Peter Slevin (2:44)

So the world is on fire as an awful lot of people think you have Donald Trump's presidency. He's running roughshod over the rule of law. He started a war in Iran. He doesn't seem to be listening to most anyone. The guardrails are down and the question is, who will lead the opposition who could make a difference in leading the country forward into the midterms, into the 2028 election. And so many people say, well, what about that Barack Obama guy? He seemed to be pretty popular. He seemed to have some ideas. What's he doing exactly.

David Remnick (3:23)

But the where is Obama? Question has long roots. It began immediately after he left office. And, you know, you saw a guy who, after eight years in office, was suddenly hanging around with Richard Branson and kite surfing or whatever he was doing and having a good, long extended vacation, started making money in Netflix. And suddenly you started hearing, this is before the second term. Suddenly you started hearing at all kinds of corners, where is Obama? Why isn't he more in the thick of things? And his answer was always, I can't be a political commentator. It was a traditional response to what the post presidency is.

Peter Slevin (4:08)

That's exactly right. He said he wanted to be quiet a little while is how he put it. He said he would speak up when his values seemed to be challenged. But he really didn't expect Trump 1.0 or 2.0 to be as bad as it was. He thought he could not exactly coast over the horizon, but that he could just take a big step back, focus on his family, focus on some projects that he cared about, and learn how to kite surf. Yeah. And pretty quickly people said, well, wait a minute, why are you kite surfing and hanging out with rich people when we need you?

David Remnick (4:48)

Now, you've spent time with Obama just recently in Chicago, and one of the things he told you is that if he spent more time on the in politics, he'd have trouble at home.

Peter Slevin (5:00)

He said there is genuine tension. That's how he put it with Michelle Obama about how involved he is in politics. He said he recognizes how many people are calling on him to. To ride to the rescue or do even more. And he said, look, my wife Michelle didn't expect this to be happening at this point in our lives. We gave at the office for all those years. It was really hard. There's a scene in the story where she talks about flying away from Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2017. And she gets on the plane to fly to Palm Springs, where they'll have the beginnings of a vacation. And she said she sobbed uncontrollably for 30 minutes. She said this was so hard. These eight years were so hard. There was so much pressure. And of course, she was always a reluctant recruit to politics. She's never cared for it, and she wanted to get away. And she thought it only fair that her husband get to get away, too.

David Remnick (6:02)

Peter, you wrote a biography of Michelle Obama, an excellent book. Is it your impression that in some she really disliked the White House years?

Peter Slevin (6:13)

I think she had very mixed feelings about the White House years. She certainly grew into the role after having a hard time at the beginning. She, she focused on issues of race and class. She focused on things that she cared about and really used her platform. I remember a moment where she was talking on stage about how first ladies are seen and how much it's a question of their fashion. And she had bangs at the time. And she said, you know, one hopes that after a while people stop looking at the bangs and they look at what you're standing in front of. And she felt that she, I think, used her time really well and made a bit of a difference in significant ways, but she was ready to move on. She never liked the political part of it. She didn't like the political part of it. Even when Barack Obama was in the state Senate here in Illinois, at one point, I believe she said, barack, why are you doing this? It's not noble.

David Remnick (7:11)

Now, you started asking the question of where is Obama? Months ago in your reporting, and inevitably when you start doing that, that question gets back to the subject, it gets back to Obama, it gets back to his people. And you indicate in your piece that that question, where is Obama? Makes him very unhappy.

Peter Slevin (7:37)

He feels he's doing an awful lot more than any modern president has ever done or been asked to do. And he feels that people actually don't recognize, haven't recognized what it is that he's doing, and he thinks he ought to get some credit for that. The contrast is pretty clear with, for example, George W. Bush. We know that he has very strong feelings about Trump in the reporting. Someone told me of a conversation with George Bush not long ago who had, quote, scathing things to say about Donald Trump. But he's in Dallas, he's painting, and he is keeping his own counsel, as he said he learned from his parents.

David Remnick (8:17)

Let's listen to what Barack Obama tells you about the question, where is Obama and why isn't he doing more? You brought this up in your conversation with him in Chicago. Let's listen.

