Pod Save America - “Barack Obama on 2020.”

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Former President Barack Obama joins Jon F. and Tommy to talk about the stakes of the 2020 election up and down the ballot, make his case for Joe Biden and share his vision for creating lasting progressive change in 2021 and beyond.For a transcript of this episode, please visit https://crooked.com/podcast/barack-obama-on-2020/.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. We have a very special episode of Pod Save America today. Barack Obama's here. Oh, I thought you were going to say BTS. Yes, we know we just did an interview with Barack Obama. I have BTS on the brain, Jon. That was really fun. That was like a throwback 45 minutes. He has lots to say. He talked about sort of his pitch to undecided voters, talked about Joe Biden working with him, his foreign policy. Yeah, his character, his foreign policy. We talked about what it's like to wake up and see

the president of the United States tweeting that the attorney general should indict you, if that's weird. Yeah. Stay tuned for that. That was an interesting answer. He talked a lot about Fox News and the right wing media infrastructure. We talked about what it's like governing with this kind of Republican Party and how Joe Biden can deal with this kind of Republican Party if he is, in fact, elected. Yeah. And why you need to vote. By the way, I'm hoping we have some new listeners to this. So if you need any information about where you need to vote, the issues on your ballot, a sample ballot, go to VoteSaveAmerica.com. We got you covered. Figured I'd plug it, John.

Why not? And Barack Obama reminded us of this at the end of the interview. Go fill out your census because it was just a horrible Supreme Court decision where they stopped counting the census and Obama wants you all to fill out your census. So that's directly from him. Now you got to do it. Sorry. All right. Here is our interview with Barack Obama. Here is our interview with Barack Obama. On today's show, the 44th president of the United States, our former boss, responsible for hiring the two of us, Barack Obama. Still questioning that decision. Welcome back to the pod.

It's good to be back. You guys look good. Thank you. We're trying. You too. You too. So, you know, I'm fairly confident that Pod Save America listeners know who they're voting for at this point. But we have about 300,000 volunteers who are phone banking, text banking every day. A lot of the polling shows that the people who are still deciding who to vote for and especially whether to vote at all tend to not have a college degree, tend to be younger. They tend to be voters of color. This cycle, they tend to be younger, black and Latino men specifically. These voters generally have a negative view of Trump,

but they pay less attention to the news and are less likely to believe that voting will actually make a difference. What is your pitch to these voters? actually make a difference. What is your pitch to these voters? Well, let's take some examples just from this year, right? We know that COVID-19 disproportionately affects minorities. So those voters you just described, they've got a member of their family who may have been killed by COVID or disabled by COVID or laid off as a consequence of COVID. And whatever you think about whether the federal government can help on big major issues like systemic racism, one thing we know is that just basic competence can end up saving lives. And so one thing I would say to anybody who's skeptical about what government can do generally is to just take the example of when we were in office. You might not have been happy with everything I did, all my policy choices.

I didn't eliminate poverty in America. But when we had a pandemic or the threat of pandemic, we had competent people in place who would deal with it. And that's an example of the kind of thing that government can do and we've seen it do and that I think is important. For those who are concerned about the criminal justice system, as you guys know, I've talked about this a lot, I am hugely proud of the demonstrations and activism that young people have displayed and a lot of those folks may be skeptical about what the government can do. Some of them may have been

frustrated about my failure to have completely transformed the criminal justice system to eliminate racial bias. Part of that is because 90% of criminal sentencing typically is taking place at the state rather than the federal level. So the federal government doesn't have power. But the truth of the matter is that when I was in office, Eric Holder said to U.S. attorneys, we're not going to judge you on getting the maximum sentence every single time. He changed the criteria so that the federal government in cases that were involving drug cases, for example, wasn't throwing the book at folks and trying to maximize the number of people going to prison. That may not eliminate mass incarceration, but it does change the lives of potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Us initiating a consent decree in a place like Ferguson so that they can't make a move in terms

of how their police department works without first clearing it with civil rights attorneys to make sure they're not reinforcing bias, that makes a difference. And one of the things that I've been emphasizing is the degree to which it's not just the presidential candidates that are on the ticket. You've got district attorneys and state's attorneys who are going to be responsible for whether or not police misconduct is charged and departments are held accountable. You've got mayor's races in which the mayor is going to decide who the police

