Barack Obama
Appearances
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
First of all, you guys are exactly right. Joe's got... an unbelievable record of accomplishment. If you had told me that the unemployment rate after COVID was gonna be back down to 4% or lower, Lowest in 50 years, isn't it? Absolutely. And if you had told me that 15 million jobs would have been created, that wages are higher now than they were pre-pandemic.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
That's unbelievable. In this four-year period. You've got African-American unemployment, right, which is always higher than the general population, the lowest it's been. since record-keeping on the issue was taken. So Joe's got a strong message to tell. Jason, you're right. The media environment's changed.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
During Bill's presidency, during my presidency, you already had Fox and Rush Limbaugh and so forth, but it was still going through basic broadcast TV, and the average person was still kind of getting the mix. Some dissenting views. Part of what happened is that whole ecosystem moved on to social media.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And once it's on social media and it's on an algorithm and everybody's just getting their news selected essentially to suit their biases, penetrating that is real tough. It is very hard.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
I would argue that actually they've got some legitimate points in the sense that there's a side that doesn't recognize conservative thought or isn't respectful to some traditional values that they care about and so forth. The difference though is, and Jason touched on it, there's a difference between facts and opinions. And the one thing that our side still pretty much sticks to is the facts.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
You may not agree with whatever's in the New York Times or whatever's on MSNBC, but generally they're not going to just make stuff up.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And, you know, look, I was in office... in 2016, and I would have loved to pretend that the election outcome wasn't what it was. That was painful, right? But we said, well, here are the facts, and there's a system of government that transcends that is more important than whoever wins this particular election. We're gonna abide by those facts and stick with democracy.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And that is a shift that's taking place. Now, last point I'd make though, because you asked, Jason was asking, what do we do? I think Joe's point is right. And that is, you just keep on showing up and delivering the message wherever you can, however you can.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And if you talk to folks enough, all of us, Bill, Joe, myself, all have the experience of going to places where we may not be the most popular person. People may have some preconceived notions about Barack Hussein Obama, right? But if you show up and you make a human connection with people and you talk to them, we'll be right back.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Yeah, I remember that. Look, I've got a Canadian brother-in-law. Canadians are interesting because they sneak up on you. You remember that movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Like, they look like us. but you don't really know. Wait, I saw you at the Raptors game. Actually, I love me some Canadians.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
I think Bill's points and Joe's points are important. You know, look. We all know America's not always lived up to its ideals. We got our warts, we got issues. But we do set the tone around the world. And part of what happened before Joe got elected, during that four year period, folks around the world started feeling as if
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
the ideals of human rights, freedom, democracy, that nobody was looking after that. Nobody was promoting that. Nobody was minding it. And people like Putin became emboldened. And you saw the Chinese and even countries that were democracies start backsliding because they do still look to America as an example of what they hope
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious big country can look like. That maybe people can still get along and act decently towards each other even if they don't all look the same and don't all talk the same and all come from the same place. That's what makes America exceptional.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And if you start getting into a situation in which we don't believe our own Declaration of Independence, if we're not acting on behalf of the things that we say we stand for, that has ripple effects all around the globe. And these guys are exactly right. I just came back from Europe, and every meeting I had, the only thing people were concerned about was
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
what's gonna happen in this next election because they understand what the stakes are.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
You know, I will say, and Bill saw this begin to happen during his presidency, it then accelerated during my presidency, I have been surprised that there haven't been guardrails inside the Republican Party. Trump didn't surprise me. No. I mean, I'd like... It's a natural conclusion. No, I mean, you watch Trump's campaign, you watch his career. He's never changed.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
If you know anybody who's... He's a huckster. I mean, he comes from New York. There's nobody in New York who does business with him. No. Or lend him money. He's not considered a serious guy here, but... So I was surprised he was elected, but I wasn't surprised in terms of his behavior.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
I did expect, and I suspect Bill and Joe, you'd agree with this, that there would be some folks in the Republican Party who would say, no, you can't go that far. You can't start praising Putin and saying that his intelligence is better than The U.S. intelligence agencies.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Well, you know, I think that we can't discount... the fact that the world's changing quick. And when the world changes quick, people get scared and they get confused. And we had a historic recession in 2008, 2009, where the financial system almost collapses. We'd obviously already gone through 9-11. You got globalization, you have suddenly people feeling as if they're losing manufacturing jobs.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Some of the towns in Illinois where I was representing, Arkansas where Bill was working, you see people starting to feel like they're losing status. suddenly you've got the internet and social media and people are being flooded with all kinds of stuff and they don't know how to sort it all out.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And when people get scared and concerned, then the appeal of somebody who says, I'm gonna make it like it used to be where you don't have to worry about it and men are men and women know their place. that message can sometimes have some appeal.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
If there's a problem around the world, You know, if there's a natural disaster, if there is a crisis, nobody's calling Moscow or Beijing expecting them to help them. Everybody's looking to Washington.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
That's a little too advanced. You might need a 25-year-old aide to help on the merger thing.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Go ahead. Look, everybody talks about Air Force One. Yeah, sure. Marine One. Yeah. It's pretty convenient, I won't lie. But I'll tell you the thing I miss the most is, you remember those music concerts I used to do at, You can basically invite anybody. And you have this concert. And I mean, we got Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney. Everybody will show up. They'll show up.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And they do these rehearsals the night before a lot of times. And you can kind of sneak down and you could just sit there and watch Mick Jagger practicing with B.B. King or something on a blues night. I do miss that. That's so good.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Not necessarily regrets, but things that you would wish had... Handing off the baton in 2016, definitely. But I think Bill's point is the right one, which is when you're sitting in that office, you are essentially a relay runner. You've taken a bunch of problems from the previous president, and you're working through them as best you can.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
You're running the best race you can, and then you hand it off. During that time where you've got the baton in your hand and you're running... if you are focused on every day, can I make things a little bit better? Because you're not gonna make them perfect. There are too many problems, they're too hard. If you can make them a little better, then a lot of people are helped.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
So the Affordable Care Act wasn't perfect. We didn't get everybody health insurance, but we got- It was a big deal. Tens of millions of people. Yeah. Really big deal. We got tens of millions of people- You can say the real quote on the show.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
We got tens of millions of people health insurance and- My successor tried to kill it. Didn't succeed because it was starting to actually work. You get it passed on to Joe, and what does he do? He then takes what's already in place and builds on it. You know, expands the subsidies so that more people can start getting on it. Expands Medicaid so that more people can get on it. And so...