Barack Obama (8:27)

I understand why people feel that way because people aren't looking at me like a historical comparison to other presidents. They don't care. The fact that no other ex president was the main surrogate for their party for four election cycles after they left office. I think the real answer there, A, I'm doing more than you think, and B, I promise you, if I was out there every day, you'd be tired of me. I also think, though, that the fact that people want me to, quote, unquote, be doing more is a good sign. There has not been as decided a shift in American attitudes as we are making out.

David Remnick (9:22)

Let's take that answer one piece at a time. I think what he's saying is that the fact that people are asking, where is Obama? Where is Obama? Insofar as they do, let's not overestimate it, but insofar as they do means that we're in a state of real crisis. But I have to point out, as you do in your piece, that when Donald Trump was elected, initially Obama said that he expected his own achievements only to get rolled back by a measure of about 15%. That was a mistake, wasn't it?

Peter Slevin (9:54)

He acknowledges that he underestimated the impact of Donald Trump and where Donald Trump would go from there. And interesting, that day he met with Donald Trump, the traditional post election meeting in the Oval Office that you reported about in your terrific piece from 2016. I was told that Obama went in to make a bit of a pitch to Trump. Don't give up on the Affordable Care act, don't give up on the Dreamers, definitely do not give up on the Iran nuclear deal. And Trump said, well, you know, I'll consider that. And Obama thought, well, you know, just maybe he wasn't going to put too much weight on that. But he thought just maybe that was true. And he essentially felt that the center would hold. Needless to say, he, like a lot of us, underestimated the damage that Donald Trump could do. And you know, after he had his final parties at the White House, he went off to Chicago and he gave a speech, his farewell speech. And he talked rather optimistically about how in very Obama form, we all need to get along. We need to recognize that everybody loves America. We've got to find a way to talk. And essentially he was saying, it'll be okay. So I asked him about that speech and the message that he delivered in Chicago in January 2017 and whether he had lost some confidence in the prospect, in the American prospect. And he said, I would be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that.

David Remnick (11:21)

A little tinge of, if not despair, that Obama's really lost some faith at least in where America is today.

Peter Slevin (11:31)

Yeah, I mean, Obama's not a despairing guy. We know that about him. Some things are so consistent with him. He's a glass half full man. But the events since then are on many fronts. Shook his confidence in. Well, in his confidence.

David Remnick (11:54)

I'm speaking with contributing writer Peter Slevin, who's reporting on Obama's legacy is@newyorker.com and part of the recent issue on America at 250 years. Our conversation continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

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David Remnick (16:01)

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick in the New Yorker this week we published a long piece of reporting by Peter Slevin about Barack Obama and his legacy in the age of Donald Trump. And I've been speaking today with Peter Slevin about that reporting. Peter spoke with the former president and dozens of people around him and he tended to start with this if Obama remains one of the most popular politicians in this country and the Democrats are failing to mount an effective opposition to the Trump presidency, what exactly are Obama's obligations? What exactly can he do? Almost a decade after leaving the White House, we'll continue our conversation now. How does Obama's day to day life compared to other presidents? Is there really a typical model for an ex president? Is Obama doing more than others had in their years out of office? I mean, a lot of people will point to Jimmy Carter and say, well, he was the ultimate idealist and to such a degree that he was probably a better ex president than he was a president. And and then you have somebody like George W. Bush who's a kind of invisible man. As an ex president, he's not making any Mark at all.

Peter Slevin (17:13)

It's striking that Obama is younger than a lot of former ex presidents. He was elected when he was 47 years old. He's only 64 now, turning 65. And he does enjoy his time away from the White House. He used to joke even before he left the White House that the best job in the country is ex president. So there's a certain reveling in, in, in, in that leisure time. But at the same time, he has a whole raft of projects that he has embarked upon that do seem distinctive, that are different from certainly any recent ex president. He, he is mentoring other people. He got deeply involved in the redistricting fights in California and Virginia, where he in fact became the face of the Democratic move to carve out more Democratic seats in those two states after Donald Trump called Greg Abbott in Texas last summer and said, hey, give me five more Republican seats in Texas. And of course he plays a lot of golf.