chief is and what the contract is with the police union. So on every issue that young people in particular care about, let's agree, let's stipulate that, yeah, the government's not going to solve every problem overnight. But you know what? It can make it better. And better means lives saved. Better means the air a little less polluted. Better means that maybe some people don't get charged for crimes that they shouldn't be charged for. And some people don't get shot. And that's worth fighting for. And the idea that you'd give away your power because you're not getting 100 percent when you could get 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent better, that doesn't make any sense.

And that, I think, is the most important thing that I focus on when I'm talking to young people in particular. Don't let the best be the enemy of the good in this situation. don't let the best be the enemy of the good in this situation. There are constraints in our system. Even a well-meaning president can't solve everything, but they can make some things better. And just like the Affordable Care Act, you know, us getting 20 million people health insurance and locking in pre-existing conditions

and everybody being under 26 being able to be on their parents' plan. You know, we still had millions of people without health insurance. But for those 20 million or those people with pre-existing conditions who had tried to get insurance, that was a lifeline. That was a lifesaver. And you can spend 15 minutes, half an hour voting to do that. Good. A quick plug. If you go to votesaveamerica.com, you can find your sample ballot. You can see all those down ballot races that are critical. If you're in California, you can see ballot initiatives. So check it out, votesaveamerica.com, shameless plug. Mr. President, so presidents have the most discretion when it comes to foreign

policy, but those issues rarely get a lot of attention during the campaign. Voters may have heard that Joe Biden supported the war in Iraq back in the day, but not a lot else about him. You spent countless hours with Vice President Biden talking about national security. What did you learn about how he thinks about diplomacy and counterterrorism and the use of military force that others would not have seen? Well, a couple of things. One, and I think this is most important, is when people ask me what surprised me most about the presidency, what I always tell them is I understood but didn't fully appreciate the degree to which we kind of underwrite the international order. And in the sense that even our enemies expect us to behave like adults on the international stage.

If there's a crisis somewhere, people don't call Moscow or Beijing. They call us and say, what are we going to do to help? If there is a ethnic cleansing, if there is a conflict, if there is a natural disaster. And the reason that we can serve in that role, even if we're not perfect, is that we have the infrastructure, we have experienced diplomats. We have institutional traditions that allow us to show leadership on the international stage, whether it's in the Paris Peace Accords, whether it's on the Iran deal, you name it. And the thing that over the last four years, it's not as if Trump has been all that active internationally. I mean, the truth

is he doesn't have the patience and the focus to really substantially change a lot of U.S. foreign policy. What he's done is he's systematically tried to decimate our entire foreign policy infrastructure. And the thing I know about Joe is that he respects people who know history and have expertise. somebody who has worked in Africa to find out, like, how should I deal with a particular crisis there, as opposed to calling it a bunch of, I won't say the word, countries. He has a respect and understanding for what American leadership can do. And let's take the example of human rights, because I've just been writing about this. Any U.S. president, when I became president, one of the things I discovered coming into office is you're in charge of this big apparatus.

You've got all these legacy systems. You've got the Pentagon. You've got the intelligence community. A bunch of choices have been made, some of, you've got the intelligence community. A bunch of choices have been made, some of which you don't necessarily agree with. It's an ocean liner and not a speed boat. So you trying to change policy is really difficult, right? But even in those circumstances where you have to balance U.S. interests versus human rights interests, for us to go around and just talk about human rights, for me to meet with a dictator,

yes, I may have to deal with them because we've got other interests at stake. But for me to bring up in a meeting, you know what, you locking up journalists or you mistreating this minority ethnic group is something that the United States objects to. That that gives them pause. It it it in some cases may tilt the balance in a way that you create more space for human rights activists or freedom of speech or environmental activism. And that's something I know Joe cares about. The other thing I think that's important, you mentioned Joe having voted for the war in Iraq. He learned a lesson from that. And as you know, he was probably the person who was most restrained in terms of use of military force among my senior advisors during the course of my presidency. He consistently believed that we should show restraint and humility and think through the use of military power and had huge confidence and faith in the use of diplomacy as a strategy for,

