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Im Ezra Klein, and this is The Ezra Klein Show.
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So in preparation for this episode, I have spent the last few weeks very deep in the mind of Barack Obama. I read the first volume of his presidential memoirs, A Promised Land. But Ive also been listening to his podcast and other interviews hes given, and reading interviews hes given.
And spending a lot of time there, there were a few things I noticed that really became the core of this conversation and that Ive actually just been struggling with myself since. The first is Obamas many mindedness. Its almost pathological how much he tries, in his memoirs, to grant the points of his critics and even the really unfair points of some of his attackers, how much he doubts his own motivations and righteousness.
There are times when it almost feels self-lacerating, like when you want to take him aside and say, look, you won the presidency. You passed the Affordable Care Act. You dont need to keep wondering if you should have gotten into politics at all.
But that personal tendency or maybe its almost better described as a personal discipline, I came to think it really contributes to something deep in what made his presidency possible. Barack Hussein Obama understood, in his bones at that time, that the odds were not good that majority white electorates in the age of the War on Terror were going to vote for him. And he didnt approach that fact resentfully, as a flaw that other people needed to fix in their politics. He saw comforting their fears as his work to do, the work of his politics.
He saw, also, avoiding the issues, and sometimes even the truths that would awaken their suspicions, as just part of the job. And so you can see in the book that hes not just trying to convince them to vote for him as he is. Hes also trying to turn himself, through what he says, and then very importantly, what he doesnt say into the kind of candidate and even person they want to vote for.
Thats an important difference. Its subtle in a way, but its important. And its a whole style of politics that I think is really contested now.
Anyway, so as you can hear in this conversation, for him, it came with a cost, both psychic and eventually, in some ways, political. That is the paradox of his book, and of his career, and to me his presidency. He puts everything into this project of persuasion, of trying to convince America to do something it has never done before. And he so profoundly succeeds and fails.
His win, it simultaneously proves this politics he believes in is possible, which was not obvious then. And at the same time, his win and his presidency begin reshaping the Republican Party into a much more direct antithesis of that politics. It turns into something that more powerfully threatens his vision of America.
Obama is this triumph of political persuasion and compromise. And then he also leaves behind, certainly a less persuadable Republican Party and a more fractured and polarized political system. And Im not saying thats his fault. But it is part of the whole thing, in this really, I think, difficult way that is shaping our politics now. That, to me, is a question his career and his book sets up.
I think a lot of people have more or less given up on the kinds of politics Obama pursued. On the right, of course, thats true with Donald Trump and everything that he has made the Republican Party into. But on the left, in a different way, I do think theres a move towards a politics more of confrontation, of forcing people to face hard truths and saying that, if you dont see where history is going, and you will not admit where our history has been, then you are the problem, that its our job to beat you not accommodate you.
And so when I sat with Obama this week, I wanted to see how he reflected on both the successes and the failures of his approach to politics, how he held the contradictions of his own career together, and where he thought Democrats had something to learn from what he did right, and then also, from what he did wrong. And so thats where we began. As always, my email is ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Here is President Barack Obama.
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So something I noticed again and again in the book is this very particular approach to persuasion that you have. I think the normal way most of us think about it youre winning an argument with someone. And you seem to approach it with this first step of making yourself a person the other person will feel able to listen to, which means sympathizing with their argument, sanding off some of the edges of your own. Tell me a bit about how you think about that.
No, thats interesting. I forget whether it was Clarence Darrow, or Abraham Lincoln, or some apocryphal figure in the past who said, look, the best way to win an argument is to first be able to make the other persons argument better than they can. And for me, what that meant was that I had to understand their world view. And I couldnt expect them to understand mine if I wasnt extending myself to understand theirs.
Now, why that is the way I think about things generally partly is temperament. Partly its biographical. As Ive written not just in this recent book but in past books, if youre a kid whose parents are from Kansas and Kenya, and youre born in Hawaii, and you live in Indonesia, you are naturally having to figure out, well, how did all these pieces fit together? How do all these perspectives, cultures, blind spots, biases, how do you reconcile them to approximate something true?
And I think that carries over into my adulthood, and into my politics, and how I approach the world generally. It presumes that none of us have a monopoly on truth. It admits doubt, in terms of our own perspectives.
