President Obama--We Need You to Rise to the Moment!
The Times Now Call for Obama to use his Voice to Speak Out
Former president Barack Obama seems to have had trouble finding his voice. It was Mark Leibovich who called him out in his hardhitting Atlantic article "Where is Barack Obama?" Written almost as a letter of complaint to the former president it probably caused him to seriously reflect his current strategy of laying low in these tumultous times. The heart of the piece is contained in the paradox—that despite being "the most effective communicator in the Democratic Party," Obama "continues to opt for minimal communication, even as "Trump becomes" increasingly "brazen.” The question is why the minimal engagement in this time which historians are sure to look back on as pivotal to America’s democratic future. While he does "occasionally dips into politics with brief and unmemorable statements, or sporadic fundraising emails," We all have to agree that "these are not normal times" There are a few explanations some dark, some less so. The dark explanation is that he is afraid of assassination attempts on him and harm to his family that if he really set his rhetorical chops to work would surely produce some hint to his supporters that he was getting in his way. Before you dismiss this as an explanation, check out how Senator Romney went from the most articulate opponent on the Republican side to Trump and his policies to a muted version of his former self eventually resigning his seat under pressure from the MAGA crowd’s charges that he was a RINO—Republican in Name Only.
Maybe he was trying to conform to the idea that former presidents should slowly fade into the darkness. Trump was a former president in 2016 and rebuilt his relationship with the GOP and raise millions of dollars for the party that got him re-elected. What is Obama really up to? Writing another memoir? Playing basketball with his bro friends, playing golf?
Consider Frederick Douglass in his final decades. After escaping bondage, after becoming the most powerful orator of his generation, after serving as a marshal and diplomat, Douglass didn't retreat into genteel semi-retirement. He understood that his very existence had become an argument—against every assumption about Black intellectual capacity, against every justification for subjugation, against every comfortable lie white America told itself. His autobiographies weren't just personal narratives; they were forensic demolitions of an entire worldview.
Douglass grew more pointed with age, not less. In 1894, a year before his death, he delivered what may have been his most searing speech on lynching, telling a Brooklyn audience that the real question wasn't whether Black Americans deserved citizenship, but whether white Americans deserved to keep it. This was an elder statesman wielding his authority like a blade.
Obama, at 63, possesses every tool that made Douglass so formidable: the biographical weight, the rhetorical gifts, the moral authority earned through perseverance. His presidency shattered assumptions just as Douglass's escape had—proving that intellectual excellence and measured judgment could coexist with Black identity in ways that still unnerve certain corners of American consciousness. Yet where Douglass leveraged his symbolic power into increasingly direct confrontation with injustice, Obama seems to be doing the reverse.
The contrast with Bruce Springsteen's recent Manchester performance is instructive. Standing before a crowd of British fans, the 75-year-old rocker didn't hedge or speak in code. "There's some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now," he declared before launching into "My City in Ruins." He told the audience directly: "The last check, the last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me. It's in the union of people around a common set of values now that's all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism."
Springsteen understood something that Obama seems reluctant to embrace: that his platform carries responsibilities that transcend personal comfort. The Boss didn't worry about seeming "political" or violating some imaginary code of artistic neutrality. He recognized that his voice, amplified by decades of cultural authority, had become a democratic instrument.
This isn't about wanting Obama to become a partisan attack dog or to abandon presidential dignity. It's about recognizing that certain moments demand that respected elders speak with the full force of their accumulated authority. When Douglass wrote his final autobiography in 1881, he wasn't simply recounting his experiences—he was wielding his life story as evidence in an ongoing trial of American democracy.
Obama's current approach—the oblique references, the careful euphemisms, the refusal to name what everyone can see—suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of his own position. His spokesman recently said that "when he does" speak out, "the last thing he wants to do is make it harder for others to establish themselves and grow their own profiles." But this misses the point entirely. The issue isn't about making space for others; it's about using the space he already occupies.
There's something almost tragic in watching Obama, who once embodied the audacity of hope, now embodying what critics call "the fierce lethargy of semi-retirement." His Hartford appearance, like his previous public outings, felt like a masterclass in saying everything while saying nothing—technically flawless, substantively empty.
Meanwhile, democracy strains under pressures that make the 1850s look like a dress rehearsal. The country that elected Obama twice is the same country currently watching its institutions buckle under authoritarian pressure. This isn't a time for former presidents to practice good manners while the republic burns.
Douglass understood that his very survival had been an argument against the logic of oppression. Obama's presidency was similarly argumentative—proof that excellence and thoughtfulness could emerge from communities that certain Americans preferred to write off. But arguments require voices to make them heard.
The tragedy isn't that Obama has chosen comfort over confrontation—it's that he seems to have forgotten that some silences speak louder than words. And in this case, they're speaking the wrong language entirely.