"... that provides a lot of people with health care that didn’t have it before? And there’s a psychic cost to not always just telling the truth... using your prophetic voice as opposed to your coalition building political voice. And I think there were times where supporters of mine would get frustrated if I wasn’t being as forthright about certain things as I might otherwise be. And then there are also just institutional constraints that I think every president has to follow on some of these issues. And it was sort of on a case by case basis, where you try to make decisions."
Said Barack Obama, answering a question on the Ezra Klein podcast at the NYT about how he decided it was worth it, politically, to refrain from accusing people of racism.
The question, asked by Klein, specifically referred to the Tea Party, and Klein asserts, based on reading Obama's book, that it was clear that the Tea Party was "at least partly" racist. Obama had been musing about understanding people and bringing us together, and Klein, seeming to want to bring some edge to the discussion, asked "How do you decide when the cost of that kind of truth outweighs the value of it?"
I've edited down the answer, but if you look at the whole thing, you'll see that what I left out was blander than what I quoted. Obama referred to the "basic historical truth... about racism," then immediately turned to political expediency. He acknowledged the "psychic cost to not always just telling the truth," by which I think he meant the cost to himself personally in devaluing truth-telling. And he strangely equated truth with "using your prophetic voice as opposed to your coalition building political voice." Prophetic voice?
CORRECTION: This post originally said Obama was wrong to say "Sarah Palin... was sort of a prototype for the politics that led to the
Tea Party, that in turn, ultimately led to Donald Trump, and that we’re
still seeing today." I was wrong. He has the chronology right.
ADDED: I wish Klein had pursued Obama about the slippage between telling the truth and speaking in a prophetic voice! Maybe it's developed in his book, but I'd say, just offhand, that prophesy relates to the future, and, normally, when we talk about telling the truth, it relates to the present and the past.
AND: I don't think the book uses the idea of the "prophetic voice," because I'm not seeing that phrase in connection with the book title. What I can see is that Obama's early speeches, when he first ran for President, were discussed in terms of a "prophetic" tradition among black Americans. I suspect that Obama conflated telling the truth about racism with speaking in the lofty, inspirational style associated with Martin Luther King, Jr.
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17 comments:
Lloyd writes:
"He must be feeling whip-sawed about now. When the woke say (preposterously) that Biden is the most transformative Pres since FDR, they are tacitly suggesting that all the others either were right wing or have appeased "the right wing" far too much. Of course the Dems during those years, including Obama, even or especially the younger Biden, would boast that they knew how to "manage" the right wingers, even appease them, in order to get bills passed and get things done. By woke definitions, if you cooperate with systemic racism, are you not a racist? If it is true that every non-Dem is automatically racist (sorry, NeverTrump Republicans), then surely every Dem who is not sufficiently woke is a racist. Hasn't everyone been racist until the day before yesterday? Are the woke not rejecting MLK Jr., "character not skin color" because while pretending to be "fair" he actually gave support to systemic racism? Of course sustaining this view requires a selective, superficial and crude understanding of history and a lot of other things. We are dealing with people who have never read a book (not even Angela Davis's books, I would think) and have no intention of doing so. Obama has been an inspiration to them in all their crudeness, even or especially with his "prophetic" voice. Way to be a prophet Barry."
Amadeus 48 writes:
Where to begin? At one time, editors at the NYT or WaPoo might have labeled this “More mush from the wimp” in their mental headlines, but since this is Obama, not Jimmy Carter, they are going with “The Great Oracle Speaks. Can We Understand Him?” Look on his works, ye Mighty, and despair.
One can certainly ask what happened to the Tea Party? The answer is that a bunch of citizens, with no leadership, attempted to keep decisions local and avoid having the US government take over the market for individual health insurance. The were accused of things they didn’t do, they elected a bunch of senators (Tim Scott, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul), several members of the House, and several governors. They were center-right populists. They were taken down by the Obama bureaucracy (IRS delays) and their own “friends” in Washington, the GOP consultants and strategists who took their money and made sure they never got organized. There was no national leader. Sarah Palin was a Republican populist elected governor of Alaska in 2006, and she was elevated to the national stage in 2008 by the one and only John McCain, who chose her as his running mate to attempt to appeal to women. He didn’t know her, he didn’t like her, but he was ahead of Obama in the polls until his catastrophic suspension of his campaign “to address the financial crisis”. McCain really wanted to run against George W. Bush, not Obama.
So, I think Obama was right in a way about Palin. She was a center-right populist who defeated an establishment incumbent governor (Frank Murkowski—this becomes the Game of Thrones at some point) in the GOP primary in 2006. She was the prototype Tea Party politician. What ever happened to her? Look at what is happening to two of the very best Tea party senators—Ron Johnson and Rand Paul. The press passes no opportunity to say that they are cranks spreading conspiracy theories about Trump/Russia/FBI/CIA and the Wuhan virus.
