-american community. so obama still holds a very, very vaunted place in black communities. so even when people, you know, limit the things that didn't happen or maybe disagree with him on some area of policy, we

can't forget that he's still highly respected and still holds a lot of weight. and so there's the academic way that we talk about things, and then there's the way that people are talking about this on the streets. and we have to be mindful of that and balance both. you know, andre, your point about it being really difficult to imagine the black lives matter movement having as much impact as it did without, you know, obama's being in the white house, you know, really reminds us that, you know, the prospects and the political environment for racial and social justice activism is usually a lot better with a liberal democratic administration than a conservative republican administration. and i think we should probably bring things up to date a little bit. we also are looking forward to entertaining your questions. there are some note cards, hopefully, and we look forward to engaging you in dialog. but i just wanted to move ahead

to a more recent event, the the return of the obamas to the white house for the unveiling of the official white house portraits of them. and, you know, i had the sense that we're looking at further evolution in the relationship between barack and michelle obama. if you recall, if you watched the the ceremony, barack seemed to be the warm up act for michelle and michelle. you know, was the person who gave, you know, the very serious political speech. so, andrew, how are you thinking about michelle obama's evolution as a political figure, even though she, you know, openly pursues that role? the role of first lady is, you know, the most powerful, you know, unpaid, you know, unelected job in the united states. and from that position and the

american consort wields a lot of soft power. and i think michelle obama is very aware of the soft power role that she had as first lady and that she continues to have in her husband's post-presidency. oftentimes, there are constraints on what presidential spouses up until now, all female, have been able to do their expectations about gender roles. and when you run afoul of those, then that can cause a certain backlash. and so eleanor roosevelt certainly experienced this. hillary clinton clearly experienced this. and this had implications even for her political career when she was actually running for office and holding formal appointed positions. michelle obama, you know, i take her at her word that, you know, she really does not want to run for office or serve in elective office. but she does realize the influence that she has. and she is certainly leveraging that. i am looking forward to seeing what her new book comes out with and the tour that goes along with it. because i spent my prepared,

endemic year running around the country going to her, but coming to her and seeing what that became. and one of the things i'm very curious about for this tour was some of the last events that i went to were not necessarily official becoming tour events, but in february of 2020, i was in new york where she was being featured in one of oprah's lifestyle kind of self-help events. and i'm very curious about whether or not she's going to move into becoming a type of lifestyle figure and influencer and to see what the implications of that are. but the power of the concert role is that sometimes you can take advantage of the gendered constraints of the role to actually push policy and to do so with one's authority as a wife or, as a mother. so we certainly saw this when we looked at lady bird johnson's highway beautification plan. right. she's she's a proto environmentalist. right. but it looks like she's a housewife. know, just trying to put pretty flowers all over the place. right. and you fall for it because it's

come in this really subtle packaging and i think similarly here, the obamas wanted to confront and address the fact that norms were violated by not having these unveilings during the trump administration. right. it shouldn't have to be two administrations later when they're when their pictures are unveiled and they you could say it in a way that could become hyper politicized, that could become a talking point on right wing media and the way to perhaps avert that the most is to not have the president say it, but to have the former first lady say it. and so she can make that type of pointed political commentary in a disarming and threatening way because she never held the title and because in her case she is explicitly said that she's not seeking to hold any title and using this as a stepping stone to her next point, i think it also kind of falls into the you know, she's made her brand dignity and high mindedness. and so she can make pointed critiques and be taken very

about doing this. and so she's coming from this as a concerned citizen, as a concerned parent who just cares about democracy and preserving norms. and i think because that event was also a symbolic event. right. who best to sort of talk about the symbolic importance of the event? other than the person who's held the most important ceremonial position in the united states? you know, i'm i'm glad you mentioned those those examples of earlier first ladies and their political engagement. it reminded me that, you know, laura bush during the trump administration and the policy of family separation and, you know, she did speak out against that policy. so, you know, it's not unprecedented that a first lady will assume that role. and let's think about like to invert this, because, you know, george w bush has has talked about it, too. he's actually taken the more symbolic route of doing this of laura bush. can speak out on it. and george w bush writes pics and paints pictures, and then they go on display around the country. just think about sort of like it's the soft sell, right?

