Perhaps nothing has captured the raw sense of hopelessness #NeverTrump Americans feel as much as hearing their current president discuss their next one.
Partly, it’s Barack Obama’s affect: the calm, professorial demeanor through which he has telegraphed a sense of intelligence and poise the last eight years now feels totally out of step with the current moment’s vicious partisan turmoil.
But mostly, it’s his content. “We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country,” he said of president-elect Donald Trump in a Rose Garden speech the day after the election. “The peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy, and over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world.”
The way it felt for his supporters to hear those words of conciliation, after Trump ran a campaign that was premised on misogyny and racism often directed at the president and his supporters, was best captured by the photographers who took photos of White House staff listening to Obama speak on the election a day earlier – their eyes red, arms crossed, faces ashen.
This approach continued Monday, when Obama appeared in the White House briefing room to deliver one of the final press conferences of his term. Gone were his pre-election day denunciations of Trump’s politics of division. Instead, he refused to repeat past criticisms of Trump and declined to comment on the appointment of Stephen Bannon to a chief advisory role in the White House. “The people have spoken. Donald Trump will be the next president, the 45th President of the United States. And it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflect his policies,” Obama said, when asked about Bannon. “I think it’s important for us to let him make his decisions.” Listening to him speak, it was hard to overcome the urge to put my head down on my desk.
As disappointing as it was to hear him say those words – to essentially take a pass on condemning the elevation of white supremacy to the White House – it made sense. The president is in a difficult bind. Already, law enforcement officials are getting reports indicating a wave of hate crimes in the wake of the election. And Obama knows as well as anyone what the impact that a few intemperate remarks could have on a nation just barely holding it together.
The president, too, has always shown deference to America’s democratic norms. He chose not to pursue legal action against Bush administration officials for charges of war crimes, despite pressure at home and across the world. And he declined to take action in Syria after losing a congressional vote and has been a restrained voice about police shootings, even as protests roiled, arguing that it was important for him to allow the judicial system to do its work.
But Barack Obama will not be in the White House forever. Come 21 January, we’ll need a truth-teller more than ever. In his post-presidency, Obama will have an important role to play in opposition to the Trump era.
He knows this, despite his conciliatory overtures toward Trump. If you look carefully enough, the clues are there. Buried in this wide-ranging interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in the November issue of Vanity Fair was an intriguing comment from the soon-to-be outgoing president. There are things, he said, “that in some ways I suspect I’m able to do better out of this office”. The “institutional constraints” of his job, he said, means that “there are things I cannot say”.
The interview was conducted before Donald Trump won the election, and if anything, he probably underestimated how much his voice would be needed in the coming years. But the role he will need to play was never really in doubt.
“There are institutional obligations I have to carry out that are important for a president of the United States to carry out, but may not always align with what I think would move the ball down the field on the issues that I care most deeply about,” Obama said to Kearns Goodwin.
In a conference call with Hillary Clinton supporters this week, he went further, telling volunteers that they only had a few weeks left to grieve the outcome of this election, because he was expecting them to prepare and get organized for the work that lies ahead. “Michelle and I are going to be right there with you,” he told them.
As hard as it was to hear the president duck questions about Trump’s victory this week, liberals should take comfort: he clearly knows that his work has only just begun.