When Barack Obama set out to fundamentally transform the country, he took for granted that it could be transformed back — and could only look on as America sent a populist billionaire to do just that. The aspiring media mogul has only now discovered that part of a politician’s legacy is the successors he leaves behind. It has dawned on Obama that his chief legacy from eight years in office will not be healthcare reform but Joe Biden — and now he is scrambling to cultivate a new champion.
Politico is reporting that America’s first black president is holding closed-door meetings with the likes of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and moderate Michigan representative Haley Stevens to try to find an heir worthy of the crown. Obama did not exactly roll out the red carpet for these supplicants. No private helicopter to his Martha’s Vineyard estate or Learjet to Hawaii; they settled for cheese and crackers at his DC office.
The news, of course, rocked the Capitol. Obama is the Democratic Party’s Tom Cruise. When Hollywood is on the verge of bankruptcy the ageless sexagenarian hops in a Navy jet or off an airborne motorcycle to deliver a cool nine-figure box office hit. Obama, still considered a fresh face despite his sixty-one years, emerges every election year to rescue struggling Democrats before retreating back to wherever he hosts those interesting Italians. When he emerges in a non-election year, DC takes notice.
“He’s hardly played the role of party power broker since leaving office. Podcasts, documentaries, his foundation and, yes, golf in Hawaii and on Martha’s Vineyard have taken precedence,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin writes. “He rarely took much of an interest in counseling lawmakers when he was president.”
Obama has been described by hagiographers as “aloof,” “professorial” and “above the fray” at various times over his public career — but these were always euphemisms for “self-centered.” The ultimate boomer president appeared to believe that his mere status as an historic president was enough to ensure the machinery of progress would roll ever forward. He left his party in shambles, as his agenda cost Democrats more than 1,000 seats at the state and federal level over his tenure — something not even toxic Donald Trump has managed to achieve. He let the Democratic Party go bankrupt even as his Organizing for Action super PAC raked in millions in his two election victories that were surrounded by midterm massacres.
Obama could have learned a thing or two by reflecting on his own rise to power.
Emil Jones is famous in Springfield, Illinois. The former Chicago sanitation worker rose from poverty to become the president of the State Senate. He is best known outside Chicago as the anonymous “old ward heeler” that Obama belittled in his memoir, Dreams from my Father. It is fortunate for Obama that Jones wasn’t much of a reader. When Democrats won control of the Illinois Senate, he plucked a little known failed congressional candidate from obscurity and declared to everyone around him, “I’m gonna make me a US senator.” Obama’s name was attached to every major bill that passed, even if it meant trampling the legislation’s authors and activists. Obama then used those “achievements” to neuter attacks on his youth and inexperience back in 2008. Eight years in the Oval Office surrounded by sycophantic aides and an adoring press corps convinced Obama that he truly was a self-made man.
Plenty of young Democrats say they have been inspired by Obama, but I can’t recall anyone saying he played the role of mentor outside of the podcaster Obama Bros in his immediate orbit. Emil Jones, born 1935, was a student of machine Chicago politics and used it to build a progressive juggernaut that all but ensured perpetual Democratic supermajorities in the Illinois statehouse. After all these years, Obama may have finally realized that his status as an historic figure will depend on his ability to channel his inner “old ward heeler.”
