The Black President: A balance sheet of things Obama did right and could have done better

A ghost is haunting American politics – the ghost of Barack Obama. Donald Trump won the White House by appealing to those who could never accept a black man as their president. He rose to prominence by promulgating the racist conspiracy theory that Obama had not been born in the US.

Joe Biden is president today because he was Obama’s vice-president. Biden struggled badly in early Democratic primaries, but he was saved by African American voters who supported him because for eight years he had gladly taken orders from a black man. Also, Obama intervened behind the scenes to rally party support for Biden and squelch the chances of Bernie Sanders.

Though just five years ago Obama still occupied the Oval Office, it feels like ages ago since he was president. Historians require that sense of living in a different era to bring perspective to their subjects. Thus it is fitting that the first history of the Obama presidency has been published even though its author, Claude A Clegg, lacked the access to archives on which historians typically depend.

The Black President aims to capture “the America that made Obama’s White House possible, while also rendering the America that resolutely resisted the idea of a black chief executive”. Clegg’s focus is on race and how the Obama presidency affected African Americans, his most loyal constituency. But he also shines a wider light on the Obama presidency.

Because he was black Obama could present himself as a transformational candidate despite his boilerplate Democratic centrism. Yet as Clegg reminds us, Obama’s background was atypical; he could “insert himself into a European immigrant narrative” in a way most African Americans could not. The son of a Kenyan immigrant, Obama was raised in Hawaii by his white mother and grandparents. As Clegg observes: “For the individual not easily categorised visually or culturally within conventional racial categories, the navigating of race can be deployed for advantage.”

Obama could shapeshift to appeal to different constituencies, but it was nevertheless a high-wire act. And the tightropes “that bridged issues connected to race were often greased with slick, flammable oils needing only a spark to ignite or a strong gust to upset his footing.” Thus, despite his professed optimism about American race relations, Obama was reticent to discuss race for fear of alienating white voters.

Firestorm

Nevertheless, sometimes Obama slipped. Early in his presidency he offhandedly remarked that police had acted stupidly in arresting the African American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for forcing entry into his own home. Even though patently true, the comment set off a firestorm. Obama’s approval rating among white Americans dipped below 50 per cent; never again would more than half of white Americans support him.

Obama responded cautiously to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement during his second term. When an African American teenager, Trayvon Martin, was murdered by a white man claiming to act in self-defence, Obama refrained from addressing the incident. But when the clamour became too loud to ignore, he delivered the most poignant line of his presidency: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Yet Obama offered only limited reforms to address the police violence and mass incarceration criticised by Black Lives Matter activists. As in all things, Obama’s approach was defined by his “even-keel temperament, pragmatic strategising, and measured movements”.

Clegg is a compelling writer with an understated wit. His account is comprehensive and judicious. But readers looking for a more sweeping analysis will be disappointed. For what The Black President offers is mostly a balance sheet of things Obama did right and things he could have done better.

Overall Clegg is a moderate critic of Obama, but one who has little time for those who failed to understand how circumscribed he was. Sandwiched between George W Bush and Trump, future historians will no doubt judge Obama kindly as Clegg has done. But they may also conclude that he deserves at least some of the blame for the mess his country is now in.

Backlash

While it is true that a president can only do so much in the American political system, Obama’s failures were as a politician. He underestimated the power of intransigent Republican opposition and its ruthless willingness to employ undemocratic means. He incited a backlash merely by being black.

But his policies were too moderate and too accommodating of elite power to rally enough Americans behind them. Tellingly, he bailed out the big banks that caused the Great Recession while offering minimal assistance to those who lost their homes, disproportionately African Americans.

Obama energised so many voters yet failed to keep them mobilised beyond the election cycle. He offered no long-term vision for his political party, which became too dependent on his charisma and struggled when he wasn’t on the ballot. Obama’s measured statesmanship made sense only in a healthy society with functioning democratic institutions. He was cautious when he needed to be bold.

Daniel Geary is associate professor in American history at Trinity College Dublin