Obama's Unfinished Legacy In Plain View

CHICAGO — Stevie Wonder and an all-star collection of musicians were playing the former first families off the stage and Barack Obama was having fun. After dancing with his wife, Michelle, the former president waved good-bye to his hometown crowd, even played a little air guitar and then strolled away. Nearly 10 years after leaving office, Obama’s presidential center had finally been dedicated on a sunny, early-summer day here.

But there was still a former president lingering, the last VIP yet to go backstage. And for a moment, when Joe Biden stood behind the podium, it seemed as though he may try to speak over the music to the departing crowd. It soon became clear he was only joking, but not before his wife, Jill, came back from backstage to retrieve her husband.

This was Obama’s day and he was the only former elected official to address his former aides, old friends and legion of admirers. Yet Biden’s playful lunge for the lectern on the way out was an almost too-perfect metaphor for how Obama will be remembered, as much for what came after as his own presidency.

That legacy was in plain view Thursday.

It was visible in the second row of a two-row stage, where Obama rivals-turned-misbegotten-heirs, Biden and Hillary Clinton, sat on opposite ends from one another, separated by their spouses, George W. and Laura Bush and Clinton’s eyebrow-blazing comments this week that Biden “made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country” by seeking re-election.

It was pulsating through the withering indictments of the only living president not present, Donald Trump, who neither Obama named in their remarks because their target was self-evident.

Yet the prospect of an Obama redemption, or perhaps continuation, was also just as easy to glimpse. It was down front in the audience, where two sons of Illinois, JB Pritzker and Rahm Emanuel, sat not far from Pete Buttigieg, Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsom. And it was on display further from the stage, where a diverse array of young people and their families came to see a now-grey and well-into-AARP-eligibility man tell them about hope, change and their capacity to make America greater than it has ever been.

“There is a new generation out there ready to write the next chapter of our story,” Obama said at the end of his remarks, alluding to the country.

The unveiling of presidential libraries has always been one of those political rituals that blends past, present, and future.

When Jimmy Carter spoke at the opening of John F. Kennedy’s library in 1979, the slain brother’s youngest brother was just weeks away from announcing his primary challenge against Carter, which the then-president earned laughs by slyly alluding to in his remarks.

Bill Clinton’s library was dedicated just weeks after George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election while Democrats despaired about their prospects, not recognizing Illinois voters had just elected their next president.

And in 2013, when Bush presided over his own library opening, his mother made some impromptu news hours before the ceremony. Appearing on the TODAY show, Barbara Bush splashed cold water on another son, presciently declaring of Jeb Bush’s presidential prospects that America “had enough Bushes.”

In Chicago, however, it was as if yesterday, today and tomorrow all converged.

It was inevitable that the current president would shadow the gathering because this is, like it or not, the Age of Trump. Who he is and what he’s done to the country and presidency is inescapable. Yet in their impassioned effort to argue that there is (and was) a better way, the Obamas all but dragged Trump on stage with them.

Michelle Obama said she’d do what her husband wouldn’t and brag on him. She did so by extolling his decency, composure, moral compass and Nobel Peace Prize — get it? — before lamenting those who questioned his birthplace, sat in judgement of who’s truly American and created a moment where “everything feels so upside down.”

After a UFC fighter used a microphone on the South Lawn of the White House Sunday to slur the former first lady, there was an effort to send a rejoinder of kindness. The musician Bono did so by serenading her with a brief cover, crooning “Michelle, my belle” and walking over to her seat.

The former president also hailed his wife — her tribute brought him and their daughters to tears. Yet he wanted to use his speech to separate Trump from the main currents of American politics and even the Republican Party.

Obama invoked the country’s founding and its promise, simply citing checks and balances, an independent judiciary and the necessity of a peaceful transfer of power to assail Trump. Those values, Obama said, didn’t belong to any party but were “American values we can all share.” The former presidents sitting behind him believed in them and so did John McCain and Mitt Romney, Obama said, citing his two Republican opponents by name.

While allowing that it’s mostly the “loudest and most extreme voices” receiving attention, Obama found hope in the selfless examples of everyday Americans, most notably “ordinary people in the Twin Cities who braved frigid temperatures, risked their own safety standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors and sometimes look out for strangers because they knew that was the right thing to do.”

At least one potential future president got the message.

“At a time of so much anxiety, despair — so much negativity focusing on what’s wrong, it’s nice to see the spirit elevated,” Newsom said after the ceremony, as The Beatles' “All You Need is Love” blared and the California governor stood in an impromptu photo line.

It was Michelle Obama’s speech, though, which was “just another level,” Newsom said, adding that she ought to run herself for president and acknowledging that he couldn’t beat her — “no one could.”

In part because of her magnetism and in part because she was the only other featured speaker here, the former first lady made clear she may have been her husband’s only rightful heir, the equal to an otherwise singular talent.

The two Democrats a generation older who sought to succeed him — his secretary of state and vice-president — were allies, but never truly part of his movement, because no one could be. As with Trump, Obama alone is the brand.

At the outset of his remarks, Obama generously praised Biden, calling him “family” and stating, “he would not be here without you.”

Yet their relationship was always more tenuous. Biden was open about his resentment toward Obama’s aides over nudging from the 2016 race and privately thrilled as president about the prospect of pursuing a more ambitious agenda than Obama and therefore being seen as just as consequential.

Since Biden’s insistence on running for re-election as he neared 82, and the annus horribilis for Democrats that followed, Obama’s top aides have been scathing in their criticism of their vice-president, prompting Biden’s son Hunter to return fire.

It’s a testament to Obama’s enduring imprint that so many Republicans were convinced he’s secretly controlled the party for the last decade and the wish of so many Democrats that that were only true.

Like so many Democrats, including the newly-outspoken Hillary Clinton, Obama failed to speak up about Biden’s fitness when the moment demanded it and helped ensure Trump’s resurrection.

Of course that was all publicly suppressed here. And for a few hours, at least between the Trump trolling, this day recalled a warmer version of that November night a few miles north in Grant Park when the country witnessed its first Black first family.

The Obama girls are now women, the musicians besotted with their pop culture equal are downright elderly, and as the former president noted, his youthful devotees have children or even grandchildren now.

Yet the best part of Obama was never any of them; it was that he inspired others to do their part to fulfill America’s promise — and to believe that they could.

If that spirit rises again it will not only see the country “through its present trials,” as Obama put it today, but write his own final chapter.