But if you practice it long enough, at least for me, it actually allows you then to maybe not always persuade others but at least have some solid ground that you can stand on, that you can with confidence say, you know what? I know what I think, and I know what I believe. It actually gives me more conviction rather than less if I listen to somebody elses argument.
One of the things that strikes me about it, though, is that you see in the book sometimes it means not calling out arguments that I think you think are really wrong, in the same way that you might normally. So in a section about the Tea Party, you mull over whether the reaction they had to you was racist. And clear you think it, at least partly, was. And then you say quote, whatever my instincts might tell me, whatever truth the history books might suggest, I knew I wasnt going to win over any voters by labeling my opponents racist. How do you decide when the cost of that kind of truth outweighs the value of it?
Well, now youre describing something a little bit different, which is, how do you move large segments of the population politically towards an outcome you want, whether its universal health care, or lets do something about climate change? Versus how I might persuade somebody one on one, right? The premise of persuading somebody who you can build some trust with, and have a history with and relationship, then there might be times where you say, you know what? Youre just full of it. And let me tell you why.
And you can be very logical and incisive about how you want to dismantle their arguments. Although I should add, by the way, do not try that at home. Because thats not a recipe for winning arguments with Michelle.
But look, when youre dealing at the macro level, when youre dealing with 300 million people with enormous regional, and racial, and religious, and cultural differences, then now you are having to make some calculations. So lets take the example you used. And I write extensively about the emergence of the Tea Party. And we could see that happening with Sarah Palin. She was sort of a prototype for the politics that led to the Tea Party, that in turn, ultimately led to Donald Trump, and that were still seeing today.
There were times where calling it out would have given me great satisfaction personally. But it wouldnt have necessarily won the political day in terms of me getting a bill passed. And I think every president has to deal with this.
It may have been more noticeable with me, in part because, as the first African American president, there was a presumption, not incorrect, that there were times where I was biting my tongue. Thats why the skit that Key and Peele did with the anger translator, Luther, was funny. Because people assumed, you know Baracks thinking something other than what hes saying in certain circumstances.
I think that, a lot of times, one of the ways I would measure it would be: is it more important for me to tell a basic historical truth, lets say, about racism in America right now? Or is it more important for me to get a bill passed that provides a lot of people with health care that didnt have it before? And theres a psychic cost to not always just telling the truth, as I think I describe in the book, 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 wasnt 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. Sometimes, youd get sufficiently disappointed. Lets say for example, with gun safety issues after Newtown, for example, and Congresss complete unwillingness to do anything about the slaughter of children.
There were times, where I would just go off. Because I felt that deeply about how wrongheaded we were in a basic fundamental way. But that was, lets face it, after I had exhausted every other possibility of trying to get Congress to move on those issues.
I set up that kind of persuasion and pluralism tension, because something that really struck me about the book is how much it lives in paradoxes, how much its comfortable with the idea, that youre comfortable with the idea that something and its opposite are true at the same time. And I think of a politics of persuasion as being the central paradox of your presidency. So you accomplished this massive act of persuasion, winning the presidency twice, as a Black man with the middle name Hussein. And now that, in retrospect, its like, oh yeah, of course, Barack Obama was president.
Yeah, no. I think its fair to say that wasnt a given.
It wasnt as obvious at the time.
Yeah.
But at the same time, your presidency made the Republican Party less persuadable. It opened the door, in certain ways, to Donald Trump. And it further closed the door on the kind of pluralistic politics that you try to practice. And Im curious how you hold both of those outcomes together.
Look, thats been the history of America. Right? There is abolition and the Civil War. And then theres backlash and the rise of the KKK. And the Reconstruction ends, and Jim Crow arises.
And then you have a civil rights movement, a modern civil rights movement and desegregation. And that, in turn, leads to pushback and, ultimately, Nixons Southern strategy. And what I take comfort from is that in the traditional two steps forward, one step back, as long as youre getting the two steps, then the one step back is the price of doing business.
In my case, lets say, I get elected. We have a spurt of activity that gets things done. Even after we lose Congress, during the course of those eight years, we manage the government, restore some sense of that it can work on behalf of people.