you know, showing American leadership. And that instinct, I think, is going to trickle out, partly because he's going to have to rebuild a State Department that where some of the best people have been driven out systematically because they weren't willing to tow Trump's ideological agenda. Right. So the two of you, you know, became really close over the eight years that you served together. Do you have an anecdote about Joe Biden that most people don't know tells a story about what kind of a person or leader he is? You know, I think the thing that I always, when I think about Joe, I always think about the fact that, and this is not a particular anecdote, this is more just day-to-day interactions. He was always the guy in every meeting who asked, how's this helping regular folks?

talking to the conductors and knowing their names and, you know, wanting to, you know, spend as much time as possible with voters and just hear about their lives and identifying with the ordinary day-to-day struggles of the American people. That's not a shtick. You know, that's who he is. Now, that's part of the reason why he was always late, because if you got in a rope line with him, you know, I was pretty good about working the rope line. You know, this whole myth about me being aloof and stuff, you guys were there. Like, I loved hugging grandmas and kissing babies.

Yeah. And I'd take my time in rope lines, and if he and I were campaigning, you know, I would have been really giving everybody a lot of attention. I'd be at the end of the rope. I'd look back. He was a third of the way through, man. He was still, you know, telling a story or listening to somebody. And that heart is who he is.

And that's why, you know, a lot of times when you're thinking about the presidency uh it's it's great to to look at policy and and you know do they have what were their 10 point plans on this or that the other but a lot of it is what's their basic character right are they people who instinct instinctively care about the underdog? Are they people who are able to see the world through somebody else's eyes and stand in their shoes? Are they people who are instinctively generous in spirit? Right. And that is who Joe is.

And I've never seen him. And you don't, you know, look, when you run for president, pretty much every, all your flaws are exposed. And once you're president, then they're really exposed but you don't hear stories about Joe being just mean to somebody right people may fault him for other stuff but you don't hear

Joe being disloyal to somebody or mistreating them or you know being standoffish and pushing them away when you know they were asking for help and and that is the thing in him that I think should give people a lot of confidence that along with the fact that he understands the importance of surrounding himself with people who are smart and are you know believe in science and believe in expertise

and believe in institutional knowledge and experience. And so you get that combination, it means that his North Star will be good, but at the same time, he'll have a lot of people around him who are able to translate his good instincts into actual policy that works. Speaking of bad instincts, President Trump keeps tweeting that the attorney general should indict you or indict Vice President Biden for spying on his campaign. The allegation is absurd. It's false. It's seemingly part of just his general rage at any discussion of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

It's remarkable to me how used to this kind of language the D.C. has become, the press corps has become. Is it weird for you when he tweets that you should be indicted? Well, look, as you said, this is something that even his fellow Republicans tend to just pretend doesn't happen. Didn't read the tweet. Yeah, I didn't read the tweet. I didn't read the tweet. They kind of dodge reporters when they're asked about it. The allegations

are so absurd that even Republican controlled committees looking into it have dismissed them. Attorney General Barr has dismissed them. But this is an example, I think, of a larger problem. Well, two larger problems,

which don't get as much attention, understandably, when you've got high unemployment and a pandemic raging, it doesn't touch people's day to day lives. you do not allow the politicization of the criminal justice system, the intelligence system, the military, right? That is stuff that you keep out of politics because it's too dangerous. You don't want, you can't have a democracy in which political opponents are subject to this kind of inflammatory language. Now, he did this same thing with Hillary and the lock her up theme. And so I'm not surprised by it, that it continues. I'm disappointed that Republicans who know better have not checked in on this. seeing the Republican Party restore some sense of here are norms that we can't breach because he's breached all of them and they have not said to him this is

too far. So that brings me then to the second issue, and that is the whole misinformation, social media, media infrastructure, the conservative media infrastructure. We've had this conversation before. That is a problem that is going to outlast Trump. Trump is a symptom of it and an accelerant to it, but he did not create it. We saw it during my campaign back in 08, and we saw it, you know, you guys had to deal with it directly during our administration. It has gotten turbocharged because of social media and because the head of the Republican Party. What that tells you is that there are no more guardrails within that media ecosystem.

