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Former President Barack Obama is starting to define his new role in the age of Donald Trump.

After dropping out of sight for a pair of glamorous island getaways, Obama is emerging for a series of paid and unpaid speeches, drawing sharp contrasts with Trump even as he avoids saying the new president's name. He's wielding his influence overseas, offering his support for some of the international political candidates who are clamoring for his endorsement. His aides are engaging in real-time political combat with Trump, including revealing Monday that Obama personally warned his successor against tapping embattled Michael Flynn as his national security adviser.

Obama's swift return to the spotlight has been cheered by some Democrats, who are still sifting through the wreckage of the party's crushing defeats in the November election. But the attention surrounding Obama has also magnified the vacuum for new Democratic leadership, a reality that aides say is not lost on the former president.

"He's acutely aware that when the former president speaks, he consumes a lot of the oxygen," said Eric Schultz, Obama's senior adviser. "He wants to make sure we make room for the next generation of leaders."

With that in mind, Obama is picking his spots carefully.

During a speech Sunday night in Boston, he urged members of Congress to have "courage" as Trump presses for the repeal of his signature health care law, recalling the Democrats who were swept into office with him in 2009, but lost their seats after casting votes in favor of the "Obamacare" measure. But he avoided a lengthy defense of the law Democrats muscled through in 2010 and did not critique the bill House Republicans passed last week.

In an unusual move for a former president particularly one who just handed the White House to the opposing party Obama taped a video endorsing Emmanuel Macron, the eventual winner of the French presidential election. He backed Macron after Trump appeared to side with nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen , calling her the strongest candidate on terrorism and borders.

Obama advisers say the former president is still navigating his role in international politics, but he is willing to consider requests for support from overseas candidates. Later this month, he'll appear alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces elections later this year, for a panel on democracy.

Obama's stop in Germany will coincide with Trump's first visit to Europe as president, likely setting up a stark contrast between the 44th and 45th presidents on the world stage.

The former president is said to be reluctant to get into a tit-for-tat with Trump over every tweet or critique from the White House briefing room. But he has plenty of proxies willing to jump in for him, including on Monday, when three former Obama administration officials said Obama had personally warned Trump against hiring Michael Flynn as national security adviser.

Flynn, who is at the center of the controversy surrounding Trump's campaign and Russia, was fired after less than a month. The revelation from Obama advisers appeared to be sparked by Trump's attempts to shift some of the blame for Flynn's troubles to Obama by noting that the previous administration renewed the former military intelligence director's clearance even after he was fired in 2014.

Obama and Trump haven't spoken since the inauguration, though an aide said Obama would take Trump's call if the Republican reached out. The two spoke frequently during the transition, and Trump spoke about his surprise at their good relationship.

But Trump stunned Obama advisers with his March 4 tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper during the election , an explosive allegation that has been denied by FBI Director James Comey and other national security officials.

"I wouldn't say I've been exactly great to him, either," Trump acknowledged in a recent interview with The Washington Times.

Obama's re-entry in public life hasn't been all smooth sailing. He was sharply criticized by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, his party's most prominent liberals, for his plans to receive $400,000 to speak at a September health care conference put on by the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

The former president is said to have been unbothered by the criticism. Still, he and wife Michelle Obama moved swiftly to announce a $2 million donation for a summer jobs program in their home town of Chicago.

Warren and Sanders represent one flank of the Democratic Party that's trying to take control as the party tries to rebuild ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. Obama is expected to campaign and fundraise for candidates as those contests draw near, but his supporters are clear-eyed about his own role as the party tries to recalibrate.

"The onus is on the next generation to lead the party in the Trump era," said Dan Pfeiffer, a longtime Obama White House and campaign adviser.

Link:
Obama Is Back and He's Carving Out His Role in the Age of Trump - Fortune

Former president Barack Obama said today that the U.S. is progressing on clean energy policy, despite some rollbacks from the Trump administration .

Although because of the current debates taking place in Washington, it may be some of the steps we put in place move more slowly than they otherwise would have, Obama said, Im confident that the U.S. will continue to move in the right direction.

Obama was speaking at Seeds&Chips, a global food and innovation summit in Milan, Italy, where he discussed the intersection of climate change and the global food system.

Obama said that the private sector, having made the determination that clean energy is the future , would lead the way. He pointed to fuel efficiency in the auto industry as an example, saying that his administration had set aggressive standardssome of which are subject to change by the current White House. But California, the largest car market in the U.S., sets its own fuel emission standards, he noted. Even if the rules change in Washington, theres no U.S. automaker that can afford to produce a car that is not fuel efficient to be sold in California, he said.