We regain credibility internationally, but youre right. It unleashes and helps to precipitate a shift in the Republican Party that was already there but probably accelerates it. And were still playing out how this works to this day.
On the other hand, during that period, youve got an entire generation thats growing up and taking for granted, as you just described, that youve got a Black family in the White House, taking for granted that that administration can be competent, and have integrity, and not be wrought with scandal. And it serves as a marker. Its planted a flag from which then the next generation builds.
And by the way, the next generation can then look back and say, yeah, we do take that for granted. We can do a lot better than that and go even further. And that is, I wouldnt say, an inevitable progression.
Sometimes, the backlash can last a very long time, and you can take three steps back after two steps forward. But it does seem to be in the nature of things that any significant movement of social progress, particularly those aspects of social progress that relate to identity, race, gender, all the stuff that is not just dollars and cents and transactional. That, invariably, will release some energy on the other side by folks who feel threatened by change.
But one lesson Ive seen a lot of folks on the left take, I think particularly in the aftermath in the Trump years, is that theres just some core of this you cant do through persuasion, that you cant do through pluralism. And I think some of the rise of shaming and social pressure, what I think people call cancel culture, ends up partly as a reaction to this. But also, just some of the move towards a politics of, I would say, more confrontation, that theres not a virtue in letting some things lie unsaid, to both the coalition. That you really do have to confront the country.
You really do have to confront others with the ugliest pieces of it. So that light can come in, and it can heal. And Im curious if you think they have a point, or thats the wrong lesson to take.
No. I dont think its well, lets take, since were on the topic of race, what we saw after George Floyds murder was a useful bit of truth telling that young people led. And I think, opened peoples eyes to a renewed way of thinking about how incomplete the process of reckoning has been in this country when it comes to race.
But even after, I think, a shift in perspective around George Floyd, were still back into the trenches of how do we get different district attorneys elected? And how do we actually reform police departments? And now, were back in the world of politics. And as soon as we get back into the world of politics, its a numbers game. And you have to persuade, and you have to create coalitions.
So I dont think its an either/or proposition. I think there are times, where theres what we might describe as a teachable moment. And George Floyds tragic death was an example of that, in very stark terms.
In some ways on the economic front, part of what happens as a result of the pandemic is theres a teachable moment about hey, maybe this whole deficit hawk thing of the federal government just being nervous about our debt 30 years from now, while millions of people are suffering, maybe thats not a smart way to think about our economics. Again, a teachable moment. So there are times where, when thats presented, I think you try to drive it home as much as possible and get a reorientation of the body politic.
But at some point, in this country, in our democracy, you still have to cobble together majorities to get things done. And that is particularly true at the federal level, where although reconciliation has now presented a narrow window to do some pretty big things, the filibuster apparently, if it does not get reformed, still means that maybe 30 percent of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats. So if you say that that 30 percent of the country is irreconcilably wrong, then its going to be hard to govern.
Theres a pretty fundamental asymmetry that brings out. So I think, at the presidential level, you have about a three and a half point advantage for Republicans in the electoral college. At the Senate level, its now about five points, and the House level, its about two points.
So you have this real difference now between the parties, where Democrats need to win right of center voters to win national power. But Republicans do not need to win left of center voters to win national power. And thats really changed the strategic picture for both of them.
Its enormous. And this is part of what I write about in the book. Its one of those things thats in the background of folks in Washington and people who follow politics closely. But the average American, understandably, isnt spending a lot of time thinking about Senate rules, and gerrymandering, and you know
How dare you?
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Im sorry, Ezra, but youre on the nerd side of the spectrum on this stuff, as am I. So people dont understand, well, if the Democrats win the presidency, or if theyre in control of the Senate, why arent all these things that they promised happening? Or why are they trimming their sails on single payer plan health care plans, or what have you?
And the answer is, well, the game is tilted in a way that partly arises out of very intentional desire for Southern states, for example, to maintain power and reduce the power of the federal government. Some of it has to do with demographic patterns and where populations distributed that its not surprising that the progressive party, the Democratic party, is more of an urban party. Because, by necessity, you got more different kinds of people, immigrants flooding urban areas and settling, and having a different perspective than folks who are in more rural, more homogeneous areas. And once you get Wyoming having the same number of senators as California, youve got a problem. That does mean Democratic politics is going to be different than Republican politics.
