Even Barack Obama knows that the Age of Obama is over, though he just can’t quite acknowledge it. That’s my take from a podcast interview with the former president making the rounds this week.
Obama spoke to podcaster Marc Maron in the final episode of the comedian’s show released Monday. It came at a fitting time as President Donald Trump was finalizing a deal to end the war between Israel and Hamas by, in part, entirely repudiating the Obama doctrine in the Middle East.
The interview was filled with all kinds of Obama-isms. His “above it all” persona was on full display as he lamented “division” in America.
As always, Obama presents himself as Mr. Reasonable, the norm defender who merely asks Americans to try to be half as good as his lofty ideals. This, while completely ignoring or glossing over his own ruthless and catastrophic departures from our constitutional and political norms.
Without a bit of irony, Obama lamented the politicization of the FBI and Justice Department as if he didn’t have an instrumental role in their corruption.
What was remarkable about this interview, besides the usual obnoxious holier-than-thou attitude, is how defeated Obama seemed. This man—for the Millennial generation that put him in office—was peak “cool.” He would fix all the mistakes of his predecessors, bring in “smart” people to government, stop climate change, end war, defeat racism, and make all your dreams come true.
Now he sits on a couch looking slightly miserable, wondering how it is that the country embraced Trump, a man who set out to undo everything he’d done.
Obama even lashed out at voters.
Maybe now, deep down, Obama understands the reality he is now stuck with. Despite once being lauded as a transcendent figure in American politics, despite the perpetual media accolades, the unmerited awards, the 44th president’s legacy is being almost entirely eclipsed by his Republican successor. And for very good reasons.
Trump’s counterrevolution is a repudiation of not just Obama the man, but all the careful, and wholly toxic institution-building Obama did during and after his time in office.
It was Obama who merged the functions of the progressive state with nongovernmental organizations and Big Business. He was the one who used federal bureaucracy to strong-arm the country into adopting left-wing social views, a style of governance eagerly adopted by those who ran the executive branch under his successor stand-in, President Joe Biden.
Most presidents leave Washington when their time in office is through to avoid the impression that they are trying to control their successors. Obama abandoned that precedent. It couldn’t be clearer that Obama and his advisers would be pulling the strings of future administrations from the moment he officially left office.
It was Obama who unleashed supposedly nonpartisan intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice on political foes.
And it was Obama who unleashed the DEI madness on the United States, a contagion that spilled over into much of the Western world.
It’s little remembered now, but Obama issued an executive order to establish a “Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce” way back in 2011. The order came down at almost exactly the moment legacy, corporate media began racializing literally everything under the sun.
Whether this cultural transformation happened more because of Obama’s outsized influence over media and politics at the time or larger historical forces could be a matter of debate.
The Left has certainly long sought to “remake” American culture, which it always found to be unacceptably resistant to its larger cultural and political goals. But there is little doubt in my mind that the former president had a massive role to play in the emergence of the Great Awokening.
That’s all crashing down now after the excesses of the Biden years, which are now looking like the middle stage, “Empire Strikes Back” portion of the Trump trilogy. The Age of Obama was not a time of transition to the supposedly sunlit uplands of liberal, technocratic dominance, a permanent majority borne of the diversification of America.
Instead, it looks like Obama’s legacy is one of failure. The final act of a century-old Progressive movement that collapsed under its own contradictions, failed promises, and increasing lack of connection to reality.
Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.” Send an email to Jarrett.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Jarrett Stepman.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Was there an Obama legacy? The only item that comes to mind and WAS A COMPLETE RIPOFF for the American people — “obama (s)care”. I was fortunate to have better insurance but had a son and daughter that had to pick it up until they finally found better insurance. His legacy is as long as Biden’s.
The reality of what bobo Hussein is has widely recognized today: A mindless clas envy radical with nothing but hatred for our nation’s founding and our patriotic majority.
President Trump’s policies have improved all income bracket’s vastly more than Obama-bin-biden’s pathetic 12 years.
The lower earners have seen an exponentially higher increase in useable income that “the rich” you liberals belly ache leftist class envy rhetoric over.
