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I sat down with President Barack Obama for a wide region conversation. We talked about the challenges facing the world, his message to young activists, and workshopping slogans with Michelle Enjoy. Are you going to fill a bust me or like, because I don't have all the time?
You want me to be very So is this like a roundabout way of saying you just want me to give short pithy No, I don't want short question. You want me to speed up. You want me to talk faster?
No, no, no, no, please, mister President.
I will not I will not purposely fillibuster, but sometimes I will have a pause as I'm formulating my thoughts. As you well know, Michelle, Michelle has been speeding up my auto my my audiobook. So you know, I guess you can press a button so it.
Plays like, yeah, you can like one or one and a half. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a one and a half guy. You're definitely one and a half guy.
I was a little offended by that, but that's okay, that's fine. It does it doesn't communicate the depth of feeling with which I'm doing the reading, but it's Okay.
How do you like being referred to like just as a human being? Do you like?
Mister President's people call me Baraq. But then sometimes some folks feel awkward doing it. Obviously that's what my friends call me. So I consider you a friend, but you may feel you.
Know, so no, no, no, the people, the people will feel like like even Africans will. They'll write me letters saying how dare you?
This is my fourth two So I don't want to get you in trouble. So you can say it, mister President.
That makes sense.
You can call me potus.
My favorite one was Obisil. That was my favorite.
Please call me that, mister President.
Welcome to the Daily Social Distancing Show.
I am very happy to be here with you.
You're out there promoting a brand new book, a promised land, a seven hundred page book, if I may add, of reading your stuff. Don't get me wrong, but like I would have liked three fifty three fifty why seven hundred pages?
You know I would have been I would have broken it up even more. But you know, the publishers thought that bringing it up into two volumes would be about right. And look, the goal of the book was to give people a sense of what it's like to be in the White House as a normal person finding themselves in
extraordinary circumstances. And I think part of the goal, particularly for young people, I wanted them to get a sense that, you know, not everybody's going to end up being president, but if you decide that your voice makes a difference, if you decide that you can have an impact, then through the ups and downs, you will end up having some pretty extraordinary experiences. And I want I wanted to be an encouragement for people to say, ah, you know the guy, Yeah, okay, but he's not so special and
look what he ended up doing. Maybe I can do something as well.
It feels like this book is Barack Obama convincing Barack Obama to remain optimistic. And what I mean by convincing Barack Obama I think of like a young Barack Obama. I think of a fledgling Barack Obama. I'm not trying to emulate you, per se, but rather anyone who's trying to make a change in the world or their world. That's what it feels like if you are writing to
young people to be optimistic. In the book, what are some of the frustrations that you understand on their side that may hinder that optimism, you know, because if a young person says, yeah, but this system right now is crumbling more and more, how do you maintain that optimism or do you think that there has to be a point where they go, I'm not optimistic. I'm just fighting to break what it is to create something new.
Part of the reason that it's seven hundred page as long is because by reading the book they'll see, Man, there are a lot of structural problems or barriers in making this place better. We're learning right now in vivid a vivid example of the fact that our democracy is not the way we would imagine it to be. Right. There are all kinds of elements to it where the most votes don't necessarily translate into the equivalent amount of power.
Very popular proposals can wither on the vine because of a filibuster in the Senate, and so I don't try to gloss those over. You know. The Paris Accord did not solve climate change, but it created the first global framework whereby all countries agreed we have to do something
about this, and here's a mechanism to do it. You can still be terrified about the pace at which we are burning up the planet, and yet think that was a worthwhile endeavor because it gives us at least the opportunity maybe three, four or five years down the road, to keep building on them. So that is the kind of mentality I want young people to have a certain impatience, a certain frustration, a certain anger about the status quo.
There are times now where you have younger activists criticizing me for Obama, why didn't you take care of this or that or the other. And I welcome them feeling frustrated and impatient, because that's how I was before I got started. And then they'll get their own knocks on the head, and you know, some stuff won't work out
exactly the way they want. But the impulse is the one that I want to encourage because it's as a consequence of that constant striving and imagining something better that things don't get exactly as we wanted, but they get better.