Obama spoke with urgency about climate change, saying that he had made the issue "a top priority because I believe of all the challenges we face, this is the one that will define the contours of this century" more than any other.

"I do not believe this planet is condemned to ever rising temperatures. I believe these are problems that were caused by man and can be solved by man," he said, stressing the need for action. Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., he said there is such a thing as being too late, and "when it comes to climate change, the hour is almost upon us."

Although Obama only mentioned the Trump administration once in the 90-minute session that included prepared remarks and a Q&A with his one-time senior food policy advisor Sam Kass, the current tenor in Washington clearly informed his comments. During his campaign, President Donald Trump said that he would cancel the U.S.s involvement in the Paris climate accord, which Obama brokered. Trump once Tweeted that the concept of global was created by and for the Chinese.

Obama said that the Paris agreement "did not set high enough standards to completely solve the problem of climate change, but what it did was put together the architecture, the mechanism, where each year, each country could progressively do more to reduce carbon emission. He said that its important big countries that are major emitters like the U.S. and China lead the way. Its going to require continuing leadership on all our parts, he said. No one can sit on the sidelines.

Obama said that 99% of scientists who study climate change carefully will tell you that the planet is getting warmer and the only real controversy is how much warmer it will get. If the planet warms at the upper end of current projections, it would be catastrophic," he said. "At the low end, it will still be very disruptive." A three-foot rise in sea level could lead to mass migration, he said. "The number of refugees that could be resulting from something like that could be unprecedented in human history, he said. If we don't, address these issue, we can anticipate "not only real threats to food security but increases in conflict as a consequence of scarcity.

Obama highlighted the work that still needs to done in the food system to both ease its impact on the environment and feed a growing planet. Although weve made real progress in becoming more efficient in the energy side, we are actually seeing a continuing increase in the emissions coming out of the agricultural sector, he said.

In Obama's view, one of the reasons why pressure on the food system has lagged the energy sector is that food is an emotional issue and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions has not been publicized. People arent as familiar with the impact of cows and methane, he notedan issue that will only increase as developing nations demand more protein. (Obama noted that he is a meat eater"I respect vegetarians, but I am not one of them," he said.)

Key to making progress is taking into account the interests of food producers, Obama said. If you prioritize environmental concerns over their economic interests, theyll resist, he added.

Obama said he saw major potential in personalized medicine. He pointed to allergies as an example, using one of his daughters who has a peanut allergy to illustrate the point. He said she's now going through a process at Stanford University, where shes being evaluated for each nut to determine the type of allergy and severity. He said her doctors can now determine protocols where if she take a little nut protein in a pill each day, slowly her allergy will be eliminated.

Since his presidency has ended, Obama said that most of his time has been spent writing his third book and building the next phase of his workthe Obama Presidential Center, which is designed to help the next generation of leadership for activism.

See more here:
Obama: The Private Sector Will Lead the Way on Climate Change - Fortune

Pete Souza, former President Barack Obamas staff photographer, is well-known for his low-key trolling of President Donald Trump.

In March, GOOD first reported on Souzas totally transparent jabs at the new commander in chief and his administration via his wildly popular Instagram account. Souzas thinly veiled Insta-jokes included a doctored photo he posted to his account with the caption, Someone has been photoshopping one of my photos. For the record, it wasn't me. In the photo, President Obama is situatedbehind a camera insidea microwave, which clearly is a poke at Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway following her bizarre theory that Obama spied on Trump via microwaves.

In another, Souza posted a photo of Obama looking at his phone with the caption, Glad he only tweeted out facts with his device.

And on Wednesday, following the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey, Souza posted a photo of the now out-of-work Comey, alongside the former president and his chief Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and Obama's former White House chief of staff Denis McDonough. The caption simply read, Every person in this photograph is a patriot.

As of Wednesday morning, the photo has garnered more than 50,000 likes and hundreds of comments.

Originally posted here:
Former Obama Photographer Blasts Trump Over Comey's Firing With One Simple Photo - GOOD Magazine

I see you Barry, said comedian Hasan Minhaj at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. What you doin right now? You jet skiing while the world burns? After leaving office, Barack Obama spent a few weeks palling around with Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks, and Oprah Winfrey in French Polynesia. Now the vacations over, how can Obama maximize his sway in American politics? The answer lies in understanding the source of his influence.

President Trumps strength is founded on hard power, or the ability to coerce people through payments and force. As commander-in-chief, millions of men and women stand ready to follow his orders. With a stroke of the pen, Trump can renounce Americas commitment to the Paris climate treaty. Or he can put the pen down and press the nuclear buttonand here, there are no checks and balances.

