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Obama Toasts Away His Presidency With Tears and Thanks New York Times WASHINGTON With just hours left in his presidency, Barack Obama toasted about 30 of his closest advisers in the private second-floor residence of the White House one final chance for a departing president to say goodbye. Champagne flute in hand, ... and more »

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Obama Toasts Away His Presidency With Tears and Thanks - New York Times

The work of unraveling President Obamas legacy is under way, but even if the Trump administration and a Republican Congress reverse every last law and regulation, they wont be able to touch the core of it.

Obamas enduring legacy will be as a cultural symbol, the first African-American president who represented a current of social change in the country and reflected the values and attitudes of the progressive elite.

He will be remembered and revered by his admirers as his generations JFK. The standards here are largely stylistic, and Obama checks nearly every box: He was a young president; a photogenic man with a good-looking family; a symbol of generational change; an orator given to flights of inspiring rhetoric; if not a wit exactly, a facile talker with a taste for mocking the other side.

The process is a little like Romans deciding which emperors to make gods after their deaths, depending on their reputations. For Democrats, LBJ and Jimmy Carter were too unglamorous and too obviously failures, whereas Bill Clinton gave too much ground to Republicans (and didnt keep his dalliances discreet).

Obama won two terms, is as ideologically pure as reasonably possible and has cultural staying power.

The original myth of Camelot was borne aloft by the tragedy of JFKs assassination, which created a suspension of disbelief about the martyred president.

Obama isnt a martyr, but his supporters have experienced the election of Donald Trump as a major trauma. For them, the poignancy and power of Obama as a symbol of what they consider a better American will increase every single day of the Trump years.

The New York Times columnist Tom Wicker once wrote a book on Richard Nixon called One of Us. The liberal opinion elite fell in love with Obama because he was one of them. In sensibility and worldview, hes a writer for The New Yorker who happened to win two presidential elections.

Words matter to Obama. He is comfortable with popular culture and embodies a certain kind of cool. When he is not whipping up a crowd, he has the affect of a Harvard lecturer.

His politics are assumed to be unassailable common sense wherever unreflective liberals gather, from faculty lounges to Hollywood fund-raisers.

One of the root causes of Obamas domestic political failure was the tension between his pitch for himself as a unifying figure and the fact that he was a committed man of the left. He could be one or other, but not both. He always chose his left-wing politics.

His favorite rhetorical crutch was to portray his positions as the centrist path between two extremes, although this was convincing only to people who already agreed with him. His inability or unwillingness to compromise proved devastating to his party, which got wiped out in 2010, 2014 and most importantly 2016. This puts much of what he accomplished legislatively and unilaterally in jeopardy.

Obama the symbol, though, will remain wholly intact. His election in 2008 was a genuinely historic and affecting cultural milestone. The country had sent to the White House a man who a few decades prior wouldnt have been allowed to stay in some motels.

Attitudes notably shifted to the left during Obamas presidency on highly contested cultural issues. In the space of about seven years, he went from opposing gay marriage to lighting up the White House in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Courts gay-marriage decision.

At least temporarily, he discovered a different way to win elections that had almost as much cultural resonance as electoral significance. When and if the so-called coalition of the ascendant rises again, Obama will be remembered as its architect, and an exemplar of the demographic changes behind it.

And Obama isnt going away. He will be a memoirist, lecturer and late-night-show guest representing enlightened liberalism in exile, stoking nostalgia and yearning among his supporters.

Even as his substantive legacy washes away, the apotheosis will begin.

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The Obama legacy that no one can, or should, undo - New York Post

President Obama will begin the dayFriday amid the pomp of Inauguration Dayand end it in a way he hasnt in eight years without a coterie of aides, a slate of briefings or a trailing gaggle of reporters, as he hands over power and retreats tothe quiet of the Palm Springs desert where former presidents before him have found escape.

After he witnesses the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol at noon, Obama will take his final flight aboard the presidential aircraft it will no longer be Air Force One, as the sitting president will not be aboard and begin recuperatingfrom a tumultuous campaign season and intense transition that punctuated his presidency. He will enter a period of what he says will be silence and reflection with family.