David Remnick (18:14)

He plays a hell of a lot of golf. But he also, in fairness, when election time comes around, he throws himself into it. Why does any of this matter? Why does an ex presidency matter at all? In fact, are we being sentimental here? His variety of center left liberalism, I think, probably would strike a lot of young people in the Democratic Party as something of the past and may not be an answer for a lot of people about what's necessary now.

Peter Slevin (18:44)

I think that's right. And these are questions that he asks himself. He himself doesn't think that he's necessarily the right avatar for the party. He does. He relishes the role of being an elder, of mentoring younger leaders. And yet at this moment, there is this not insignificant sense of desperation on the left and among Democrats for a leader, for momentum and even a movement to drive past Trump and Trumpism and the MAGA world. And Obama, as we learned in the reporting, is seen as someone who can still mobilize an awful lot of people.

David Remnick (19:24)

So in your interview, Obama pushes back on the idea that he could somehow be the savior for the Democratic Party. First of all, he's not positioned. The Constitution tells him he can't run for president again and he clearly doesn't want to be.

Barack Obama (19:36)

What I strongly believe is that my highest and best use now is to help find the next set of leaders who are going to move us forward. And part of it is because I think the, the very best leaders can tap into the zeitgeist of the moment. There's a element of lived experience. I can understand things intellectually that I, I haven't gone through when I was running. I could talk about student loans that Michelle and I had because I was. I had just paid them off. Right. We could talk about Michelle's challenges when I was on the road. And we're thinking about childcare. And some of those things still exist,

Peter Slevin (20:31)

but you sort of feel like you're the wrong person for the moment.

Barack Obama (20:35)

Generationally, you get rooted in what you went through. And so the freshness with which you can speak to some of these issues I think is important. Look, you know, you take somebody like

Peter Slevin (20:50)

Mom Dhumi, who I got to still talk to some. Yeah.

Barack Obama (20:54)

His authenticity and facility in communicating digitally is very much a part of the fact that he's 33, maybe he's 34 now.

David Remnick (21:16)

That's really an interesting moment because I think of Mamdani's ideological views as to the left of Obama. And yet here Obama went out of his way to name check him singularly in his conversation with you. What did you think of that moment, Peter?

Peter Slevin (21:36)

It's striking in two ways. He sees Mamdani as an extraordinary communicator. He's able to connect. We all remember those fabulous Instagram posts and those little short videos, the halal guys, the taxi guys out of the airport at LaGuardia and so on. He's charming and he's effective as a communicator in a way that maybe echoes Obama and his great success, particularly in the 2008 campaign, which was in some ways the first digital campaign. But the other thing is this point of Obama's that there really does need to be a new generation. And he said in the interview that this next generation of leaders is going to have to, as he put it pretty substantially reform, revise, refresh, update our institutions so that they can work in this new age. And he feels that this next generation is the best position to do that.

David Remnick (22:27)

What does that mean?

Peter Slevin (22:28)

What it means is moving on past maybe sort of a more establishment view of where we are as a country. And it means not just going back to, let's say, Pre Maga, but moving on, maybe more assertively, to find ways that where institutions, particularly government, something Obama cares about, is connecting far better with people, what they need, what it can do for them.

David Remnick (22:55)

You talked to Obama at his new presidential center on the south side of Chicago before it opened. And he sees this as some sort of campus to help develop new leaders, a kind of training site almost as well as a tourist attraction. And part of that is a museum there of American history. It's not just about Obama and his career in politics. Let's listen to Obama describe what the place is all about.

Barack Obama (23:19)

Well, I want to start with the Declaration of Independence and the abolitionist movement and the suffragist movement. You know, one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing working with younger leaders is refuting the notion that things have never been worse. I said, no, no, you know what? Civil War, really bad. Jim Crow, tough. And I say that not to try to pull rank on them, but rather to pull them out of any kind of sense of hopelessness about the situation.

David Remnick (23:56)

So that gets to the theme of what we were discussing earlier, but also I'd love to know what your view of that presidential center was. What's the experience like to be there?