And I think one of the biggest challenges all of us have, this is not just a progressives versus right wing issue. This is really a genuine American society issue, is how do we reestablish some baselines of truth that at least the vast majority of people can agree to? And then we can have a whole bunch of debates about, all right, yeah, climate change is real, but Republicans think we just have to adapt because we can't give up our cars

and progressives say, no, we should use these alternative technologies. We can have that debate. And I have some pretty strong views about it. But if you say climate change is a hoax, then there's nothing we can do. You know, the same is true with COVID. Right. You know, if you say, yes, COVID is a genuine, you know, really big problem, a serious disease. Here's the science. We can agree to that. And then, you know, you have a country like Sweden that decides, well, we think we're going to try to approach this through herd immunity. But at least there's some coherence to

their argument. I disagree with it. I don't think it is proven out. But we're within the same reality in our debates. We're going to have to find ways to do that. I don't have a quick answer for that. is they become impenetrable, right? Any bit of information that contradicts the worldview and the conspiracies within it, or the conspiracy theories within it, it gets rejected as part of the conspiracy and part of the liberal plot. But I do think that that's going to be a big challenge that we all have. And I'm concerned about that. Well, it goes to governing, too. I mean, and you know this from your time in office. Majority of voters want leaders who will bring the country together, try to work together in a bipartisan way. They also want leaders who will end the gridlock in Washington and actually get something done on the big issues. leaders who will end the gridlock in Washington and actually get something done on the big issues. How do you govern in a way that's both bipartisan and productive when the only way to break the gridlock with this version of the Republican Party is through huge Democratic majorities, getting rid of the filibuster, other big structural reforms, all of which will be seen by Republicans and much of the media as extremely partisan?

all of which will be seen by Republicans and much of the media as extremely partisan. Well, look, as you know, this is exactly what we confronted with, and we had really big majorities. But because of the filibuster and Mitch McConnell systematically wanting to throw sand into the gears, no matter how much outreach we made, as long as Republicans could maintain unity. And McConnell was very explicit about this. He said, okay, here's one thing I've learned is as long as we can keep Republicans off Obama's bills, even when they're proposals that used to be Republican proposals,

then we can rob them of the veneer of bipartisanship. And that polarization plays to our advantage, right? I mean, he was very systematic and strategic about that. What I have concluded is, is that the answer is to change some of these structural impediments to just getting stuff done. change some of these structural impediments to just getting stuff done. I mentioned at John Lewis's funeral my belief that I think we should test it. I think we should give Republicans a chance to work with us around reasonable issues. I don't think we should be maximalist and ask for 100 percent of what we want all the time. But I think that if you continue to see the kind of systematic rejection of even reasonable compromise, there comes a point at which

you just have to change how the system works. The filibuster would be one. I would argue that around voting, us going ahead and just making it easier for people to vote, making it harder to suppress the vote, is not partisan. It is an expression of our democracy. It will be portrayed as partisan, but that's an argument I think we have to welcome. I think we have to go ahead and have that argument. Look, if you have one major party, perhaps the only major party that I know of in any advanced democracy in the world, who explicitly says we're trying to keep fellow citizens, certain fellow citizens from voting and we're trying to make it as hard on them as possible. You even the far right in Europe does not say that. They don't say, you know, let's stop other, you know, Austrians from voting or let's stop

other Germans from voting. Germans from voting. This is unique to us and it's a legacy of racial discrimination and gender discrimination and was embedded in our initial constitution and had to be fixed through a series of amendments. And so I think that we should welcome the argument that making it easier for people to vote and eliminating the last vestiges of Jim Crow and poll taxes and all that stuff is not a partisan issue. And anyone who argues against that is behaving in a partisan fashion. And I think we can win that argument with the majority of the American people. Yeah. I mean, your last answer sort of gets at this ongoing four years later debate about whether Trump is an aberration or whether he is sort of the next phase of a Republican Party that

