On Thursday, Americans could see the stark contrast between two presidents, two visions of America, and two codes of behavior. Rarely has a split screen been so informative.
On one side, Donald Trump, a fetid figure in irreversible decline, lumbered around Versailles and signed a deal capitulating to an Iranian regime he had vowed to overthrow. By Saturday, Iran flaunted the extent of its diplomatic triumph, reclosing the Strait of Hormuz on the grounds that the United States failed to stop Israel from violating the ceasefire in Lebanon.
The extent of his catastrophe — the product of his noxious vision of “might makes right,” genocidal fury, and constitutional nihilism — was in full view. (“The humiliation is the point,” wrote Graeme Wood. “Iran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation.”) Unsurprisingly, Trump stuck Vice President JD Vance (whose own career may be another casualty of the war) with the job of defending the indefensible.
On the other side of the split screen, former President Barack Obama, looking trim and vigorous, delivered remarks opening his presidential center. Reminding us how presidents should behave, he disparaged no group of Americans, rewrote no history, recited no election results, and ridiculed no predecessors (instead, he praised the three on stage with him).
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It’s easy to see why Trump loathes Obama, whose intellectual and verbal acuity, graciousness, class, and real accomplishments Trump could never match. As the unfavorable comparison to a Black man whose presidency the rabidly racist Trump tried to delegitimize becomes starker, it is no surprise Trump’s unhinged meltdowns become more frequent.
Obama addressed the key question before us: Can our democracy survive?That largely depends, Obama said, on our commitment to the “shared values that make democracy possible” (each of which Trump has savaged, not coincidentally):
A belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party, but to the people and our Constitution.
A belief in the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections, recognizing that in a large, complicated society like ours, no group or faction gets its way 100% of the time.
And a belief that qualities of character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion, a sense of duty and honor, those things matter in our public dealings, just as they do in our private lives.
Obama reiterated that these are values “we can all share, regardless of party, values every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold, values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did.” Only Trump stands apart, hostile to American values and contemptuous of those who embrace them. (Yes, I still find it unfathomable the same country could elect both Trump and Obama.)
Declining to minimize the extent of our democratic crisis (“It’s a lot…. I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt”), Obama acknowledged that our anxiety and social isolation gets heightened by “a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts.” Obama nevertheless cautioned against giving in “to cynicism, and even despair.”
Obama made a rather compelling empirical argument that democracy is on the rebound. “In cities that have worked together to reclaim their streets from crime, in rural communities that have rebuilt their economy, in businesses that are finding new ways to make housing affordable, and those ordinary people in the Twin Cities, who brave frigid temperatures, risk their own safety, standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors, and sometimes look out for strangers, because they knew that was the right thing to do,” Americans are rising to the occasion.
Though the mere mention of Minnesota was enough to trigger goosebumps, stirring memories of resilience and courage in the face of intolerable lawlessness and brutality, we have seen plenty of green shoots of democracy spring up. Chicagoans protected their migrant neighbors, grand jurors refused to rubber stamp absurd indictments, a post-Callais civil rights movement staved off re-redistricting in South Carolina and Georgia, and millions turned out in No Kings peaceful protests.
MAGA cultists desperately want Americans to trade pluralistic democracy for autocratically imposed white Christian supremacy, but they have few takers. MAGA dead-enders are left to gaze on the White House squalor after the gladiator games and soothe their white resentment by reinstalling Confederate names on military bases and blocking Black and female military officers’ promotions. Increasingly, we see MAGA has nothing but Lost Cause political stunts and DEI for incompetent white males — a formula for political extinction.
As Obama told us, “America’s story isn’t frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written, not by one person or a few people … but by all of us” (unless you are cocooned in a dying cult with no positive agenda or compelling leader).
It’s no coincidence that the Obama center focuses heavily on ordinary citizens who helped him make change and on future leaders who will continue his life’s work. The foundation’s mission statement is not an exercise in false modesty but rather a calculated bet that lifting up regular people and developing engaged, committed citizens is the best way to ensure that Obama’s legacy continues and democracy prevails.
Like the 19th-century abolitionists who steeled themselves against serial setbacks to “stay true to our better selves and true to one another, and to keep fighting, to fulfill the promise of this nation,” we have every reason to eschew defeatism, Obama argued. We too can retain “a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens and the possibility that despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together.”
Of late, I find plenty of evidence to support Obama’s view that Americans truly “want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away.” The fight to define America will be won not by embittered, decaying bullies frantically racing to rewrite the past and savage other Americans. It will be won by a multi-generational movement dedicated to constructing the most inclusive, values-based democracy possible. The future belongs to Chicago and Minnesota, not to Versailles and Mar-a-Lago.
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