The Aftermath of James Comey's Dismissal

By contrast, as an ex-president, Obama has virtually no hard power. He even had to learn how to use the coffee machine at home. Instead, Obamas strength lies with soft power, or the attraction of his image, beliefs, and values, in getting others to do what they otherwise might not. Soft power is still power, but its influence through seduction rather than coercion.

Here, Obama faces what I call the ex-presidents dilemma. He wants to remain an influential player in the political world, but intervening in the national debate may diminish his image, and therefore his power.

The good news is that retired commanders-in-chief usually get a boost in their approval ratings when they enter private life. The bad news is that this boost may be contingent on holding their tongue.

In a speech in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt celebrated, the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. But for an ex-president, the political arena is a dangerous place to be. By staying above the fray, they gain the chance to enjoy a rosy image, carrying out charitable work, and becoming an elder statesman and a symbol of the nation. Wading into the arena, however, by making speeches, and condemning the other side is a risky move. In a partisan age, the moment an ex-president attacks his successor, he antagonizes around half the population.

Consider the example of George W. Bush. When he left office, in the wake of the Iraq War, the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina, and the financial crisis, only 35 percent of people had a favorable view of Bush. In an informal poll of historians in 2008, 61 percent said that Bush was the worst president in American history. But then a strange thing happened. His favorability score ticked upward, and in 2015, 52 percent of people had a positive view of Bush. One reason is that he largely kept out of politics and refused to condemn Obama. Being commander-in-chief is a tough job, said Bush, and A former president doesnt need to make it any harder. Bushs absence from the arena made the heart grow fonder.

Given this dilemma, whats the best strategy for Obama to maximize his influence?

The first choice is to jet-ski into the sunset. Obama could drop off the political grid, and stick to writing his memoirs, charitable work, and improving his golf handicap. Its a tempting choice. Few on the Democratic side of the aisle would begrudge Obama a break after eight exhausting years battling an intransigent Republican Party.

If he does nothing controversial for the next few years, Obama will probably become widely admired. Back in January 2015, when his approval ratings were in the mid-40s, I predicted that Obama would be hugely popular once he left office. This didnt require any great prophetic ability because ex-presidents usually get a bump in support.

But Obama is also uniquely qualified to be an ex-president. He has intelligence, grace, and a great family. He also benefits from Trumps unpopularity. Obama is Trumps dark doppelganger: eloquent and professorial where Trump is gauche and bombastic. As the medias Eye of Sauron fixates on Trumps sins, people miss the last guy. Most importantly, Obama represents a storyAmericas first black president. This tale got lost amidst the partisan helter-skelter of the last eight years. But if Obama avoids the partisan battlefield, even many former critics will celebrate this narrative because it makes them feel better about America. Having largely stayed out of the limelight since the election, Obamas approval rating is already at 62 percentfar above that of other national politicians.

The jet skiing option would give Obama a degree of indirect influence. Obamas popularity spills over into anything associated with himwhich psychologists call the halo effect. For example, one reason why Obamacare has become more popular is that Obama himself has become more popular. Youll know when Obama gets really popular because Republicans will stop using the term Obamacare, and will start referring to the Affordable Care Act.

But theres a big problem with following the Bush trajectory. Choosing to jet ski means that Obama is an observer even if the world burns. What if Trump plans a damnatio memoriae, or a systematic effort to obliterate Obamas legacy, including health care, climate change, the Iran deal, and so on? Is Obama willing to see his lifes work destroyed by a man who won just 45.9 percent of the popular voteonly 0.2 percent higher than John McCain received during his drubbing in 2008?

The second option lies at the other end of the scale: Lead the resistance. Obama could grasp the sword, gladiator-style, and race into the arena, becoming the face of the opposition, making speeches, and running television advertisements. After all, he has the communication skills and the credibility as a former commander-in-chief. And he has Michelle. So why not go back to being a community organizerthis time organizing progressive America?

Taking the fight to Trump would come at a priceand not just for Obamas golf handicap. It would energize conservative opponents and erode Obamas image, which is the basis of his soft power. Furthermore, the Democratic Party may not want to be led by yesterdays man. And a scorched earth campaign would entrench todays partisan divideand perhaps provoke ex-president Trump to wage war on a Democratic successor.

The best option for Obama to maximize his influence is the third choice: picking his battles. This means entering the arena selectively, when the pay-off is high, or the cost in popularity is low. He can oppose egregious violations of the American creed. Obama suggested that if an issue, goes to core questions about our values and our ideals, and if I think that its necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, then Ill examine it when it comes. Alternatively, if the fate of a critical policy issue lies on a knife edgefor example, is the Senate nears a vote on health-care reformObama could intervene to try and tip the result one way. He also recorded a video to endorse Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential electionan action with some upside and little downside.