I want to do some writing, he told reporters this week. I want to be quiet a little bit and not hear myself talk so darn much. I want to spend precious time with my girls.

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Presidents historically have cloistered themselves immediately after leaving office, letting their successors establish themselves as the new commander in chief. The Obamas are not disclosing how long they plan to remain in Palm Springs nor whether the former president and first lady will stay in the Coachella Valley longer than their daughters, one of whom is still in high school.

Obama isnt the first former president to get away to the vicinity of the historic Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, where he has taken several golf vacations and hosted foreign leaders over the past eight years; President Nixon retreated to Sunnylands after his resignation.

Obama has no plans to give interviews, the White House said, though he has said he will speak out as events demand it, particularly if the Trump administration moves to deport the 750,000 or so young adults who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children and whom Obama temporarily protected from deportation.

The notion that we would just arbitrarily, or because of politics, punish those kidswhen they didn't do anything wrong themselves, I think, would be something that would merit me speaking out, Obama said.

Eventually, Obama will transition into his post-presidency career, which might be the most robust of any former president in the modern era. Obama has loosely outlined his plans for friends and close aides, several of whom will work with him either at his foundation, presidential library or personal office.

In the final days of his presidency, Obama talked about a return to the ideals of his early community organizing with the worldwide reach of a former president as global organizer, as one friend calledit.

Obama plans to help motivate a new generation of leaders at every level of government, though with a different approach as a global leader than the one he took as a grass-roots community organizer.

A close aide, David Simas, left the White House at the end of the year to become chief executive of the Obama Foundation, with a board of directors run by Obamas close friend Marty Nesbitt.Part of the foundations responsibility is to build the Obama library on the South Side of Chicago, including programming, training, storytelling and interactive experiences.

Their first task is to raise money for the library and its museum. Officials havent disclosed a funding target, but the George W. Bush Presidential Library and endowment broke records with more than $500million raised.

Obama may eventually enter into partnerships with the East-West Center, an education and research organization based in Honolulu, and with his alma mater, Columbia University in New York.

Hes very optimistic about our future, said Valerie Jarrett, a close family friend and longtime advisor.

Obama also hopes to keep up his regular contact with Trump, offering advice and counsel if he seeks it, or simply a word of empathy.Obama has often remarked on the change that set in when he was elected, the responsibility that appeared in the form of the decorated military officer who carries the nuclear launch codes who wasnever more than a few paces away.

Obama is not going to be the voice of opposition to Trump, aides agreed.

"President Obama is enormously grateful President Bush gave the president space to do his job when he took office, and he'll do the same for President Trump, said Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz. President Obama won't weigh in on the day-to-day churn of Washington, but if there's something that's counter to what he believes America stands for, he might consider speaking out.

I'd expect a huge exhale after the 20th, Schultz added.

Obamas exact scope of influence is still taking shape, said one friend.

Right now, the friend said, Obama is contemplating what this time means in the greater arc of history.

christi.parsons@latimes.com

Twitter: @cparsons

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Obama is ready for life after the White House. But first, he'll retreat to Palm Springs - Los Angeles Times

New York Times

The Crooner in Chief: Barack Obama's Musical Legacy New York Times In 2015, after Aretha Franklin played an outstanding, fur-dropping rendition of (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman onstage at the Kennedy Center Honors, Barack Obama reflected on the performance in an email to The New Yorker editor David ... and more »

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The Crooner in Chief: Barack Obama's Musical Legacy - New York Times

New York Times

Before Emptying the White House, Obama's Glittering Round of Farewells New York Times On Monday, four days before Mr. Obama was to hand the presidency to Donald J. Trump, the Chicago Cubs visited the White House to celebrate their first World Series championship since 1908. It was a rollicking event, with references to the team's rabid ... Watch Live: President Obama's Final Press ConferenceTIME all 1,691 news articles »

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Before Emptying the White House, Obama's Glittering Round of Farewells - New York Times