Now, look, the good news is I also think that has made the Democratic Party more empathetic, more thoughtful, wiser. By necessity we have to think about a broader array of interests and people. And thats my vision for how America ultimately works best and perfects its union.
We dont have the luxury of just consigning a group of people to say, youre not real Americans. We cant do that. But it does make our job harder, when it comes to just trying to get a bill passed or trying to win an election.
One of the ways this has reoriented, even just since your presidency, is around education. So for reasons that are complicated to explain here, when educational polarization becomes bigger, the Democratic disadvantage in the electoral college gets a lot worse.
Right.
But you did something unusual in 2008 and 2012. And you bucked a kind of international trend here, and educational polarization went down. In 2012, you won non-college whites making less than $27,000 a year.
But Donald Trump then wins them by more than 20 points in 2016. He keeps them in 2020. So what advice do you have to Democrats to bring educational polarization back down?
I actually think Joe Bidens got good instincts on this. And the current administrations pursuing policies that speak to the concerns and interests of folks who, if youre 45 and working in a blue collar job, and somebody is lecturing you about becoming a computer programmer, that feels abstract. That feels like something got spit out of some think tank, as opposed to how my real life is lived.
And I think, when you start talking about minimum wages, and when you start talking about union power, you are not soft pedaling social issues. I mean, the interesting thing is people knew I was left on issues like race, or gender equality, and LGBTQ issues, and so forth. But I think, maybe the reason I was successful campaigning in downstate Illinois, or Iowa, or places like that is they never felt as if I was condemning them for not having gotten to the politically correct answer quick enough. Or that somehow they were morally suspect, because they had grown up with and believed more traditional values.
And I think Joe has that same capacity, partly because of his biography and where he comes from. The challenge I have, and I know youve written about this, is when I started running in 2007, 2008, it was still possible for me to go into a small town, in a disproportionately white conservative town in rural America, and get a fair hearing. Because people just they hadnt heard of me.
Now, they might say, what kind of name is that? And they might look at me and have a set of assumptions. But the filter just wasnt that thick. Because rather than getting all their news from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, they were the way Id describe it, the prototypical that I show up in a small town in Southern Illinois, which is closer to the South than it is to Chicago, both culturally as well as geographically. And usually, the local paper was owned by a modestly conservative, maybe even quite conservative usually guy.
Hed call me in. Wed have a cup of coffee. Wed have a conversation about tax policy, or trade, or whatever else he cared about. Or he might have a small editorial board of two or three writers.
And at the end of it, usually, I could expect some sort of story in the paper saying, well, we met with Obama. He seems like an intelligent young man. We dont agree with him on much. Hes kind of liberal for our taste but had some interesting ideas, and that was it.
And so then I could go to the fish fry, or the VFW hall, or all these other venues and just talk to people and have a conversation. And they didnt have any preconceptions about what I believe. They could just take me at face value. If I went into those same places now, or if any Democrat whos campaigning goes in those places now, almost all news is from either Fox News, Sinclairs news stations, talk radio, or some Facebook page. And trying to penetrate that is really difficult.
And its not that the people in these communities have changed. Its that if thats what you are being fed day in day out, then youre going to come to every conversation with a certain set of predispositions that are really hard to break through. And that is one of the biggest challenges I think we face. Because at the end of the day, I actually have found that, and this still sounds naive, I think a lot of people would still question this. But Ive seen it.
Most folks actually are persuadable in the sense of they kind of want the same things. They want a good job. They want to be able to support a family. They want safe neighborhoods.
And even on historically difficult issues like race, people arent going around thinking, man, how can we do terrible things to people who dont look like us? Thats not peoples perspective. What they are concerned about is not being taken advantage of, or is their way of life and traditions slipping away from them? Or is their status being undermined by changes in society?
And if you have a conversation with folks, you can usually assuage those fears. But they have to be able to hear you. And you have to be able to get into the room.
And I still could do that back in 2007, 2008. I think Joe, by virtue of biography and generationally, I think he can still reach some of those folks. But it starts getting harder, particularly for newcomers who are coming up.