You're a very serious person, because I mean, you're a president of the United States, But at the same time, you're a lot more fun than a lot of people think.
You know, I'm constantly trying to explain to people. I'm a funny guy, but I don't know.
But you really are, you really really are. And what I liked in the book is there are moments where there's just like a roasting of people or life like the G twenty. I've never heard of a world need to describe the G twenty the way you do in the book The High School of it All. I wandered on a personal level, have you maintained connections with those world leaders as like, like do you do you send Angler Merkel memes? Do you like who are you still close with just as a human being?
You know, I don't send Angelo Merkell memes, but I talked to her sometimes sometimes you know, she'll give me a call. I'll give her a call and we'll trade notes. Yeah, they're a handful of folks who you've been in the thoughts old with right, you've done some good, important work. Some of them are still in power. So I don't want to mention that you know that I'm giving them a call because you know, who knows they might give them get them in trouble. You mentioned somebody like an
Angela Merkel. Look, you know the stance she took in Europe relative to immigration and the enormous political costs she paid for that, and yet there was something inside her that said, look, I'm not going to simply abandon a million people who are in desperate need. You know, you see that in somebody, and you say, it encourages you that for all the cruelty and venality and corruption around the world, there are a lot of good people doing good work, and some of them actually rise to significant
positions of power. And in that sense, democracy can work the way it's supposed to if we have a vigilant citizenry, and that's not always the case.
You started leadership programs, not just in South Africa, but all over the world. The Obama Foundation has set about on a journey to inspire young people to grow up to become leaders. Growing up in South Africa, I was taught about the different levels of what a struggle is going to be. You know, the freedom fighters may not necessarily be the best politicians. The best politicians may not
necessarily best be the best leaders. The best activists may not be the best organizers, and so on and so forth. Everyone has a role to play in trying to get to a certain place. And so I wonder when you set up these you know, this leadership academy that's that's all over the globe. You know, you're clearly trying to create mini Obamas everywhere, which is probably like a fever dream of the rights. But what you what you're trying to do is create something pacific. And I'd like you
know what that is? What do you believe a leader is not just somebody who's in power, but a leader.
The program we did in Johannesburg, we gathered up two hundred young leaders from fifty countries on the continent of Africa, and it was as varied. You had young women who had started rural health clinics, you had MPs who had
taken a more conventional political route, you had entrepreneurs. The thing they all had in common, though, was this sense not only that the world could be better and that they had a role to play in it, but also the belief that they couldn't do it by themselves, and that they had to in some ways unlock the potential
and power of other people. A speech I gave in Johannesburg in conjunction with that is for the anniversary Mandela's one hundredth anniversary, where I contrasted that sort of democratic, inclusive leadership to this strongman leadership that in some ways we've seen ascendant in certain parts of the world, in some ways has was acendant here in the United States. And those are two different stories of what it means
to be a leader and power. And that conflict, that battle between a more democratic, inclusive vision and one that's top down, dominant, subordinate. That's a contest that's taking place here in the United States and around the world. And it's not going to be finished just because the election's over and Donald Trump was defeated, because you see examples of this in the Philippines and Hungary, uh in a variety countries in Africa and Asia, and so that contest is going to continue.
What I find fascinating about the conversation that a lot of Americans are having now, and you talk about this in the book as well, is how America's influence in the world has diminished over the past few years. You know, how countries around the world have no longer said, what is America doing, We'll work with them. It's it's been more like, no, guys, we can't wait for America. We're
doing our own thing. But I wonder, as somebody who has grown up in other parts of the world, as someone who has family and other parts of the world, is there an argument that maybe that's a good thing that the world doesn't follow America anymore, or what would the what would the inverse of that argument be, like, should the world follow America? Or is it time for the world to start doing its own thing and America to be less the world police.
