An Obama reminder: Conservatives have feelings, too
When Barack Obama's first major speech since his presidency decried today's "utter loss of shame among political leaders," did anyone not know whom he was talking about?
When this country's the first African-American president made that point Tuesday during the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg honoring the 100th anniversary of the former South African President's birth, there was no need for Obama to name names -- or, in this case, name the name.
When Obama decried the unexpected revival of "strongman politics," rising assaults on "every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning" and the "utter loss of shame among political leaders" who, when caught in a lie, "just double down and they lie some more," you could tell from the jolly crowd reactions that everybody knew who he was talking about.
President Donald Trump, after all, stands alone among presidents for having made more than 3,200 false or misleading claims by the end of May, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker's running count.
"Politicians have always lied," Obama acknowledged. "But it used to be if you caught them lying they'd be like, 'Oh man.' Now? They just keep on lying."
Obama defended the importance of facts, science, free press, intellectualism and other virtues we used to take for granted more than we have since this nation's current president took over.
But in a statement that drew an intriguing mix of praise and criticism from conservative critics, Obama's defense of democracy jabbed exclusionary identity politics, the kind that seek to exclude voices who were not born into the aggrieved group.
"Democracy demands that we're able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view," he said. "Maybe we can change their minds, maybe they'll change ours. You can't do this if you just out of hand disregard what your opponent has to say from the start. And you can't do it if you insist that those who aren't like you because they are white or they are male, somehow there is no way they can understand what I'm feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters."
"I detest racialism," Obama quoted Mandela as saying, "whether it comes from a black man or a white man."
It was on this point that prominent conservative critics, who approved of many of his other comments, charged Obama with hypocrisy.
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