We may have arrived that place that Yeats referred to in The Second Coming: The best lack all conviction, while the worst/
Are full of passionate intensity…What rough beast, its hour come at last/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Tina writes:
People forget that Obama called his grandparents racists repeatedly while on the 2008 campaign trail. Once he found that his repulsive accusation that his grandmother who raised him was “racist” got a big rise out of leftist audiences, it became his main schtick. He talked incessantly about being disgusted that his white grandmother complained about being hassled at the bus stop by black men — and note she was thriftily taking the bus to her difficult job so Obama and his adult mother could travel the world and get advanced degrees from private schools, all of which she paid for. His impulse wasn’t to protect a frail, elderly woman feather bedding his cushy lifestyle: it was to throw her under the bus at every campaign stop, knowing full well the media would cover up and deny his shabby treatment of her.
Also note that we learn much later in David Garrow’s book that Michelle gets in on the act, openly lying about who paid for the down payment and pricey renovations to the house she and her adult husband bought from mobster Rezko: it wasn’t Michelle being thrifty and taking on that debt: it was paid for by evil white grandma, still living in a small apartment, still supporting luxuries for two adult people scoring six figure no-show jobs while kicking her to the curb. What a pair those two were. And what a lie that Obama didn’t do everything possible to divide us by race, day in and day out.
MikeR writes:
"I'd say, just offhand, that prophesy relates to the future, and, normally, when we talk about telling the truth, it relates to the present and the past."
I don't think so. I think the basic job of the prophets was to rebuke the nation for what they were doing. And (this is hard) to interpret correctly, to tell them what was really happening as opposed to all the noise. If they discussed the future it was mostly about consequences.
Sometimes they did encourage the nation by telling it about its ultimate destiny.
That would maybe be a prophetic mode, to tell the Tea Party that what they were doing was based on racism, not on what they thought were the reasons for what they were doing.
Of course, Barack Obama was President, and a black man, and smart - but I don't think he was a prophet. If that's what he judged, I think he and Ezra Klein got it wrong.
Michael writes:
I would ask you to revisit the thrust of your recent post about Barack Obama and speaking prophetically. In the Jewish and Christian context, speaking prophetically is typically understood as (a kind of) truth telling, namely bringing the word of God to the people, who more than not don't want to hear it. This may be the word of God relating future events, but more often than not it is the word of God relaying timeless truths.
Here are a few sources that talk about "prophets" in this tradition
- https://cdn.website-editor.net/aa054753432a4a38853650904850f3d9/files/uploaded/BiblicalProphecy-TheUniquenessOf.pdf
- https://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/prophets-and-prophecy
- - https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/what-are-prophets-for
Obama is using the word in this context. You may disagree with truth that he is telling (or refraining from telling) but seen from his prospective, this is a use of the word prophesy with a long Christian pedigree.
Now, I'm reading about "prophet," "prophetic," and "prophesy" in the OED.
I'm seeing different definitions, one having to do with knowing the will of God and another having to do with foretelling the future.
The question is what meaning did Obama refer to when he said "prophetic voice."
I suspect, as I said in the post, that it's specific to black voices in America. And it doesn't feel right to me to say that it is "prophetic" to say that Americans are racist. I think the idea is a more lofty call to an idealized future, such as MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Even within the idea of the will of God, it seems to look to the future: What does God want us to do?
Ron writes:
"I'd say, just offhand, that prophesy relates to the future, and, normally, when we talk about telling the truth, it relates to the present and the past. "
That's a Roman/Greek view of prophesy. I suspect that Obama is using the Old Testament interpretation. OT prophets do, on occasion, predict the future, but only to prove that they are speaking the word of God or when telling people how they are going to be punished by God. But mostly they tell the Israelites how they are failing to obey God.
Amadeus 48 writes:
"Who can forget Obama solemnly intoning, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice" quoting MLKJr, quoting Theodore Parker. That is Obama's prophetic voice. But he was using it to boost (and perhaps sanctify) political and social policies, many of which were venal vote-buying schemes dolled up as social justice. But to do that is to divide rather than unite. Who likes being called immoral because you don't believe in buying beer and sandwiches for the voters? And one could equally say, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward Trump. The prophetic voice gives one's supporters thrills and chills, but it infuriates and alienates one's opponents.
Rose writes:
"I misunderstood and thought it was Joe Biden’s words in the first paragraph. He gave a talk yesterday when he made an odd comments about black business owners and lawyers/accountants and I assumed it was part of that speech.
"When I realized if was President Obama, I thought he really answered his own question. One of his first decisions was to pick a running mate and he picked Joe Biden whose history on racism is not unblemished."
james the lesser writes:
I'm no fan of Obama, but I must defend him here: he's using the term "prophetic voice" accurately.
A prophet had a message from God, generally a warning and accusation. The prophet might explain the meaning of a recent event from God's point of view. Sometimes the message would include a prediction. But the main point was to try to turn people from their wicked ways. The prophetic voice was a challenge, often against systemic evils.
In the Old Testament as now, "false prophet" was an attractive gig: butter up your fans and challenge your enemies. To be a real prophet--not so much. He was supposed to challenge his friends. (Jonah is an interesting special case. Most people miss the point of the story.)
There are also instances of "a prophetic word" to an individual--from what I've heard the genuine ones seem to be short and incisive.
