In a conversation with Ezra Klein, he reflects on the past four years.
In 2015, I sat down with President Barack Obama for an interview at the White House. One thing I asked him was about the merging of racial and partisan identity. But he was optimistic. "People are getting more and more comfortable with the diversity of this country, much more sophisticated about both the cultural differences but more importantly, the basic commonality that we have," he said. |
"My gut tells me," he continued, "and I've seen it in my own career and you see it generally, a politician who plays on those fears in America, I don't think is going to over time get a lot of traction." |
On that, Obama was wrong. His successor, Donald Trump, proved the potency of the kind of politics Obama had worked so hard to banish. And so, when I joined him in his office in Washington last week for a conversation about the first volume of his presidential memoirs, I wanted to explore how his views on the political instincts of the American people had changed. |
The central paradox of Obama's presidency, and his legacy, is that he both accomplished one of the most remarkable acts of political persuasion in American history, and also left behind a country that, even in his own estimation, is less persuadable and more polarized. |
"Even when I first came in, what was striking was the degree to which the conservative Democrat or the pro-choice Republican were getting winnowed out of each respective party," he told me. "What's interesting is how it filtered. Rather than the public saying we don't like that, let's try something else, in some ways, the public's come to see themselves individually in those terms as well." |
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