Peter Slevin (24:03)

It's really striking. It is a museum in several different levels. And I asked him, well, why doesn't the story of the museum start on August 4, 1961, when you were born? And he said, well, because of where I came from and because of. He wants to express this view that he has that seems unchanged, that the road to progress is long and it's jagged and it's messy and there are setbacks, but it's going to be okay. And so what he does is he. In the, in the museum, he tries to create an experience where visitors understand history at a time when the Trump administration is supposedly restoring truth and sanity to American history, as they put it, and. And carries the visitor through to his unlikely election as president and then beyond, and basically asks, what can I, the visitor, do to make a difference?

David Remnick (25:07)

Something really curious. Donald Trump clearly has terrible animus about Obama and has for a long time since the birther conspiracy theory, and that was many years ago. Recently, he posted a video of the Obamas depicted as apes. He's posted other pretty terrible videos and statements about the Obamas. He constantly refers to him as Barack Hussein Obama to emphasize what, in his view, is his otherness? What is Obama willing to say about things like these videos and about Trump on a personal level?

Peter Slevin (25:47)

He said it bugs him when people go after his wife, his kids, but as far as he's concerned, he's not particularly bothered by it. He's gotten used to it. At the same time, though, I was talking with Ben Rhodes, who was his former deputy national security advisor and still does some work with Obama, and he said, oh, yeah, there are times in the wee hours when the former president will send off an email about what Rhodes called some dumbass thing Donald Trump has just done.

David Remnick (26:18)

So it does irritate him.

Peter Slevin (26:19)

It does. And inevitably, I mean, he's seen Donald Trump run roughshod over all kinds of things that are really important to Barack Obama that he didn't really expect to be losing.

David Remnick (26:31)

Some ex presidents like Jimmy Carter, and he's a rarity, have thrown themselves completely into public service. And money has nothing to do with their existence. After the White House, some people have taken a different route. Al Gore, who was vice president, has made a fortune. He's not alone. Tell me about Barack Obama and money.

Peter Slevin (26:55)

Well, they don't have to worry where their next meal's coming from. They have made a whole bunch of money. I mean, their original book deal for the two of them seemed extraordinary at the time. A $65 million advance. Well, they have way out earned that advance. They're reaping millions more above that even. I mean, Michelle Obama's first book Becoming sold more than 17 million copies. And between them, they have produced a number of other bestsellers. They've bought property in Martha's Vineyard. They have a beautiful house in Kalorama in Washington, D.C. they have a property on the water in Hawaii. They have these pet projects that make them, I think, pretty happy, including in Hollywood. And Michelle Obama has a very popular podcast, imo. She even says herself, I really feel fully in myself in my 60s now.

David Remnick (27:52)

Do they see their post White House lives in precisely the same way Michelle and Barack Obama?

Peter Slevin (27:59)

Well, I think one way we know they see it differently is that he is involved in politics more than he would prefer, as he told me, and he does feel a need to get out on the campaign trail. Whereas Michelle has moved away from politics. She never cared for it. She's not out on the campaign trail, though she did give a couple of memorable speeches at the Democratic National Convention. Since they left, it seems to me,

David Remnick (28:23)

Peter, in conclusion, really, that the Obamas would like to see Donald Trump and the Trump era end not only for political reasons and for the sake of the country, but maybe for their own lives.

Peter Slevin (28:35)

They would love to step back and love to see Donald Trump be gone and be able to move on with the projects that he's carved out.

David Remnick (28:43)

Peter Slevin, thanks so much.

Peter Slevin (28:44)

Thank you, David. Great pleasure.

David Remnick (28:49)

The Obama Presidential center opens in Chicago next month. Peter Slevin is a professor in the journalism school of Northwestern University, and you can find his reporting on Obama's legacy@newyorker.com you can also subscribe to the New Yorker there as well. New yorker.com I'm David Remnick and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for Today. Next week, Pulitzer Prize Winning historian Jill Lepore will join us to weigh in on the 250th anniversary of of the Declaration of Independence.

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