has been built on racial grievance and built on cruelty to immigrants and Fox News conspiracy theories. And it's a bit of an esoteric like Washington debate. But the answer also shapes how Joe Biden or any Democrat should approach the job, because, you know, we all hope that the Republican fever would break after the 2012 reelect. And clearly it didn't. Things have gotten worse. Do you have a view on this sort of debate about whether Trump is an aberration? You know what? Here's the way I think about it. I would distinguish between people who vote Republican and the Republican Party and the Republican media infrastructure. And what I mean by that is this, and you guys have heard me say this before. You know, when I was elected to the U.S. Senate, I got about 70 percent of the vote in Illinois. I got the majority of the vote in Southern Illinois,

which is much closer culturally to Kentucky or Southern Indiana or Southern Ohio than it is Chicago. And it did well in a bunch of white evangelical counties, rural counties, that I think it's fair to say there's no way right now that I could get those votes, right, if I went back to those same places. And the reason is because they see me only through the filter of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Lord knows what's going on in Facebook, etc., right? But when you got those folks one-on-one and they had a chance to meet you and talk to you and you were at a veterans, you know, a VA, you know, a hospital or a fish fry,

you could have a conversation with them. They might disagree with you on a whole bunch of stuff, but they thought, you know what? He seems like an OK guy. I'm not scared of him, even if I disagree with him. And those folks right now are just being fed what's coming through that filter. I do not think that that is inevitable. that is inevitable. I think if, if, if they were watching Walter Cronkite or they were reading the, what used to be the local paper that was put out by,

you know, some, uh, uh, cranky conservative guy with a bow tie and, you know, uh, you know,

why we're in glasses who, yeah, and a buzz cut, you know, but was like a, a learned guy who, who, you know,

was kind of serious, but was sort of conservative. If that's where they were getting their information from, I think it'd be, then you could in fact have just the normal debates between a more conservative and a more liberal America. And in that circumstance, democracy works. So the answer, I guess, Tommy, is I think that Trump is expressing or mirroring and in some ways explicitly exploited and took on the crazy that was being pumped out through these venues each and every day. And if that stuff is still being pumped out and Trump goes away, someone else will meet that market demand. But on the other hand, do I think that that is inevitably who, what the Republican party has to be? No, I don't, I don't think it does. It was fascinating as I was writing the book, I was

just looking through some of the old stuff, uh, about, uh, Trump was really complimentary of me for like the first two years. So, you know, Obama seemed like doing a great job, you know, uh, thank you. You know, uh, and, and essentially what happened because the guy just decided he wanted attention, right. Whether it was to promote celebrity apprentice or whatever,

he, he started, he looked and saw what was being fed. And he said, Oh, if that's, if that's what folks want, I can do that with even less inhibition.

So with even less of a, I don't need a dog whistle. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. And I'll just, you know, and that's how the whole birtherism shtick came about. Our country has always had this battle right between these darker impulses to exclude to dominate to to rig the game in favor of certain folks and not others and then the other side of it has been to expand and embrace the dignity and inherent worth of every individual, regardless of what they look like or where they come from. And that tug of war is always going to be there. And we as Democrats have to remind ourselves that for much of the 20th century

the Democrats were as bad or worse, right? The South was Democratic. Dixiecrats were the ones who were running filibusters to prevent anti-lynching legislation, etc. And Lincoln was

a Republican. So the issue has less to do with is, is one party or the other inevitably like this one way or the other. It has much more to do with this ongoing tug of war between our, the better angels of our nature and our worst impulses. And I have confidence that we can get back to a point where both parties have in it those better angels. But I do think that we're going to have to figure out how to get to voters. What are the workarounds to just penetrate the 24-7 narrative that is being pumped out by folks like Fox News and others.

