In general, an ex president is expected to benefit a lot from his position: all the prestige and clout without the responsibility.
Even when things don’t go your way, you can act and feel superior, confident in your “understanding” that things are complicated, and yet you could have managed.
If you open up to the opposite side, you’re a great and magnanimous statesman; if you denounce them, you’re supposed to have used your advanced insight: it means even through your gravitas and prudence you feel it’s important to point out how dangerous they are…
You can basically almost never go wrong.
This is particularly true for Obama.
He went from being a nobody that had literally accomplished nothing in life but was somehow always pushed to get in positions of power he wasn’t qualified for, with two autobiographies written for him, shoo-in unopposed political victories, a Nobel Peace prize as a form of encouragement, to becoming for a while the frontman for the establishment, to being now a sort of still young and influential figure, with an office in Washington DC (a new sight for ex-presidents) and, you bet, very good connections…
Counting on being immortalized in history books as one of the most admired and consequential statesmen of the 1st half of the 21st century… He only had to be a good frontman as a president, and he was.
But he came from a strange place: raised abroad, visibly not authentically American (to the point some pointed out his mistakes in language, pronouncing “corpsmen” as I, an English learner, would instinctively), possibly a CIA asset (?) or at any rate one that should have had to explain how long did he stay in Pakistan and why, and did he really graduate from Columbia University or was he just graciously given the degree and why? More than anything else, with deep ties with the extreme left, launched on the political scene by a communist terrorist, Bill Ayers…
Success begets success, mostly because people have no clue and cannot accept that a certain impression be reversed: Bill Gates, like Obama, or well, Bergoglio, or even Taylor Swift… are absolutely great people! Because they heard their name in the news (in non-negative terms) too many times for that not to be the case!
So, knowing deep down he was just unqualified but now he’s being immortalized, he should be really basking in the glory! The contrast with his previous obscure self makes it even more enjoyable, no doubt.
Moreover, his presidency has been greatly consequential.
Primarily for his successful weaponizing the intelligence and state apparatus against his political opponents, creating a system of protections to guarantee an effective transfer of power to the Deep State, making democracy a sort of façade, a show for the gullible. Almost a completed process, unless there’s some undoing now on the part of Trump & co.
Then for his radical transformation and polarization of society: media control, racial hatred, deepening social division, censorship in the name of official truths.
We can add the push to maximize illegal immigration and the transformation of the fabric of America.
Then of course destabilizing various countries around the world, at the same time empowering the most radical Islamic organizations.
Also furthering the Revolution in matters of morals and social issues, most notably destroying the concept of marriage that is now a contract between two parties, cementing in the public the impression that it would be suddenly unthinkable to “deny a right to marriage” to a same sex coupleUncanny: he was elected as someone who defended marriage in its authentic meaning man+woman, but then 'changed his mind', thus imposing the revolution on the world and making it easier for others to identify with it, as he was sort of carrying you by the hand, leading by example....
(Plus other insignificant things like further central government control, on healthcare, green energy…)
He participated in all those things and he was the standard bearer. At the same time, now that all that radical transformation has happened, his job is done. He’s accomplished.
He’s relieved from the responsibility to stop Trump or anyone else trying to undo the Revolution. But he can, as an extra, sort of like it’s a hobby, do something about that, behind the scenes. Magnanimously lending a hand, so to speak.
His administration was going from one big scandal to another, unfazed; but thanks to the totally partisan media coverage, he can now claim, with a straight face, that his tenure was scandal-free! They had the gall to assert that, numerous times!
Now a good chunk of the general public doesn’t trust the media anymore, but at the time many did, and they won’t revisit their wrong impression they were induced into.
Through all of this, we may lose perspective on how he was actually perceived by those in the know, compared to now, when we got Joe Biden as a new reference point. The star of Obama REALLY shines once he’s compared to his successor.
Obama was the face of a faceless power. A very polished and articulate non-thinker, unable to have the apparatus under his control, yet at the same time he played the part convincingly enough; he was mostly played, but tried to signal his alpha position nonetheless.
You would have called him an empty suit, in fact I did many years ago, but… once you got to see Joe Biden in that same position, a corrupt idiot even before he became senile… Well, Obama in comparison does in fact become a great politician and a cool guy!
Every sane person is now so genuinely convinced Biden was NOT calling the shots, in fact he was often oblivious to what was happening around him, that it’s hard to dwell on the Obama administration being mostly a collective effort with a screen of posturing and pretending.
I once talked face to face to a guy who, in his official capacity, had to interact directly with them… *cough*Introvigne*cough* (before his, ahem, figurative Baltic capsizing) and he said in one occasion an Obama minion took him on a balcony, in order to avoid being heard, and told him quite bluntly “Obama is an idiot”.
It’s just that we’re used to letting the public image of people influence our perception.
In retrospect, in the above graph I probably overestimated Obama’s evil side over his stupidity: I’m not immune to the effect!
All in all, once you realize the level of ineptitude and corruption, the self-destructive push to tear down America in service of a failed ideology, and at the same time how now the opposite impression has been cemented in the collective consciousness… you cannot be in awe.
Especially if you’re him, kind of self-aware of how lucky he was.
Obama must be walking on clouds.
Biden’s legacy is making him a genius. Whatever good happens, it’s thanks to Barack the “uniter” and progressive reformer. Whatever bad happens, they were unable to follow in his footsteps.
A champion of the decay of the Western World, riding in style the wave of doom.
The perfect fake icon.