Ernest writes:
"Obama is using the term “prophetic voice” to refer to the function of the Old Testament prophets who mainly spoke to the ills of their contemporary society. Scholars of the Bible view the future-telling function of these prophets as less important than their challenge to their contemporaries. This is similar to the prophetic tradition in black churches, which you mention in the final paragraph of your post."
JPS writes:
"Obama had been musing about understanding people and bringing us together,”
This is not directed at your accurate description, but this idea of Obama understanding people and bringing us together really is an excellent example of Scott Adams’ “two movies” framework. To Obama admirers I know, and no doubt in his own mind, he was forever trying to do that. In retrospect he should have just stopped trying to reach across the aisle all the time, recognized that Republicans were going to sabotage him no matter how darned reasonable he was (we won't speculate why...), and just boldly enacted his agenda.
To me and a lot of people on the right, he was President Pen and Phone. John Boehner asked him, “Mr. President, I just put eight hundred billion dollars on the table, what do I get for that?” and he responded, “You get nothing. I get that for free.” His “understanding people” was best represented by his “bitter clingers” riff: understanding as an intellectual exercise, with lordly condescension. He had a sweeping health care reform rammed through Congress without any buy-in from the other side. He enacted a treaty in all but name with Iran on his own authority, and sent people to explain that treaties never get through the Senate anymore. And hey, he really never heard a good argument against it anyway.
From 2008 through now I've had the sense that if I could just sit down with him – maybe over a beer – and explain calmly where I was coming from, he would sincerely hate my guts. He always spoke as though everyone, on all sides, agreed that his policies were the right ones, but for various dishonest or cowardly reasons some had to make a show of disagreeing.
Birches writes:
I think Lloyd has it right. Obama is trying to protect his legacy and is in a tricky spot. Unconsciously, everyone knows this is his third term. His people got Biden elected to try and save Obama's legacy. But they can't directly take credit because Ol' Joe actually believes he's in charge and Biden wasn't their first choice. So they do this kind of passive aggressive narrative rewriting to try and thread the needle between the two.
Another observation: reading Obama's words on race after so many years reminds me why I had such an intense dislike of him as President. Nothing is ever his fault.
Left Bank of the Charles writes:
"Here is a lecture your friend Glenn Loury gave back in 2009 on Barack Obama and the Future of the Black Prophetic Tradition: http://www.jsums.edu/scholars/files/2012/08/2009HoldenLecture.pdf?x36929"
Loury writes:
"What, you may be asking yourself, do I mean by “the black prophetic tradition?” Well, I see it as an outsider's and underdog’s critical view about national narrative of the United States of America. It is, to be concrete, an historical counter-narrative – one that, for example, sees
the dispossession of the native people of North America as the great historic crime that it was: One that looks back on the bombing of Hiroshima with a feeling of horror and national shame. It's an insistence that American democracy -- which of course has always been a complicated political compact, usually serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful -- live up to the true meaning of our espoused civic creed. It is an understanding that struggle, resistance and protest are often the only ways to bring this about. And it's the recognition that even in the late 20th and early 21st century, America has not yet to fully do so. The black prophetic tradition is anti-triumphalist, vis-à-vis America's role in the world, and it is deeply suspicious of the “city on a hill” rhetoric of self- congratulation to which American politicians, including President Obama, are so often inclined. It's an outsider's critical assessment of what we Americans do, an assessment that sympathizes in a deep way with the struggles of those who are dispossessed: Palestinians in the Middle East today, for instance, and blacks at the southern tip of Africa in an earlier decade. This tradition of moral witness within the American experience that I associate with the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century and with the civil right movement of the 20th century preaches that “collateral damage” -- where civilians are killed by U.S. military operations -- is not simply an unavoidable cost of doing business in the modern world, but rather is a deeply problematic offense against a righteousness toward which we ought to aspire. What I am calling the black prophetic tradition also reflects a theology, and a universal theory of freedom -- with a strong anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-militarist tilt."
Chris writes:
"I’ve grown skeptical whenever public figures use words like prophetic or moral to describe their views. Same for the word justice. These absolute words claim victory before discussion has even begun. If someone is being prophetic in demanding justice, no one can dissent. The very words put things in an absolute moral plane that doesn’t exist."
Jonathan writes:
"Probably too late to get this in, but I read all the comments to this and found most very good. However, no one fully expressed the view of Obama I have. Obama's true prophetic potential was to point out how trivial the issue of racism has become in understanding and seeking to change things for Blacks, especially those mired in poverty. Obama was the perfect person to speak prophetically to Blacks about the actual nature of their moment in history now. To do so would have been to keep his hands off trivial events such as Gates and the Cambridge cops and Ferguson and the bogus "hands-up, don't shoot" fairy tale. The cops may be a pain for many Blacks, but they are simply NOT the issue. Instead Obama more than any other American politician then or still could have said: "Listen up, people. It's crime, lousy education (plus the culture of 'don't act white') and family disintegration -- these are the tasks you must contend with now. Forget Whitie, he cannot bother you. It is now up to you and it is in your hands. Luckily. You can do something about it all." It is a profound tragedy that Obama did not take this tack."
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