Obama and Jarrett spoke separately at a virtual event hosted by The Economic Club of Chicago, as the foundation is raising its profile in the run-up to the Obama Presidential Center Foundation groundbreaking this fall. Earlier in the week, Obama was in Chicago, speaking to youths and, with Jarrett, meeting with a group of South Side small business owners. Republican-controlled legislatures in a variety of states have passed laws making it harder to vote in the wake of former President Donald Trump making the baseless, unproven claim the election was rigged.
Trump speaks to North Carolina Republicans on Saturday. Obama did not mention gerrymandering in Illinois — where map-making is controlled by Democrats — even as he spoke after Gov. Democrats are expected to give themselves an edge when congressional district lines are mapped later this year.
Know about breaking news as it happens. We follow the stories and update you as they develop. The Hawks swept a three-game homestand by beating the lowly Coyotes on Friday. In , Rep. George T. Republicans have encouraged people to vent against their 13 colleagues who voted for the bill. One of the things that both Bush and Obama have in common? Using "okay" more often than most. Dubya used the phrase 12 times per 10, words — more than any other president. During his final news conference on Jan.
An excerpt:. You know , Presidents can try to avoid hard decisions, and therefore, avoid controversy. That's just not my nature. I'm the kind of person that, you know , is willing to take on hard tasks, and in times of war people get emotional; I understand that.
There were no howls of voting irregularities the first day or two. They waited to get the signal from Trump. Goldberg: In The Atlantic , Anne Applebaum and others have been writing about the issue of complicity. Obama: This is the thing that has surprised me the most over the past four years. This was all evident before the election. I did not believe how easily the Republican establishment, people who had been in Washington for a long time and had professed a belief in certain institutional values and norms, would just cave.
You think about John McCain: For all my differences with him, you would not have seen John McCain excuse a president cozying up to Vladimir Putin, or preferring Russian interpretations of events over those of his own intelligence agencies.
And to see figures in the Republican Party do a complete on everything they claimed to believe previously is troubling. And so essentially what Republican elected officials have done is to say to themselves that in order to survive, we have to go along with conspiracy theorizing, false assertion, fantasies that Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh and others in that echo chamber have concocted, because people believe them.
And it was interesting to recognize how powerful that impulse was, how readily people would embrace this kind of aggrievement and anger, the resentment that Palin and Santelli were peddling. So the Tea Party becomes a genuine manifestation of that. It was becoming apparent very early in my presidency that you could take anger and frustration and direct it in what I consider to be a pretty unhealthy direction.
Obama: Yes. I guess I would not have expected someone who has complete disdain for ordinary people to be able to get attention and then the following from those very same people. There was a code.
This is something I always emphasize. This is part of me. But I thought there was a shift there. I write about it to some degree. I actually have great admiration for a lot of those traditions, what were ascribed to be masculine qualities. When you think about the Greatest Generation, you think about sacrifice.
Tom Nichols: Donald Trump, the most unmanly president. Obama: I understand that. And they never bragged, and certainly they would never make cheating others or taking advantage of them a calling card. Globalism is—. A lot of rap videos are using the same measures of what it means to be successful as Donald Trump is.
Everything is gold-plated. That insinuates itself and seeps into the culture. And Donald Trump epitomizes that cultural movement that is deeply ingrained now in American culture. That is not how they seem to be defining themselves quite as much.
That makes me more optimistic. Goldberg: I want to talk a bit about the writing, and writing choices. By the way, I went back and looked at Ulysses S. On writing choices, one of my questions has to do with the tremendous amount of contextualization you do, and specifically the way you contextualize your opponents.
This book feels like a hinge between a distant political past and the political present. You generally represent your positions with restraint; you contextualize everything, including the positions of your enemies—you are actually nicer to your enemies than Trump is to his friends.
Obama: There is no doubt that one of the themes of the book is me just wanting to hang on to who I am—my soul, my sense of right and wrong, my character—while operating at the highest level of politics.
Goldberg: This is the question of how any president stays human, given the absurd nature of the job. Obama: There is the father, the friend, the husband. And the second big bet is that I can participate in this process without being hopelessly corrupted.
And so some of what you see in the book is me grappling with the inevitable choices and compromises that come up. Goldberg: Starting with your first campaign—.
This is a ballot-access issue. Signatures were used to help insiders stay on the inside— how do I feel about that? And this goes all the way to the end of the book, and to the end of my presidency. People during my presidency oftentimes had a misunderstanding of what the effect of wielding power is. They thought that bluster and being nasty somehow get more stuff done. And I remember parts of my presidency when my own base would get frustrated, at least among the intelligentsia.
Obama: Yes, what have you. And not publicly, but privately, I would remind people that Lyndon Johnson got stuff done because he had the votes. FDR got stuff done when he had the votes. And the truth of the matter is that most of the time, what we think of as arm-twisting and brow-beating—what it really comes down to most of the time is: Do you have the votes? When you look at getting the Affordable Care Act passed, not just getting it through the Senate but then working with Nancy Pelosi to get House Democrats to pass a Senate bill that they thought was not progressive enough, I worked my caucus effectively, and not once did I grab someone by the lapels in an elevator or engage in a bunch of dirty tricks to get someone to do something.
That was true in my first month in office. We had a huge and an obvious economic crisis, and we were able to squeak out a few Republican votes to get [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] passed. Goldberg: There will be renewed Republican interest in deficits come January Obama: Absolutely. Goldberg: Should you have been caught trying more?
Goldberg: Meaning, drinking with McConnell more often, working the opposition—. Obama: Look, this comes out more in volume two, and I will be more explicit on this, but take [former House Speaker] John Boehner for example. He and I had a perfectly good relationship, but he had to act a certain way for his caucus. He would badmouth many of them to me, in private. Much as John McCain did. The issue was never personal—Mitch McConnell is not buddy-buddy with anyone.
I have quotes from Biden about his interactions with Mitch McConnell. We would invite them to everything: movie nights, state dinners, Camp David, you name it. The issue was not a lack of schmoozing. The issue was that they found it politically advantageous to demonize me and the Democratic Party.
This was amplified by media outlets like Fox News. Their voters believed this, and over time Republicans became so successful in their demonization that it became very difficult for them to compromise, or even be seen being friendly. Goldberg: Charlie Crist in Florida is an example. Obama: This happens very early. You asked me what surprised me when I wrote the book. I had forgotten how fast everything takes place here. I am sworn in, and within a month we pass the Recovery Act.
And I meet Charlie Crist, at the time a very popular Republican governor known for bipartisanship, and me shaking his hand and giving him a modified bro hug, it destroys him in the party.
That was within a month of me being sworn in, at a time when my approval ratings were still around 63, 65 percent. I am, at that point, a very popular president in the midst of his honeymoon, and congratulating somebody, and just being polite and courteous to them.
This is a person whose state is hemorrhaging, and he chooses to support an economic-bailout package that will save jobs and homes in his own state. He is immediately vilified and driven out of the party. Obama: Iowa is this golden moment, when it feels the way you want politics, and the way you want America, to feel. I really enjoyed writing that chapter.
It moved me. And Iowa still moves me. And we ended up creating this movement that was premised on the idea of participatory democracy. Read: Why the Iowa senate race is suddenly competitive. Goldberg: Iowa subsequently went for Trump twice.
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