The Barack Obama who took the stage in Chicago on Tuesday night evidently hasn’t given up on the ideals of the young man who brought the house down in Boston 20 years ago.
The “ skinny kid with the funny name ” who addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention established himself as a national political figure and laid the groundwork for what, four years later, would be his own successful run for the presidency.
Tuesday night, he was older and grayer, though still pretty skinny. And this time, his mission was to promote the presidential candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, rather than that of 2004 Democratic nominee (and then-senator) John Kerry.
But Obama’s underlying message was the very same call he issued in Boston — to find common ground with would-be adversaries, to transcend division in a time of unprecedented polarization. And if it felt somehow incompatible with the harsh realities of today’s political environment, it’s worth remembering that it seemed like a pretty audacious argument back then, too.
The 2004 campaign took place in the tumultuous aftermath of the 2000 election, which is when the now-familiar portrayal of red and blue states became fixtures of political discussion. At the forefront were fights over patriotism (in the wake of 9/11 and the war in Iraq) and LGBTQ+ rights (in the wake of the first state supreme court decision legalizing same-sex marriage) that were as much about culture and identity as they were about policy.
Those battle lines were rooted in real, deeply held differences in values and prejudices as old as the country itself. But, Obama told the convention audience, the lines were hardening because certain leaders ― like then-Republican President George W. Bush and the powers-that-be at Fox News ― wanted to exploit hostility in order to gain and keep political power.
Obama, then a state legislator running for an open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, was having none of it.
Barack Obama, then a 42-year-old Illinois state senator, speaks at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Drawing on his background as the son of a Black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, and as a lawmaker from Chicago’s South Side making his way through state politics by talking to rural voters, Obama insisted that Americans shared similarities that were more important than their differences, and ultimately a source of national strength.
“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states ― red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats,” Obama said. “But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
Obama was still talking that way four years later, following Kerry’s defeat, when he ran for and won the presidency himself. But at least in Washington, D.C., transcending those differences turned out to be a lot more difficult than Obama ever imagined as Republican leaders boasted openly that denying him reelection was their overriding priority.
In the middle of an existential financial crisis, Republicans refused to support economic relief measures they had once supported. Later, they vilified a health care plan rooted in many of their own conservative principles as un-American and a vehicle for “death panels.”
Just beneath the surface of the policy fights, and sometimes above it, were attacks tied to Obama’s racial identity ― perhaps most memorably in the ongoing, utterly fabricated controversy over whether he was actually born in the U.S.
Perhaps nobody did more to promote the birtherism lie than Donald Trump, whose win in the 2016 presidential election ― on the strength of a racially, geographically distinct backlash against the Democratic vision for America ― felt like proof that Obama’s paeans to unity were just flat-out wrong.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024.
The very real possibility that Trump could win again this year would seem to render Obama’s argument even more anachronistic . Americans today may be even more bitterly divided than they were 20 years ago ― a fact Obama acknowledged and blamed partly on the way social media changed how we relate to one another.
“We chase the approval of strangers on our phones,” Obama said. “We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.”
Another force driving Americans apart, Obama said, was a quickness to attack and condemn rather than listen — a message that he’s directed at the left as well as the right, and seemed to do again on Tuesday.
“If a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people,” Obama said. “We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.”
This has always been the core of Obama’s governing philosophy ― that the best way forward, and really the only way forward, is to change minds by meeting people where they are.
That philosophy is rooted in pragmatism ― i.e., Obama’s conviction that Democrats can’t prevail without reaching well beyond their base, and that the alternative to compromised, incremental progress is frequently no progress at all. “ Better is good ” is one of his mantras for a reason.
But Obama’s outlook on politics is also infused with idealism. It relies on a belief that shared, deeply held values lie beneath all the political fissures, just waiting for the right leaders to tap into them.
“That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where ‘We, the people’ includes everyone,” Obama said, “Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do.”
To some of Obama’s critics, especially those on the left, this faith is naive and all too forgiving of people who don’t deserve the “grace” he would give them. To other critics, especially on the right, it’s an inversion of the reality they perceive ― one where it’s Obama and his allies trying to tear apart America and betray its values. In their view, lofty appeals like Tuesday’s are camouflage for selfish, corrupt or sinister plans.
But as Obama reminded his audience, he’s not the first American leader to perceive one nation where everybody else sees two. “As much as any policy or program,” Obama said, “I believe that’s what we yearn for: a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other. A restoration of what Lincoln called, on the eve of civil war, our ‘bonds of affection.’ An America that taps what he called the better angels of our nature.’”
Obama won two presidential elections appealing to those better angels, then proceeded to govern in a way that changed America forever. Who’s to say it couldn’t happen again?
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