you'll take the hard sell from the first former first lady, right. because you don't view her as political when. the former president wants to make a political statement and be mindful and respectful of norms. he does it by painting pictures of immigrants and then, you know, using his platform to be able to, you know, mount exhibits around the country. yes. you know, that said, i don't think that barack obama is going to sort of withdraw, you know, from the stage of politics. as you mentioned earlier, clyde, and you've written about and spoken about obama's optimism and his incremental approach to social change and some i wonder if his optima. might be misplaced at this moment of danger for democracy and in this moment of crisis. how do you think obama might reconcile the apparent tension between his faith and the long

game and, you know, the the urgent crisis of of, you know, republican party efforts to destroy american democracy, i.e., to institute, you know, a form of minority rule. mm hmm. at that's a great question. i think that barack obama understands the presidency as chief cheerleader for the united states, for the american people, for the american nation state, period, and that he'd like to imagine himself in the lineage of great president who were chief cheerleaders, even in the worst of times. you know, abraham lincoln, our 16th president, is, if not his favorite, then one of his favorites, favorite presidents. and abraham lincoln at gettysburg. he perhaps gave the the probably the most read and most admired speech as a short speech.

the gettysburg address, back during a horrible civil war, and that he would barely live to see the final days of. and he was an optimist in the in this vast battle field that thousands of guys had just died over this idea of whether there is going to be a united states president. lincoln got up there and gave a speech and the last minutes of it was that there would be a new birth of freedom and that government by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth. and within a couple of years, this guy was assassinated. but we remember that that speech about him, the speech that he gave, the optimism also someone like fdr, some consider him one that truly great presidents in the throes of a great depression. again, people questioning whether or not this experiment of american democracy and capitalism would survive. and he says that there's nothing, nothing to fear but fear itself. if we can past the fear, this sort of paralyzing and

traumatizing fear in the midst of bank collapses and an unemployment and riots and protests in the street and a looming war in europe, if we could get past the fear that there's nothing else to fear present, then reagan in the cold war in the 1980s, he still he's talking optimistically, even though it's a horrifying time if you lived through through the eighties and the possibility of thermonuclear war. he's talking about this side in of on the hill and americans more or less american exceptionalism. but we should be looking upward, not downwards and into the abyss. obama sees himself and in that sort of lineage of people rising to the occasion, optimistic about the country not giving up on the country. if the american president throws his hat, you know, or throws his hope away, what does that do to

the rest of the country? you know, what kind of look is that for the country where the chief of state or the head of state, the chief magistrate, has has given up. so, again, imagining himself, his legacy, what a presence opposed to do again the whole hope and change and so forth that i think that's something he takes seriously. and i think that that's just part of his sort of his political posture and that's not going to go away. that optimism. he does think that we are facing a an existential crisis in terms of american democracy. he and he said it in his last book, a promised land. he says on the on the start point give speeches. and so forth. he he has he's not pollyannish about the in regard to american democracy. i think he's yeah, i know he thinks that we're in a crisis moment. however, again, the long view, the big picture is so he looks at it, he says in his most

recent memoir that one election is not going to fix this. so even if you can keep an authoritarian and out of the white house in 2024, that's not going to fix it. fix it. these are deeper, systemic things. and the country has to put in the work. it has to try to register people who have not been participants. and in the electorate, young voters, first time voters, those folks have to be brought into the conversation. it also has to attack things such as german during he and his former attorney general, eric holder have a project in which they are looking at how districts are drawn because this is it. this is as much as anything his exact to exacerbate the hyper partizanship of the country. that is, he's safe districts in which politicians are playing to base voters and their bases instincts at the same time. so he that yes we are in an existential crisis in regard to democracy.

mr. trump is emblematic of that. what happened on january six is emblematic of that. his legacy is as a former president, that is obama legacy is at stake. he understands that. but as far as quick fixes and single elections are going to fix this, he is not under the illusion. there has to be work done in regard to educating the american people about the moment that we're in. getting people into the system, the electorate who have things at stake before. the reason they are not voters to give them a sense that there are things at stake and that voting does matter. and also the structural, the gerrymandering, the electoral college, how it operates to protect minoritarian rule in the country. so i think we can we can have both and that is a president who is optimistic about the future, a former president who's optimistic about the future, about america. the american promise and so forth. but at the same time, a former president who understands that this is an inflection point in the american experiment, in

democracy and is a crisis that if anyone knows, you know, you know, he would know. same that he had to experience you know, four years of his successor trying to dismantle his legacy right before his very. so he understands the sort of crisis the country is in not only the sort of partizan hyperpartisan crisis, but just a crisis. and in terms of democratic institution. but he's he he doesn't believe that there is. my reading of his his memoir and his his speeches and my interpretation is that he doesn't believe there's a quick fix will have to put the work in and this is going to be generational work. and that's why we need to bring young people in and voters who have not been part of this conversation. this is going to be a heavy lift that's going to be required of all of us. yeah, i think that's been a refrain of obama's since his farewell address and even before that. it's great to be back in person and we are receiving wonderful

