The political afterlife of Barack Obama in the age of Trump

Andrew Gelman asks why Barack Obama isn’t more politically active, specifically in terms of giving public speeches or even holding some political rallies, seven years after leaving the White House:

I still wonder why Obama gives a list of his favorite songs but doesn’t give public speeches. The man is famous for his speaking skills, and there are lots of issues on which he could speak with authority, ranging from abortion to immigration to health care to the federal budget to general economic and foreign policy. I’m not saying the former president necessarily has anything useful to add to the discourse right now, but public speaking isn’t just about engaging with ideas; it’s also about affecting the narrative. And Obama remains a celebrity—I think that if were to schedule some speeches, he’d get a good turnout and tons of media attention. He’s got enough money that he could afford to give these speeches for free—it’s not like he’s so busy! OK, let’s go to wikipedia . . . . it seems that he did a podcast with Bruce Springsteen, which is fine for maintaining his boomer cool, but not so relevant if his goal is political influence. And he “traveled to Australia as a part of his speaking tour of the country”? Huh?

So, why no U.S. tour, Barack? One answer is that, Trump aside, there’s not much of a history of public speaking by politicians who are out of office. It’s mostly just not done, maybe out of some general tradition of respect for alternation of power: when you’re in government, you get your shot to influence policy, and when you’re out, you stay out and you let the new team do their job. Which makes sense. But the rules seem to have changed.

The other thing is that this may be a relatively short-term opportunity. Or, to put it another way, I see diminishing returns from this sort of public speaking. Trump’s rallies got a lot of attention in large part because they were unusual. If Obama gets into the game and is followed up by others, so that celebrity-politician rallies are a regular event, then maybe nobody will care so much about them. For now, though, yeah, it just seems wack for Obama to be giving out music endorsements but not political speeches in front of adoring throngs

Some thoughts:

(1) As Gelman notes in his review of post-presidential activity since the turn of the previous century, Trump has essentially shattered a long-standing protocol in his own post-presidential politicking. One thing I learned from Gelman’s post is that Herbert Hoover did actually go on an extensive speaking tour to attack the New Deal in the mid-1930s. Other than that though, modern ex-presidents had pretty much kept away from overt ongoing involvement in politics post-presidency. (Since Harry Truman, they’ve created a new tradition of enriching themselves while being supported by the public). Then we got Trump.

(2) It does seem at least a little odd under the current extraordinary circumstances that Obama is apparently choosing to maintain a kind of above it all public persona. Yes there’s the tradition, but Trump has shattered that, and, more important, this is a genuine political crisis of the first order, requiring all hands on deck. Meanwhile, Obama seems content to busy himself becoming extremely rich via book deals and Netflix production contracts (the Obamas’ net worth is now probably north of $100 million). Maybe that will change over the course of the 2024 campaign year, but for now his ongoing reticence seems like one of those unmarked category sort of things, that doesn’t get noticed because it’s considered normal to the point of being almost compulsory. Again, this doesn’t really make any sense in the age of Trump.

And it’s not just (not) giving speeches: Obama could be politically involved in lots of other ways.

Related: Wealth taxonomy for the New Gilded Age

Well off: Net worth $1 million

Rich: Net worth $10 million

Very rich: Net worth $30 million

Extremely rich: Net worth: $100 million

Plutocrat: Net worth: $1 billion

Mega-plutocrat: Net worth $10 billion

A strong argument for True Communism: Net worth $100 billion

(3) The knee jerk response to all this is that Obama is trying not to upstage his former vice president, not step on his toes or send mixed messages, etc. This seems like a weak explanation. As Gelman points out, Obama retains great popularity among the centrist types who are the key to defeating Trump and the GOP this November. He’s young (by the standards of the current gerontocracy), healthy, vigorous, charismatic, and all that good stuff, but apparently he’s content to pile up his millions while liberal democracy in this country is tottering on the brink of collapse. That he remains essentially on the sidelines is the kind of thing that we don’t notice because it’s normal, but these are very abnormal times.