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
With all the changes he made, you know, health care in America is still not perfect. There's still folks who are, you know, having a tough time. But what has happened is that even more people have gotten coverage. And now Joe caps insulin at $35, which means that people who've got diabetes and really desperately need help, they're not getting price gouged.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And he's negotiating with Big Pharma to make sure that drug prices are affordable the way they are in Canada. Thank you. I'll take credit for that. So what you get are these incremental steps. To answer your question, Will, you're never satisfied when you leave because there's always going to be a bunch of stuff that's undone.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
But I couldn't have done the Affordable Care Act if Bill hadn't made the efforts he did around the children's health insurance program. And Joe then builds on us. And that's what you're hoping for each and every time. And let me say this, the last point I'll make. It's not always just Democrats. George Bush and I had a huge number of differences.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
But he set up this program called PEPFAR that provided drugs and support and help for people in sub-Saharan Africa and around the world who had HIV in the midst of the HIV-AIDS epidemic. And because of his program, millions of lives, tens of millions of lives were saved. And we then built on that program. So it doesn't just have to be a partisan thing.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Part of what you want, though, is somebody with Joe's decency and basic focus on the American people and who have a sense of responsibility to say, all right, I've inherited some stuff. Some of it's good. Some of it are problems. What more can I do? And that's the attitude Joe has. Yeah.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
The economy grew under Bill, it grew under Joe, it grew under me, and the reason it grows is when everybody's got a stake, when everybody's making money. Morale. When people are getting paid decent wages, they have decent benefits, they feel better, they go shopping, they might even listen to this podcast. They've got to be pretty bored.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
But the point is that American economic history shows whenever... Prosperity is broadly based, you know, and all of us ran campaigns with this basic premise that if you give everybody a fair shot, everybody does better.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Well, and I do think that there's one other thing. You were talking about, Jason, social issues versus economic issues. And why is it that sometimes things look good, but people don't feel good all the time? Part of it is, as I said before, things are changing. Folks are nervous. But underneath all the polarization that people are getting through TikTok and...
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
you know, social media and cable news. Bill's point about the average person just wanting to do the right thing, they actually don't want folks arguing all the time. They're really not looking for sort of a death match, you know, on every single issue. They'd like to see people be treating each other decently.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
about whether they're a Democrat. Or if you're in a little league, right, and you're sitting at your kid's soccer game, and you've got the parent next to you, you want to talk about kids and soccer. And I do think that underneath all this... demonization and anger that people make money off of and that gets a lot of clicks. People do want to see some decency and common sense.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And I think Joe represents that. And his administration represents that. And if we can break through, all of us doing the work of a campaign, just to remind folks of what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, then I think we're going to be okay. But the challenge we've got is anger and resentment and calling people names gets more attention.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And we do have to... One thing we do have to... I'm not sure, Jason, that in order to do the show, the performance you talked about, that it has to be pugilistic, that it has to be... hitting the other guy in the nose. It does have to be entertaining. You do have to be able to
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
Bill, Joe, me, when I'm doing okay, it's about telling stories that people can relate to because people can't relate to facts and numbers and figures as much as they can relate to stories. And to personal experience. And personal experience. That's what people relate to. And that performing by telling people stories, reminding them,
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
who they are, what family means to them, what it means to struggle and overcome. Joe, you know, what he had to overcome in terms of getting where he was. Bill, a master storyteller, talking about what it was like growing up, single mom, Arkansas. Those are the things that really, I think, resonate with people.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And if we can get more of that instead of the kind of name calling that we're seeing out here, I think we'll do okay.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
It's just moving to be in front of the three of you. Thanks for doing it. Thank you so, so much. Really important. Appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Have a great time. Thank you. Have fun tonight.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
And I'm going to swing this in a little bit. Thank you, sir. You're welcome.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
But when he did it... Do you basically scout out every state? It's like, can I go here? Is this okay? Well, it's a sequel.
SmartLess
"3 Presidents"
It's crazy. We're all wondering how we ended up here. I know, I'm sure. You've got questions for your staff.