questions from our in-person and online audience. and i'm going to turn to those questions now for our our experts. to what degree might president obama see his post-presidency as a second chance to attain policy goals that evaded him? i don't. and andrea so, i think about this because i work at emory, which is affiliated with the carter center and the carter center, certainly was an opportunity for president carter to extend his work and to have kind of a second wind, if you will. there are aspects of the obama library that look like they're moving in that direction. i think different between carter and obama is, you know, it's a new era. and so the fact that the obamas are digitally engaged, that they're using things like, the medium of television and streaming to to to make outreach

to people, that's very different than somebody who president generation would have done. you know, i think i take seriously, though, what he says when he said this at the unveiling and he said this actually in his final press conference as well, that he had to run the leg and then he was passing the baton on to somebody else. so i think he definitely wants to be a policy influencer. i think if he can come up with ways to promote innovation and to promote social entrepreneurship in terms of empowering people to make their communities better, i think he will use his post-presidency to to be able to do. will he have the same role as maybe bill clinton as explainer in chief at critical political moments? perhaps. but i don't necessarily think that it will look the same way as clinton's has looked. okay. well, the questions are piling up here. and i'll just post one to you. claude, can you give some examples of what president obama has done behind the scenes since

leaving office to influence the public agenda? do you think he will become more publicly active as time goes by? and, you know, i think we were already speaking to some of the things that he's involved in. but and i you know, i think you were speaking to this question, you know, without even having heard it about the possible activities in a future post presidency, which obviously the you know, there's no limit to the term of post presidency. so, claude, could you speak to, you know, other activities that he is taking part in and is likely to to do? he's been very subtle in regard to hopefully, you know, in our lifetimes or certainly in his lifetime, we'll get a better sense of the sort of behind the scenes things that he does. but i think a lot of that has secretive enough for us to not

know at this point. we know what kind of conversations he has with joe biden or nancy pelosi and that sort of thing. i think much of his enduring influence is very much in front of us. that is, conversations about health care and especially in the midst of a pandemic, that whether there's a right to health care in this country, i think the affordable care act is part of that path to saying, yes, there's a right to health care and the ongoing tweaking of the affordable care act and medicaid expansion in my home state of north carolina is finally talking about the possibility of expanding medicaid. and, of course, this is part of the affordable care act in of criminal justice reform and sentencing reform in particular. that was a conversation that was engaged by the obama presidency. and a few things were done. but not nearly enough was done on that. there are some green energy or clean energy initiatives during

the obama presidency that were, i think, finally seeing coming to their in regard to the hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in clean energy. so i think that his his legacy and his influence are embedded in those sort of big policy things that are going on within the democratic party. and that's where he'd want to see those things taking place. of course, and ongoing things that he he very much believed in expanding of rights, such as protection of voting rights, lgbtq rights and so forth. so i think his his influence is is there and also the whole back to the question that is shepherding the country on this path towards a multiracial, multicultural, more pluralistic, an electorate that is not hobbled, that is not stymied by authoritarian or even violent forces. that's the question of our day, whether or not that's going to happen.

and he's the sort of harbinger of that. that is that's how he gets elected into office. is sort of motive, racial, pluralistic vision of what the society could be. and that's bumping up against that. again, an authoritarian strain of of trying to make sure that doesn't happen. yeah. you know, i think it's fair to say that the bully pulpit after obama's presidency may be greater than that which he had, you know, while he was in the white house, another question, how do you see the current policies of the biden harris administration serving as an extension of the obama administration? given the close relationship that still exists between president biden and president obama? andrea, i do like the framing that as an extension. in some ways biden had to come in and perhaps restore the things that the trump administration tried to

dismantle. and so if we think about what the reset looks like, the reset starts at obama and then kind of ratchets its way back up. and so you know, if we use that baton analogy sort of correctly here, joe biden is picking up where barack obama left off. he might have to go back and change some things that were changed under a republican administration and a republican controlled congress. but he certainly is is building on the vision that democrats most recently, led by barack obama, were putting together, came. well, we have had some great questions from the audience and wonderful substantive policy oriented responses from our scholars of the obama administration. i have a question here that maybe sort of goes into the realm of gossip. what are obama's sentiments towards joe biden's abilities.

