Roughly two decades ago, Barack Obama burst onto the national stage with an address at the 2004 Democratic Convention that captivated millions of Americans. He offered what became his most widely quoted line: “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”
Obama connected the language of American unity to progressive policy goals. He described his: “belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother.”
The speech was not a one-off. I have carefully studied just about every word Barack Obama uttered or wrote in a public forum from the early 1990s through the end of his presidency, and most of the rest since. My book, Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, examined his deeply held concepts of America and Americanness. His soaring depiction of our country’s story in which we’ve committed terrible wrongs but drawn upon the founding documents to make remarkable progress resonated with enough Americans to elect and re-elect him to the presidency with commanding margins — a feat accomplished by none of the Democratic Party’s three subsequent presidential candidates.
It should be obvious that Donald Trump’s vision of America represents something like the antithesis of Obama’s. Where Obama sought to unite, Trump divides. As my coauthor and I demonstrate in a forthcoming book, Trump plays on racial stereotypes as a routine feature of his rhetoric. He labeled Mexican immigrants “murderers, child predators and bloodthirsty rapists and drug dealers.” He stated: “I think Islam hates us,” impugning people of an entire religion. He told America that Haitian migrants were eating their pets. And his Defense Secretary ordered the removal from the curriculum of U.S. military service academies any topic focusing on “race, gender or the darker moments of American history.” In large part, Trump rode racial divisiveness to the Republican nomination in 2016 and then to the presidency. For Obama, being divisive was one of the most shameful things a public figure could be. It was, in fact, the strongest criticism he leveled at his own leftwing former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in his vitally important 2008 speech titled: “A More Perfect Union: Race, Politics, and Unifying Our Country.” Whereas Trump revels in “blood and soil” nationalism, Obama champions the idea of America.
What’s less obvious but equally important is that Democratic politicians — influenced by far-left academics — have in important ways departed from how the 44th president talks about our history and our national identity in the years since he left office. In fact, I have been astonished by how much influence the views of the academic left — views that depart significantly from Obama’s — have gained even among Democratic officials.