The left has become a doomsday cult existing in a hole that they themselves created.
The Obama bin biden regime started the lawfare game against Donald Trump in 2021.
Now it’s time to play for the ultimate victory and this time President Trump is the home team.
The ONLY things Obama did perfectly were:
(This is just a very small list of his MANY FAILURES. Obama is a has-been, with very little, if ANY, influence or clout left. He self-destructed when he turned on and condemned blacks and other minorities who didn’t vote the way HE insisted they should). JUST GO AWAY OBAMMIE.
Obama was the biggest clown show ever. No one cares what he has to say.
Barack Hussein Obama was the first wholly anti-American president. Biden the second. Neither of these men nor those that they surrounded themselves with had any concern for the U. S. citizen. That’s partly shown by the destruction of the currency, also by the establishment of lawfare against their political opponents. No modern Democrat should get within walking distance of a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 or the United States Constitution. They’re opposed to all of it, with the exception of being pro-slavery. Thank God we got rid of that nightmare, even if it did take a fighting war with the Democrats. Donald J. Trump is a return to being pro-American and proud of it.
Obama–a shameless, corrupt narcissist who lied to our country from inception. The Manchurian candidate himself, he should be prosecuted for TREASON to our great country.
Obama was one big mistake.
His legacy, transformation of America as we knew it is all around us and will be for some time, the man could be called Chaos. He, LBJ and FDR the The three amigos.
He doesn’t make sense, never did, never will.
I will never understand how Obama went from unknown community organizer, half ass senator who became president. I still think of his two terms as lost years for the USA that could not get worse. I was wrong when Biden was elected! I’m glad my parents and grandparents didn’t live through the useless Obama presidency.
I will believe until my dying day that OBAMA was PUT into the presidency by Soros and his like in order to start to break the country down. He’s a traitor and has been from day one. Makes me SICK how much the taxpayers spent on his and Michele’s Hawaiian vacations. He did NOTHING but initiate hatred and division and start the brainwashing of our youth. I wish he would just GO AWAY!!
Obama represented himself as a ubiased uniter of the USA. I remember when the summer racial riots (in Missouri and other states) that everytime he spoke he fanned the flames, and he was an instigator in fueling the riots in the USA.
Here is a man who is half white (mother) and half black (father) and you was hoped, that he could or would be able to join or even surmount the racial divisions instead he magnified them to break up the unity of the U.S. A.
His legacy now…his Presidency is a man who failed in THE job that would have honored his Presidency.
Obama was a LOT OF ROTTEN THINGS during his “terms” in Washington as well as after. He was and is pathetic, pretentious, pompous, paranoid, professional phony, propagandist, puny puppet, pushy parody of a president and my last word due to him=PRISON.
this “Obama” person was NEVER the President of the United States. He was a liar from the beginning, just like his father, the devil. He has no real birth certificate and if you did, it would have to be shown that he was a United States citizen!! The liar has no real birth certificate!
Always doubted him even as he was a senator. Reading between the lines he talked his communist agenda. Biggest liar and bigot I’ve seen since LBJ
Wow, let’s not mince words. Well written and reflective of how the political swings of ‘OUR DEMOCRACY’ (actually a democratic republic) and the folks who shout it really mean nothing in the long run! PROUD to be a Trump supporter.
Once a community agitator, always a community agitator….even if it is from his couch there in Washington D.C.!
Hey Barack, how about that “”magic wand”” that you questioned then President-Elect Trump back in 2016 on having?
At that time, 44 had an average GDP percentage of less than 1.7% (1.67% to be exact) for his two terms in office. To bring this figure into the light, the administration under 44, recorded into history the worst figures ever for an administration to report out of all of the U.S. presidential administrations concerning GDP.
And, his quip to the President-Elect was that Trump would not be able to bring the GDP to 4%.
Just two years after that, 45 did indeed have Mr. Elections Have Consequences to eating crow by bringing the percentage up to 4.2% and things have continued to increase under President Trump’s tenure ever since.
Keep wielding your magic wand against your former nemesis and all of his minions, Mr. President.