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We had a conversation in 2015 about polarization.
Yeah.
And how it had gone up during your presidency, and something you said to me is something I wrestled a lot with my own book, which is that, look, people are pretty polarized when you start talking about national politics. But then you talk to them a bit more, and theyre soccer coaches. They go to church.
They got a business. Their friend down the street doesnt think like them or doesnt look like them. And I found that persuasive at the time and hopeful at the time. And one of the things
Things changed.
I began to think since is politics has become that much more nationalized. Our political identities become that much stronger. And this idea that these other identities are deeper seems less and less true. That like, when the political cue comes, you really know what side youre on. Do you think Americans have just become less persuadable?
What you just identified, in part because of the media infrastructure I described, and the siloing of media, in part because of, then, the Trump presidency and the way both sides went to their respective fortresses, absolutely. I think its real. I think its worse.
Im not the original in this. I think polling shows it. Anecdote shows it. Thanksgiving becomes a lot more difficult. What were seeing right now, with respect to vaccines.
I mean, I think its fair to say that the difference in how George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama administration wouldve approached the basic issue of a pandemic and vaccines, there might be differences in terms of efficacy, or how well programs were run, et cetera. But its hard to imagine a previous Republican administration completely ignoring science. Right?
Yeah. I thought a lot about if this were second term Mitt Romney. How would that have gone?
Yeah, exactly. And so that is a fundamental shift. And I think peoples identities have become far more invested as a result in which side are you on politically? It spills over into everyday life and even small issues, what previously were not considered even political issues.
And so if youre a soccer coach now, there might be a conversation about, why are all the refs white? Suddenly, theres a long argument. And youve got each side immediately tweeting about it. And it becomes fraught with all sorts of political stuff.
And then Fox News might grab the story and run with it in the most sensational way. And next thing you know, Joe Bidens being asked about a soccer game in Maryland. And we see that pattern playing itself out in our daily lives in a way thats unhealthy.
Some people have remarked, and I think theres some merit to this, that the decline of other mediating institutions that provided us a sense of place and who we are, whether it was the church, or union, or neighborhood, those used to be part of a multiple set of building blocks to how we thought about ourselves. And the way the national conversation evolves, suddenly, theres a right answer across all those lines, which is part of the reason why you dont get ticket splitting these days. Being a moderate Republican, and I write about this in Promised Land, you could see it happening even when I first came in. What was striking was the degree to which the conservative Democrat, or the pro-choice Republican, they were getting winnowed out of each respective party.
And whats interesting is how it filtered. Rather than the public saying, we dont like that. Lets try something else. In some ways, the publics come to see themselves individually in those terms as well.
Well, also, the choices get starker for them. Something I was thinking about while you were talking was this idea that I think about sometimes that I call ricochet polarization. And Im not asserting symmetry between two sides. I dont want to
Good.
Get flack on that.
Yeah, well. I would jump on you in a second. Dont worry.
But theres a dynamic here. You were saying a couple of minutes ago that you thought people knew you were pretty left on social issues, on LGBTQ issues, on a bunch of issues. But they thought you respected them.
But you, also, because its either what you believed, or also because, and the Democratic Party broadly, thought folks who are movable. You were restrained on a lot of these issues. You ran in 2008, and you were opposed to gay marriage. Im not saying that wasnt true to you, but publicly, that was the position.
You talk in the book about how Axelrod and Plouffe were very careful about avoiding issues that would exacerbate racial conflict. And you guys focused a lot on economics. But then as people feel that stuff not working as the other they see the worst of the outside coming at them. Theres a dynamic that happens.
And I see it among Democrats too, where its like, well, you know what? Then heres what I really believe. And heres what I really believe about you. And the parties become a little more each day less restrained, because the benefits of restraint seem lower. Like, if theyre still going to say Im a socialist, then, well, maybe I am a socialist.
Yeah.
Theyre still going to say I want to raise taxes on middle class people, then, maybe I do, actually.
As you said though, it is first of all, and you already offered this caveat. But I want to reemphasize its not symmetrical. Because Joe Manchins still a Democrat in our party.
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