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.

"Obama Decries the Political Habits That Drove His Career," said a headline on an essay by National Review's Jim Geraghty.

"Obama practiced the very identity politics he condemns," said a headline on a Commentary essay by Noah Rothman.

"This is good and true," tweeted conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. "I wish he had said it throughout his presidency instead of relying on identity politics to coalition-build."

Actually, as someone who covered Obama off and on since his days in the Illinois state senate, I have heard him made similar statements ever since his come-together keynote address at the 2004 National Democratic Convention that launched him into the national spotlight.

"The 44th president has consistently touted norms of speech consistent with Enlightenment liberalism," noted the libertarian Reason's associate editor Robby Soave, citing his 2016 Rutgers University commencement address, in which he implored students to engage speakers with whom they disagree, not to shut them down.

Still, "identity politics" is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. Geraghty, for example, cites Obama's friendly relations with the controversial Rev. Al Sharpton as an example of Obama's alleged flirtations with "identity politics." Yet, as much as I may disagree with Sharpton, particularly for the media circuses he stirred up in the 1980s, he can be a valuable source of information and insights into the most alienated segments of black America.

But, as Donald Trump's unexpected Electoral College victory demonstrated, a voice that is a loud and forceful advocate for what voters want can score major political gains, regardless of whether I like their politics or style.

We live in a politically divided nation that needs to move from shouting to healing, as Obama suggests. Democrats seeking to get back to power in Republican-dominated Washington need to expand their reach to attract more persuadable swing voters. They need a form of politics that turns the walls around their groups into bridges.

========

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)