what do you mean by abilities? is it the is it the question of whether or not he is at his age, kind of capable to continue the job or that i'm sure about? so let me let me start assuming that's the case. and if you're here, perhaps. wait, wait, wait. okay. here. i would say i think there is there is in the public record evidence of maybe tensions or a certainly a sense of a different style of going about things. and i interpret the question that way. okay. i'm not i don't see the question. i believe that that that this sort of close relationship with, you know, some i guess sort of

mutual acknowledgment of each party's strengths and weaknesses predates the current controversy and current discussion over president obama's i'm sorry, president biden's age. understood. so let me take it in that direction. so, you know, biden ran on a platform of competence and stability. so he was going to kind of make right the things that had been rendered unstable during the trump administration, particularly in 2020, when it was a very, very volatile year. and what we have seen in the last few years is we got an up close and personal view on how the sausage was made and it didn't look pretty and a lot of people were very turned off by what they saw and they expected somebody with biden's experience to be more artful and to be able to kind of hide some of the broad based fights now that some of the policy have come to fruition, have been able to get through congress and been signed

into law, people have a much more sanguine view about what was going on. i think for us, we need to moderate expectations. i think thought everything was going to be seamless and perfect. when policy is messy and politic are rough, particularly at this moment. and i think we expected perfection and that was an unrealistic expectation. i also think that and i think this is actually true for obama as well. we expected him to be able to navigate these highly polarized waters. perfectly right. he was going to encounter or you know he was going to encounter opposition from the republicans. he was going to encounter opposition from the left flank. it's hard to kind of herd all of those cats and to make the train run. and so i think sometimes we've had unrealistic expectations and then have projected them on there, but also say just as part of media, the 24 hour news cycle where you have to fill all this air time with analysis, upon analysis, paralysis after a while means that you're watching

every move. whereas, you know, a generation ago we would have heard of half an hour every day and you probably would have heard more about the end and you wouldn't have heard sort of what the bloody would have looked like in between. so i think we also to be aware that we're exposed to a lot more information that was the same as it was, you know, in a previous generation. and it's happening under much more fraught circumstances. and so, you know, on certain instances, i don't know if anybody else could have done a better job. not to say that everything is perfect or that president biden is immune or should be immune from critique. but i think we also need to kind of fix our gaze and sort of understand that sometimes we you know, when we're putting stuff together, we know that that that it was messy. and when you finally get to the show or to the end of it, it looks perfect. but there was all of this stuff that was going on behind the scenes that was crazy. we need to give our elected officials that same latitude. claude would you have anything to add about the obama biden friendship and what that augurs for the post-presidency and your future?

yes, there were. thanks for that, kevin. i think it is a friendship. i think it's a genuine friendship. they were together under pretty firm circumstances for eight years in the white house. i think that biden was a good, steady, stable, seasoned vice president to have on hand. i think there were tensions in regard to 2016, and that is i think biden wanted to run, you know, vice presidents usually want to become president at some point. and he wanted to run. and i think that for obama, hillary clinton was probably the person i know that he was the person that was she was the person that he expected to run and he was going to support her in that running for the presidency in 2016. so i think that there was some tension over over that 2020. i think there was similar tension in regard to whether biden was the person to run then. that was his third or fourth time running for the office. you know, some people were that, you know, give it a break, you know, isn't this messaging that the american electorate is

making to you in regard to your desirability and that office clear? everybody actually runs and wins. and i think that that probably has a renewing effect on the relationship between obama and biden, because it gets rid of trump. right. and joe biden's presidency, as we've been talking so far, is it's not a continuation of the obama presidency, but it is a sort of, you know, handing off the baton and seeing some advancement on things that were very dear, near and dear to the heart of barack obama, such as the affordable care act and it's surviving and being. i'm minted clean energy initiatives, at least some talk about criminal justice reform, voting rights protections and so forth. so i think we have to wait to learn more about. the behind the scenes nature of the relationship and president obama again will be very keen on

not having any sort of public fallout spent with president biden that just a bad look for the democratic party and for both of them and for obama's legacy. he's just not that kind of person. i don't think either. but in regard to the sort of the fine details of the rumors and so forth, that may come out, you know, in years to come, it would serve no one. will biden or obama or anyone else in that in the democratic party for those two to divide it to four and obama is not one to rumor mongering that way because he knows, you know, as professor gillespie was saying, our news cycle, you know, i'm just thinking of the recent burial of a monarch in a country far, far away in england. i've learned more about the english monarchy in two weeks. ever thought it, especially funeral rites of the english monarchy? so just this question of what the news cycle amplifies and can amplify. i think it's in the best

interests of both of these men. president obama and president biden. biden in regard to his ongoing president obama in regard to his his legacy, his post presidency efforts to to create legacy and relevance for them to be on the same page, at least publicly and probably most private conversations. again, we may learn in ten or 20 or 50 years that there was tensions. and so forth, but i think they've been managed really well, and i think if this was really something really serious, the press and and the leaks and in those who would love to see this in the press, would have fodder to do that. they haven't had much grist for the mill and much fodder to to give us any sort of credible public view that there is some sort of serious tensions here. well on that note, we've reached the end of our time. please join me and thanking our speakers. andra gillespie and claude