I think it is a good thing that other countries catch up and have their own capabilities and their own agency. That's not something that I think America should fear. My argument would be that even in a more multipolar world where you don't have just one big power, but you have other countries who are coming into their own the principles that America articulated at its best about rule of law, human rights, freedom of speech, democracy, those values, at least
I choose to believe, are not exclusively American. Yeah, you, as somebody who lived in South Africa, know the play that in other countries. Sometimes you hear where somebody who's doing something entirely for power and money and influence will say if they're criticized, to say, ah, you know, you've been just influenced by Western thinking. That's colonial thinking. No, no, no, no, you are stealing from your people, don't And when we criticize you, don't aim that somehow this is some American
hegemony being asserted against you. We're calling you on the fact that you're a thief. I think it's important for us to recognize that, for all its failings, the values that America is often articulated on the world stage had been ones that I would still believe in and that a lot of people took comfort from. And when we are not asserting them, oftentimes they don't, you know, they don't play out on the world stage.
I sometimes wondered if you ever grappled with the difficulty of the paradox that America was creating in what it was trying to do in the world, and then what its actions was sometimes creating in the world.
You know.
I mean, I think about that in the Middle East, you know, wars that have been started on the false pretenses, people who have been killed who had nothing to do, you know, And so I wonder someone who had to make decisions and someone who was in that leadership position, do you sometimes grapple with how America did or did not help itself in how it acted with the world, because in the world, like I'll tell you, as an international person, we would oftentimes go like, man, yes, America
is great and it's doing wonderful things. But then you'd be like, but also, man, sometimes they just break the rules and no one can say anything about it.
Absolutely well, and I record examples in the book of where I'm grappling with this right and one of the interesting challenges of being president of the United States. But I think being head of government or state in any country is you inherit a legacy. Right. So if I come in as president and I can't undo the Iraq War, the decision to go into Iraq. Now, I can manage as best I can how we can wind down that war, mitigate some of the damage that's been done, but I can't reverse it.
Did you ever Did you ever envy though? How like Trump just came in and basically broke shit though because I mean he didn't care.
No, I didn't envy it, because I do care, and I do not think that is an option to simply pretend that the legacy of problems or issues that you inherit are somehow things you can just brush aside. So the answer is yes, I would struggle with the fact that any action I took, particularly when you're talking about you know, counter terrorism, right, That's probably the area where I wrestled with this most because my obligation first and foremost in the United States was to make sure that
people didn't get hurt. That's sort of the bare minimum that you expect out of a nation state that you're living in, is that you can defend against harm because you're dealing with non state actors. That meant that by the time I took office, you had networks that were embedded in societies, not necessarily supported by those societies, but they're there and they are plotting in their planning, and
that wasn't made up. And there were organizations that if they could blow up the New York subway system, they would, If they could get their hands on a biological weapon, they would use it. You then are wrestling with how do I protect the American people from those actors, but do it in a way that is morally and ethically justified. And war is madness, kinetic action of any sort, military action of any sort that results in death and destruction at a certain level is not the thing I would
want humanity to do. And what happens to people is tragic, It is not It is not something you gloss over what it does to our soldiers and our troops. You know, as I talk about in the book, it's not just the harm that our young men and women suffered and I would witness in Walter read, but it's also how it changes them internally when they have engaged in violence, even if necessary and justified, against others. So that the best I could come up with was to never glorify it,
to never pretend like it isn't a dilemma. And so those kinds of of questions I think are ones that not only should American leaders have to grapple with, but I think the American people have to be aware. And sometimes the media does not do a very good job. It's a very binary you know, the Iraq War, It's glorious for the first year and a half and then suddenly it's not. Yes, and were shocked that US invading
another country might turn out to be messy. Hopefully that's not a lesson we have to repeatedly relearn.
