What is it about former Democratic presidents that they can’t leave the arena? They leave, then come back, then go quiet for a while, and just when you think you’ve gotten rid of them they spring back into the headlines again. Jimmy Carter set the example here. For nearly four decades the man’s been jetting around the world as though his presidency never ended—meeting with foreign leaders and dictators, offering his services as an election monitor in places where fair elections were certain not to happen, making critical and sometimes acerbic comments about his successors and their policies, insinuating himself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in unfailingly baleful ways, accepting international awards, and generally making a nuisance of himself.
Bill Clinton similarly finds it difficult to stay away: the television and magazine interviews, the “special envoy” diplomatic missions hither and yon, the speeches at innumerable elite confabs, and of course the constant efforts, both high- and low-profile, to get his intermittently estranged wife elected president.
Republican presidents, by contrast, seem mostly content to let others enjoy the limelight. Occasionally one will offer a vaguely political comment to a reporter, and George W. Bush eventually tried to help his brother’s doomed presidential campaign, but otherwise they confine their work to humanitarian projects and writing generous and statesmanlike memoirs.
This may well change when Donald Trump leaves office, but the pattern will likely hold true during the post-presidential career of Barack Obama. We learned last week that Obama and his wife, Michelle, are in the final stages of negotiations with Netflix to produce one or more shows that will allow him to retain his influence on global affairs.
News reports indicated that the Obamas do not plan to use the Netflix shows to respond directly to the Trump administration but will instead use the new medium to highlight powerful stories. “President and Mrs. Obama have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire,” the couple’s spokesman said. “Throughout their lives, they have lifted up stories of people whose efforts to make a difference are quietly changing the world for the better. As they consider their future personal plans, they continue to explore new ways to help others tell and share their stories.”
It seems to The Scrapbook that Sally Jessy Raphael and Oprah Winfrey already took that idea about as far as it can go, but we enjoy powerful stories about ordinary people changing the world for the better, and we wish the Obamas well in their new television-production careers.
But hold on. The New York Times reports that the Obamas’ media venture may not be the apolitical project we would prefer. “In one possible show idea,” the Times reports, “Mr. Obama could moderate conversations on topics that dominated his presidency—health care, voting rights, immigration, foreign policy, climate change—and that have continued to divide a polarized American electorate during President Trump’s time in office. Another program could feature Mrs. Obama on topics, like nutrition, that she championed in the White House.”
If we may be forgiven for saying so, these ideas don’t sound like ratings sensations. They sound like PBS’s Washington Week, only less exciting. The very thought of listening to Obama drone on about climate change or health care is itself a kind of soporific.
The point isn’t that we don’t want to hear Obama anymore—okay, maybe that is the point. We watched and listened to him for eight solid years, and we don’t want to think about him anymore. That’s not all his fault—it’s the nature of the postmodern presidency, which for a variety of reasons requires presidents to speak in public forums vastly more often than presidents did in former times. No day passes anymore in which a president’s name and utterances are nowhere to be found in the news.
The result is that, after just two or three years on the job, even the president’s sympathizers get tired of hearing from him and about him all the time. But perhaps Obama’s sympathizers will feel differently. We hope they enjoy more of the 44th president’s dulcet tones discussing “topics that dominated his presidency.” We’ll be watching something else. Anything else.