So last question, we'll let you go. So most of our listeners are happily working very hard to elect Joe Biden, even though they supported, you know, more progressive candidates in the primary. What's your advice to those people who want to see not only a more progressive Democratic Party, but more progressive policies enacted in Washington? You were on both sides of this. You were an organizer, you were president. So you've seen it from both sides. Look, I think that,

number one, win first, right? And I think everybody's kind of moved into that mindset. And I think everybody's kind of moved into that mindset. Let's get through the next three weeks and then the next three months, and then let's figure out what our internal debates are going to be. So that's point number one. number two is that I think it is very important for progressives to continue to press their agenda because there are going to be other forces that are pressing on the White House from the other direction. And that's always the case. That's always true. And there's nothing wrong with making noise about it. And there's nothing wrong with holding folks to account. I think the caution I always have for progressives is making sure that as you push for the most you can get, that at a certain point you say, all right, you know what, let's get this done,

and then let's move on to fight another day. And healthcare always being the best example of this. As you will recall, we wanted a public option in the Affordable Care Act. We pushed. I needed 60 votes to get it through the Senate. Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and a couple others said, I'm not voting for someone with a public option. At that point, then progressives have to be able to say, okay, let's take what we can get now and then let's build.

And every bit of progressive legislation, all of our progress throughout our history typically happens in stages, right? You get a beachhead like Social Security passes, but it excludes all kinds of folks, right? Domestic workers and agricultural workers, because Southern voters or Southern congressmen didn't want to have black folks be able to get Social Security because then they wouldn't be a subject to the whims of white employers. And should FDR not have passed Social Security? Of course not. He gets it done, and then you fight that next battle, which is to include more people. Dodd-Frank. We passed Dodd-Frank. Did we eliminate greed and malfeasance

in Wall Street entirely? No. What we did was we put in a bunch of guardrails to make it less likely that you end up having bailouts in the future. Part of the reason that we haven't seen the financial system teeter during this major economic shock was because of those guardrails that we put in place. But yet we still have to move on a whole bunch of other stuff that we weren't able to get done at the time. And I think understanding that that is not a failure, but that is just the process you push, you consolidate, you push some more, you consolidate. And also to understand, and this maybe is where sometimes I differ with Bernie and even Elizabeth in how we talk about this stuff publicly. Most of the time when I didn't get something progressive done while I was president, it wasn't because I was getting donations from some special interest or corporation. It wasn't because, you know, there were a bunch of lobbyists whispering in my ear.

It was because I didn't I didn't have votes. and I think sometimes we attribute the failure of a Democratic or progressive president not getting something done to somehow he and hopefully at some point she is being influenced by these other folks when in fact it's just that we don't yet have the votes and the clout. So progressives, if you want progressive legislation, get out there and keep working after the president is elected. I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but you guys know how frustrated I would be when progressives feeling frustrated would then sit out the midterms.

Now I have fewer Democratic votes. Now I've lost the House. Now I've lost the Senate. That is not the right reaction. We get more progressive legislation done the more Democrats we have in Congress, the more Democratic turnout happens. And again, I don't want to lose track of this

because right now we just have what's right in front of us. But if we are fortunate enough that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected, we maintain the House and hopefully we regain the Senate. One of the very first things we have to do is to get every person who was as fired up as they were about this election to understand the midterms are going to matter just as much. Yep. Because that's the that's the constraint ultimately that, you know, we all confront throughout this process was when I look back on my presidency, the real envelope, the limit to what I could get done had to do with how many votes did I have in the House,

how many votes I have in the Senate. Obviously, if there are modifications to the filibuster, that makes it easier. But even within the Democratic Party, we have to accommodate for the fact that there are going to be some regional differences. And that's OK. That's part of the big tent. and that's part of the process that we move forward. Democracy is an everyday struggle. That's what you always taught me. That's it, man.

It's a garden you have to nurture. This thing's not self-executing. Speaking of which, I'm assuming you guys are plugging the fact that we had a Supreme Court ruling around the census that was adverse to us. The Trump administration has decided to cut off the census earlier than it should have been. If anything, it should have been extended because of COVID.

But it is what it is. I hope you guys are plugging the need for everybody who has not you guys are plugging the need for everybody who has not responded to the census to get your information in there. That's part of this structural set of issues. Census determines how much representation communities get. A lot of decisions are made based on those numbers, and we've got to make sure that everybody's counted. Easy to do, quick to do, no excuse not to do it. That's it. President Barack Obama, thank you so much for coming back to Pod Save America, and good luck out there on the campaign trail.

Great hanging out with you guys as always, man. Appreciate you. Thank you. Take care. as always, man. Appreciate you. Thank you. Take care. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer

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