The numbers never lie!
The current shutdown is not the Schumer Shutdown it is the Obama Shutdown. I remind my liberal friends that the high cost of health care is a direct result of the ACA (OBAMACARE) and that they were warned repeatedly that this would be the result. They created it. They own it. Now they blame the Republicans.
Glad the ‘Kenyan born’ POS is no longer in the white house. But in CA we have one just as bad in the capitol in Sacramento. We need to get rid of him too. I hope I live long enough to see him lose the next election
He’s a disease that will take time to get rid of…….
Nairobi Obie–the ultimate failure and hypocrite.
Obama is a total-complete failure at everything he does. Just look at his stupid library, it is as ugly as all that is in him. He is the reason this country is in so much trouble and we have so much race division.
WHEN will the Obamas go away? And take Slithery Clinton and Jill with them?!
His body language gave him away on that interview with his legs and arms crossed and in a defensive position.
Even though many are seeing through his CRAP finally, the Marxist faithful are not going quietly into that good night. It will take many years of staying the course to right this great ship.
Everything Obama did was a scam. He is a treasonous criminal and most racist president ever.
The thing that finished the Radical Left is Transgenderism. As one courageous and eloquent young Black woman said on a soap box in New York City, “They came after our children and that means War.” Americans became sick and tired of being sick and tired. The Radical Left went one step too far. Hopefully, it will be very soon when we watch it disintegrate.
Finally! All can SEE, even if they still deny it, Obamas’ plan to destroy/transform America into a 3rd world nation with Bidens approval. Under the Sorros plan he used the ‘race card’ to divide the nation, under his AG Eric Holder too many of our our finest in BLUE were murdered with the ‘pigs in a blanket fry them like bacon’ slogan. The ACA Obamacare plan a failure, Foreign policies failed, unnecessary wars, corruption, his support for Iran vs Israel. I never cast a vote for the Chicago unknown smooth talker.
Through obama’s entire career in politics, he’s only ever told the truth twice; once when he said he was a marxist and the second was when he said he was going to fundamentally change America. This guy is a liar and a criminal who should have never been on the ballot for POTUS, as he wasn’t eligible. His being a citizen of Indonesia and possibly a citizen of Kenya disqualified him.
BHO doubled the national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion.
GWB doubled the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion.
Yay! Finally!
Liked the fact that as a senator, voted against bailing out giant corporations that lost money through inefficiency. That’s the only positive thing I can remember about his political career. Always wondered if he had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth when shooting basketball on his private White House basketball court funded with taxpayer money..
Easy for you to say, now. Voted him first term. At least we know now that people of America don’t vote on race or color.
I retired at 64 and went on Obamacare until I hit 65 and could get Medicare. It was real bad insurance (worst I ever had). but made up for by being real expensive.
Obama just wanted the world to be Gay with no morals whatsoever.
Can’t put that on Obama, he was busy golfing for 8 years, Joe B (for BagMan) was running the show with his #1 Bo, before he had to rely on his #2 Hunter. Fortunately NOBODY is looking into bank records from those days.
Cannot wait to see what his Library looks like (compared to Obamas’ masterpiece) stuffed with photos, and videos shot on Hunters reign cooking the books. Has the IRS provided new deduct codes for blow, hookers, drug dealers, computer repairs from driving into water, hotel damage, buying guns under false pretenses???
Still talking about slick huh after 15 years your just realizing all the wonderful things he did for America and still does in states elections. Or to afraid to speak the truth . That’s sad but the look the other way lead to Hillary and Uncle Joe’s total disrespect for America and all the criminal activities . Shouldn’t be shocked but guess you are .
Well done! Thank you.
Obama is a fraud. He did nothing while being President but came up with the Obama care health plan that was horrible. My Daughter was on that for a couple years and we ended up paying almost 300 a month and she was fined at tax time because she wasnt paying more. Him and his wife created prejudiceism
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It would be more accurate to describe your list not as “how very knowledgeable historians rank the Presidents”, but as how in your opinion the Presidents should be ranked.