Meanwhile, anything Obama can do to boost his brand is useful. His memoirs will be the publishing event of the decade, and will shape the narrative of his presidency. Appearances at national events, charitable work, meetings with world leadersall of this tops up his soft power.

But soft power is a fragile resource. Reputation can be damaged far more easily than it can be boosted. Its hard to see the benefit of Obama speaking at a Wall Street firms health-care conference for the princely sum of $400,000. After all, Obama is not like Harry Truman, who faced penury in retirement. The Obamas reportedly just signed twin book deals worth $65 million. Senator Bernie Sanders said, I think at a time when people are so frustrated with the power of Wall Street and the big-money interests, I think it is unfortunate that President Obama is doing this.

Obama should pay heed to the experience of another center-left politician, Tony Blair. The British prime minister won three elections and then retired undefeated in 2007. At Blairs final Prime Ministers Questions in Parliament, the opposition party rose to its feet and applauded.

But what did Blair do in retirement? There was teaching, charitable work, and a role as Middle East envoy. But Blair also accepted lucrative advisory roles for banks, and consulted for the dictatorship in Kazakhstan, reportedly offering advice on how to spin a domestic crackdown. These business interests generated considerable revenue but they also sapped his soft power. Blair and Blairism became terms of opprobrium in much of the British Labour Party, which subsequently lurched to the left and now faces electoral annihilation.

Swapping hard power for soft power means swapping the hammer of coercion for the arts of seduction. Obama retains influence, real influence. It lies with his image, his wide grin, and his pen. And he has a story, if he can keep it.

Link:
Should Obama Speak Up or Stay Out of American Politics? - The ... - The Atlantic

Close allies of former President Barack Obama quietly launched a new technology startup on Monday to further their ambitions of helping liberal candidates win political races across the country after waves of losses during the Obama years.

The latest move is called Higher Ground Labs and is being launched by a handful of Obama acolytes including the ex-presidents 2012 online organizing director Betsy Hoover and Organizing for Action Executive Director Jon Carson, as well as former executives from Tumblr and Google.

Higher Ground hopes to double down on Democratic reliance on technology to organize activists and track voting trends, by focusing on lower-profile races, from governors to town mayors. The group reportedly already has taken in $1 million in new donations.

OBAMA, DEMOCRATIC 'SUPER GROUP' UNITE TO END GERRYMANDERING, WIN STATE RACES, RECLAIM MAJORITIES

Higher Ground is seeking tech entrepreneurs on its website, Are you building a new tool or product to meet a challenge confronting progressive campaigns? Apply for our accelerator program!

Max Wood, developer of Deck Apps, is one such entrepreneur.According to his website, Deck is a predictive modeling tool used by progressive campaigns and causes to better understand how many votes it will take to win an election and where those votes are most likely to come from. Wood said Higher Ground is helping him change the way we organize so we can find new ways of winning, claiming theres a real risk we could end up losing the thread on this movement.

Theyve got their work cut out for them. Since 2009, Democrats have lost control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, along with 900 state legislative seats. The GOP now holds 32 state houses and 33 governorships more than 60 percent of state-level political power.

"As a lifelong campaigner, it is clear that we could be scaling faster and innovating in smarter ways, said Hoover, a Higher Ground Labs co-founder. As Democrats, our organizing needs to evolve.

THE EXES: OBAMA AVOIDS HITTING TRUMP, HILLARY SKEWERS THE MEDIA

Higher Ground Labs is yet another component in an emerging strategy by ex-President Obama to continue his advocacy, with funding from wealthy scions of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.When laying out his vision for his post-presidential activism, Obama said last October that he wanted to create a platform where young activists can get trained and learn from each other.He also gave an overview last week for his presidential center in Chicago, which he envisions in part as a campus for training future political leaders.

Much of the reported work so far has involved raising large sums of money with long-time Obama bundlers like Marty Nesbitt, founder of Chicago-based Parking Spot who is now raising millions of dollars of donations for the new Obama presidential library in Chicago.

A leftist online publication called Jacobin Mag reported the following reply when it pressed the Barack Obama Foundation for answers on whether the president is getting paid by corporate America to ease off progressive policies:TheObama Foundation will focus on developing the next generation of citizens and what it means to be a good citizen in the 21st century. More than a library, or a museum, the Obama Presidential Center will be a place that brings people together and inspires individuals and communities to take on big challenges.

Meanwhile, Obamas nonprofit community organizing project, Organizing for Action, is bringing in thousands of new people who have never been engaged before, connecting them to a nationwide grassroots network, providing them with cost-free training, and empowering them to apply those skills to make change in their communities," according to OFA communications director Jesse Lehrich.

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Obama operatives unveil latest plan to boost liberal candidates - Fox News