Twenty twenty was a year for many of racial reckoning. You know, it was the year when people of all ages took to the streets, black and white alike, and said, we need to change the way the police deal with people in this country, predominantly black people in this country. It was an interesting time as well, because I mean your presidency, as you know better than anyone, people thought, well, that is it. We're now in a post racial utopia. Barack Obama's in the white House. We have half black,
half whites, all black. Good times, let's have a good one. And then people saw that there was still a lot of work to be done. Let's talk a little bit about the movement as you see it. So the problem I have with headlines sometimes is like people take things out of context, etc. But some activists criticize you for saying they've got to be careful of snappy slogans, you know, like defund the police because it loses people. But I wonder, do you think that the slogan is off is the
thing that makes people for or against you? Or do you think people are just going to be four or against you? And then the slogan doesn't really mean as much. And what I mean by that is like like Donald Trump's make America great again. It's not a very divisive slogan. If you look at it. On the face of it, that's a great slogan. Why would anyone not want to make America great again? But the subtext sets something else when you're thinking of that as someone who's greatest slogans.
By the way, I mean, yes, we can. It's snappy.
It works. Although, as I said in the book, I actually thought it was corny. I didn't I didn't like it that much when when my team came up with it, and then they went to ask Michelle, and Michelle said, no, it's not corny, it's fine. So clearly she had a
better political brain than I did on this. I'm glad you actually brought this up, because you know what's been fascinating while I've been on this book tour is you know, people have asked me what's my source of optimism, And uniformally what I have said is nothing made me more optimistic during a very difficult year than the activism that we saw in the wake of George Floyd's murder and
Black Lives Matter. And I have consistently believed that their courage, activism, media savvy, strategic resolve far exceeds anything that I could have done at their age, and I think has shifted the conversation in ways that I would not even imagined a couple of years ago. So throughout this slew of compliments, then said, well, what do you think about the particular slogan defund the police? And I said, well, that particular slogan. I think the concern is that there may be potential
allies out there that you lose. And the issue always is how do you get enough people to support your cause that you can actually institutionalize it and translate it into laws, structures and so forth. There were two or three writers who I admire who wrote Obama's making an admission to chastise Black Lives Matter, and you go, what, hold on a second, I just spent the whole summer
complementing a member. What are you talking about. The reason it caught attention I suspect is there were some in the Democratic Party who suggested the reason we didn't do better in the congressional elections this time was because of this phrase. And I think that people assumed that somehow I was making an argument that that's why we didn't get a bigger democratic majority. That actually was not the
point I was making. I was making a very particular point around if we in fact want to translate the very legitimate belief that how we do needs to change, and that if there is, for example, a homeless guy ranting and railing in the middle of the street, sending a mental health worker rather than an armed, untrained police officer to deal with that person might be a better
outcome for all of us and make us safer. Right that if we describe that to not just white folks, but let's say Michelle's mom, that makes sense to them. But if we say defund the police, not just white folks, but Michelle's mom might say, if I'm getting robbed, who am I going to call? And is somebody going to show up? Right? So the issue here becomes, you know, at any given time, how are we translating and using language not to make people more comfortable? Quote unquote, right?
Because that's always a strain and historically right. The concern in these debates is also is often or are we just trying to make white people comfortable rather than speaking truth to power? Right, That's the framework we tend to think about these things, Right, Yeah, the issue to me, is not making them comfortable. It is can we be precise with our language enough that people who might be persuaded around that particular issue to make a particular change
that gets a particular result that we want. What's the best way for us to describe that.
What you're basically saying is we should workshop all of our slogans with Michelle. That's what I hate saying.
That probably would be wise, it would probably work. But I want to go back to something you said earlier, which I think is really important. And I said this in the wake of some criticism. I said, Look, part of this is also everybody has different roles to play. An activist, a movement leader is going to provide a prophetic voice and speak certain truths that somebody who is going to be elected into office will not be able to say. I reread James Baldwin's A Fire next time
this summer. How is it that something written fifty years ago, fifty five years ago, yeah, applies directly today, right, despite everything that's happened to me. That is as searing and as honest a portrayal of the gaping wound of race in America. But of course James Baldwin can be elected to the US Senate or unlikely that he would want to be the mayor of a city who's responsible for
figuring out how do I deal with the police union? Right, that's somebody else's role, and and all these roles are important.
