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Former President Barack Obama has dropped out of the daily news conversation, but he’s clearly still connected.
Sitting down with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour this week, he contrasted the media frenzy over wealthy explorers who died trying to see the wreckage of the Titanic on the seabed with the relatively limited attention given to the hundreds of migrants who died in the Mediterranean while trying to find a better life.
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The interview was built around a call for participants in the Obama Foundation Leaders Program in Athens, Greece. When CNN aired an hour-long special featuring the interview on Thursday, it sounded like a wake-up call to American democracy at a time when his two successors as president, both much older than him, they are again competing for the White House.
Obama’s years out of office have done nothing to slow his tendency to be long. Below, I’ve pulled some of what I thought were highlights from Amanpour’s interview with Obama. Read it all here.
Amanpour noted that Obama gave a speech shortly after former President Donald Trump won the White House in which he explained his faith in democratic ideals. She asked him if he still had that faith.
OBAMA: It is indisputable that a combination of forces has put enormous pressure on democracy and that we have seen a backlash against democratic ideals around the world. It is not exclusive to any site.
It has happened in Europe. It has happened in the United States. It has happened in this part of the world, around the Mediterranean. It’s happening in Asia.
The reason I’m optimistic is because I think, especially when I meet young people around the world, there’s still a fundamental belief in the dignity and worth of people and their agency in determining what their lives are like. I think that’s what young people want.
But our existing democratic institutions are creaky, and we will have to reform them.
Amanpour asked how the world is supposed to view the fact that a man being prosecuted by the government is also currently a top candidate to lead it in two years.
OBAMA: It’s less than ideal, isn’t it? But the fact that we have a former president who must answer to charges brought by prosecutors maintains the basic notion that no one is above the law, and allegations will now be resolved through a judicial process.
I think what worries me most when it comes to the United States is that it’s not just one particular person who is accused of undermining existing laws, but more broadly we’ve seen that, whether it’s through gerrymandering of districts, whether whether it’s trying to silence critics, through changes in the legislative process, whether it’s trying to intimidate the press, a thread of anti-democratic sentiment that we’ve seen in the United States.
It’s something that’s more prominent in the Republican Party right now, but I don’t think it’s unique to one party.
I think there’s less tolerance for ideas that don’t fit us, and a kind of free and open exchange of ideas, and the idea that we all agree on the rules of the game, and even if the results are not always what we like, we still comply with these rules. I think that has weakened since I left office, and we need to strengthen them again.
OBAMA: The good news is that, through the voting mechanism, the American people will have an opportunity to reaffirm their belief in American democracy.
And the other thing, Christiane, I think what happens in the United States is important all over the world. And the thing: I’m sometimes asked what surprised you about being president, and I said I knew it would be busy and that America is obviously an extraordinarily powerful country.
The idea of America, the idea of the possibility that a big, big, complicated multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious country can still function as a democracy, is an important idea for the world.
And when American democracy seems to be faltering or breaking down, then I think it emboldens those who do not believe in democracy around the world, and worries and weakens democratic forces elsewhere.
Amanpour noted that President Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House this week.
OBAMA: I think it is appropriate for the President of the United States, where he can, to uphold these principles and challenge, either behind closed doors or in public, trends that are troubling.
So I’m less concerned with labels than with specific practices. I think it’s important for the president of the United States to say that if you have Uighurs in China who are being put into mass camps and “re-educated,” that’s a problem. This is a challenge for all of us and we must pay attention to it.
I think it is true that if the President meets with Prime Minister Modi, then the protection of the Muslim minority in a Hindu majority India, that is something worth mentioning.
And by the way, if I were to have a conversation with Prime Minister Modi, who I know well, part of my argument would be that if the rights of ethnic minorities in India are not protected, there is a strong possibility that India in some cases. the point begins to separate.
And we’ve seen what happens when you start having these kinds of big internal conflicts. Therefore, this would be against the interests of not only Muslim India but also Hindu India.
OBAMA: I think in such a cluttered media environment, it’s very difficult to make progress until it’s election time.
Remember when I ran for re-election in 2012 my poll numbers weren’t that good and we ended up winning comfortably. Part of it was that we just started campaigning and we were able to get a message out, and people said, yeah, this policy or this policy or this thing that hadn’t been done, that irritated me a little, but in general, I think it’s over. a good job And I think that’s what they’re going to conclude about Joe Biden as well.
OBAMA: In fact, I think given both where Ukraine was at the time and where the European mindset was at the time, we held the line.
And part of what happened was, over time, a sense of Ukrainian identity separate from Russia and a determination to push back against Russia and the ability to prepare, both militarily and civically, to resist Russian pressure .
They built that muscle, and that’s part of the reason they were able to respond the way they did when you actually saw what, at least in my opinion, was incredibly wrong, not to mention the raid il· legal and incredibly cruel of the Russian forces.
OBAMA: There are still a lot of people who are politically more conservative than me on social issues, on economic issues, but who I consider good people, thoughtful people from whom I have learned and with whom I like to converse.
And therefore, the polarizations that we have seen in our national politics are not identical to what is happening on the ground.
But what is true is that partly because of where people are getting information these days, the isolation of information. … If you watch Fox News or follow some right-wing radio host or get Facebook feeds inside that bubble, your reality is different than if you read The New York Times or watch your show.
And when people get such fundamentally different facts, or what they think are facts, and their worldviews are so skewed in one direction or another, it’s very difficult for democracy to work.
OBAMA: This us-them dynamic isn’t just about race. I would argue that in the United States, and I suspect in Europe as well, changing gender roles have fueled at least as much backlash as racial backlash.
This huge fear among men and those who, like traditional structures and hierarchies and patriarchy, get very nervous when you suddenly have women speaking up and thinking they should have the same rights and power as men. And when there are people of different sexual orientations who say: I’m here, I want a seat at the table. This has been very threatening.
OBAMA: Right now, we have 24-hour coverage. And I understand, about this submarine, the submersible that is tragically lost at the bottom of the sea right now. At the same time, right here off the coast of Greece, we had 700 dead people, 700 migrants who were apparently being smuggled here.
And it’s news, but it doesn’t dominate in the same way. And in some ways, it is indicative of the degree to which people’s life chances have grown so disparate.
It is very difficult to maintain a democracy when there are such massive concentrations of wealth.
So part of my argument has been that if we don’t stick to that, unless we make people feel more financially secure and we take more seriously the need to create ladders of opportunity and a stronger safety net that ‘adapt to these new technologies and the displacements that are occurring around the world; if we don’t pay attention, this will also fuel the kind of populism that is mostly from the far right, but it can also potentially come from the left, which is undermining democracy, because it makes people angry and resentful and fearful.
