CHICAGO — Barack Obama departed the presidency on Jan. 20, 2017, nearly eight years, and what feels like a lifetime, ago. But today’s Democratic Party is still his party in many ways, and if there was ever any doubt, his rapturous welcome at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night reaffirmed it.
By Jim Geraghty
“This convention has always been good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible,” Obama said, implicitly bestowing his mantle upon Kamala Harris.
Ripping into the Republican nominee who bedeviled him with cockamamie theories surrounding his birth certificate, Obama said, “Most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided between us and them, between the real Americans who support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you just give him the power to put those ‘other’ people back in their place … America is ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story.”
It’s still Obama’s party — not in the sense that Obama is the shadow president, pulling the strings of the Biden administration, but clearly he is still the center of gravity. In May, President Joe Biden, in one of his rare interviews, said that Obama had been advising him to “keep doing what I’m doing.” In a matter of weeks, after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Obama let it be known that maybe Biden should not keep doing what he’s doing; once the party began to coalesce behind Harris, all Democratic eyes turned to Obama, awaiting his blessing of her candidacy.
For Democrats of a certain age, election night 2008 was the happiest moment of their political lives. (The promise of hope and change on that night was better than the inevitable compromises and disappointments in the eight years of reality that followed.) It’s hard to overstate the Obamamania of that first election cycle — “Obama girl” with a crush on the candidate; the SFGate column suggesting Obama was an angelic “Lightworker”; the photography and art portraying Obama with a messianic halo.
The Obama of 2008 remains the Democratic Party’s platonic ideal of what their presidential candidates ought to be: on the younger side, or at least younger than their Republican opponents. Well-credentialed and a bit of experience, but not too much experience. Not descended from the Mayflower, but a child of immigrants. A middle-class upbringing, no senator’s son like Al Gore. Some legal experience. And of course, as much charisma as possible.
No, Harris is not an Obama remake, as Post columnist Kathleen Parker reminds us. But Obama remains the Democratic template, much as Ronald Reagan was the Republican model for a generation after he left office. And Harris checks a lot more of those boxes than Hillary Clinton or Biden did.
In the summer of 2008, John McCain’s campaign knocked Obama as the “celebrity” candidate. And indeed, in a more serious, less image-obsessed era, that label might have done some damage, reinforcing voters’ nagging early sense that Obama was famous for being famous, revered without a serious accomplishment in government, a glamorous lightweight coasting on then-unprecedented media hype.
In the one political race Obama ever lost, a 2000 Democratic House primary, the incumbent, Bobby L. Rush, derailed Obama in a debate by skeptically scoffing, “Just what’s he done? I mean, what’s he done?” (Eight years meteoric years later, Obama was headed for the White House.)
A Republican Party that hadn’t tuned over the keys to a reality-TV show host — for three straight election cycles! — could theoretically mount a similar criticism of Harris: more media hype than accomplishment, unimpressive and easily overlooked in her limited roles in the Biden administration, coasting on coconut tree memes and “vibes” for the past month. Like Obama, Harris served in the Senate for about 10 minutes before launching a presidential campaign.
But from the perspective within the still-in-progress Trump era, the McCain-Obama battle looks like the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In today’s GOP, “celebrity” is no longer a criticism, it’s praise, and perhaps even a prerequisite. Even Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, had his life story directed by Ron Howard and his grandmother played by Glenn Close.
Obama changed campaigning for president, and changed Americans’ expectations of what a president ought to be. He could be professorial — some called him aloof — but he could also talk NCAA picks on ESPN, or make goofy videos with a selfie stick to tout his ill-fated healthcare.gov website. Obama was a full-spectrum pop culture celebrity — and Harris, coconut memes and all, is following in those footsteps.
Now, the new Harris crew looks an awful lot like the old Obama campaign — David Plouffe as a top strategist, Stephanie Cutter working on messaging, Mitch Stewart advising on battleground states and David Binder running the public opinion research. As some other famous Chicagoans once said, “We’re getting the band back together.”
On Tuesday night, Obama was grayer than the man in our memories from his 2008 convention speech in Denver — although he jokingly insisted, “I haven’t aged a bit.” He’s 63, just four years older than Harris. But Obama proved he has aged into a role that once might have seemed unthinkable: the Democratic Party’s elder statesman.