Uh, And so why do you think if I may interrupt? Why do you think though, that Republicans or right wingers now do that though? That's that's something that I've I've struggled to to understand. You see, now, even in this election, I mean, some of the Republicans who were running were Qann supporters, and they were going, we're running and this is what and some of them were winning. Some of
them are so extreme and they're winning. And so I sometimes wonder if if there's this, there's this is it just a political thing in America where if you if you're in the Republican Party, you can be completely bombastic in what you believe in, and then as a Democrat you're trying to toe the line between centrist and and and left leaning.
Well, because I think in fact, the Republican Party is the minority party in this country. The only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the US Senate and the Electoral College that don't render them the majority party. So they have certain built in advantages around power, given their population distribution
and how our government works. But the truth of the matter is is that sixty percent of the people are occupying what I would consider a more reality based universe, and those are the constituents worth speaking to, and that is a more diverse group.
You know.
I describe in the book the first time I go to the Republican House caucus to speak to them, and I think there was an Asian guy or gel and maybe a couple of Hispanics and that was it. It is much more homogeneous, which means that, yes, they have to do less work, but it also means that they can talk to themselves, and as a consequence of the way our democracy or republic is structured, they don't have
to appeal to as broad of a base. That's not fair, but you know what, I at least would prefer not having the progressives model ourselves out of or model ourselves on the current Republican party. That doesn't feel like a good strategy to me to get the outcomes that we want.
Let's talk a little bit about let's loosen things up. That's unbuttoned, one of those one of those buttons on the shirt. As someone who I consider to be one of the best deliverers of jokes and roasts, are you going to be more careful going forward about who you roast? And I say this because you roast to Donald Trump, he ran for president. He roast to Kanye West, he
ran for president. So I don't know if you've noticed, but you have an ability to inspire people to run for the highest office in the land with some of the jokes that you tell about them.
Well I should. I should roast people people I admire more. I'll start roasting you man, who knows, although you weren't born here. So yeah, but look, look I was able to get away with it apparently who knows.
Before I let you go, I wanted to know one last thing, and that is being president of the United States is arguably the toughest job in the world. When you transition back to personal life, I wonder what that is like, because unlike you, I don't have that power. I've never been able to just change a thing in the world or do something about it. But now in many ways, you are like me and that you see the thing on the TV and then you get angry or sad, but you cannot really do anything about it.
And so I wonder, as as former President Barack Obama, have you have you transitioned into that completely or do you find different ways to try and fix the problems that you see in the world.
Well, first of all, I'm not anything like you. I still have a lot more influence in cloud. So let's just be clear. Come on, man, I.
Was hoping you just let that one slide. I was hoping you'd just be like, yeah, you know.
In any ways, Look, the truth is that I did not have those kinds of withdrawals, and I know that they're there are people who I know who've had them when they leave public life, and very visibly, you know, they they want to get back on stage. Michelle and I, that's something we share. We feel good about the work we did. We don't feel anxiety about not being the center of attention. We get frustrated, like I think citizens around the world and here in the country do when
we see something unjust or unfair. And yes, the goal I think for us is to find new ways to have that same impact, understanding that we'll never have the exact same impact as you have in the office. But you know, a lot of the work around the foundation is you know, you said create a lot of Obamas.
I'm not sure that's the goal, but to you know, if ten years, twenty years down the road, there are a thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand young people who are now moving into positions of authority and power and in some ways have been shaped by our example in a positive way. Yeah. That that that's a legacy that may exceed anything that we did. Uh, you know while we were in uh in in our formal positions and and uh and that feels pretty good.
Well, I can talk to you for hours, but luckily I have a seven hundred page book to answer the rest of my questions. Thank you for joining me, Thank you for taking the time, and uh yeah, thank you for being you, mister president aka obisl thank you for joining me on the Daily Social Enjoyed it, man.
We'll do it again.
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