Quote:Where is Obama? It is a question much of the country has been asking over the last two years, sometimes plaintively. “Come back, Barack,” Chance the Rapper sang in a Saturday Night Live sketch. “We all miss him,” Kobe Bryant said, speaking for other athletes. Even former FBI director James Comey admitted to German interviewers this spring that he misses Obama.

Beyond the anguish is, often, simply bafflement: How did the most ubiquitous man in America for eight years virtually disappear? Over the course of his presidency, Obama cast himself as the country’s secular minister as much as its commander-in-chief, someone who understood the moral core of the nation and felt compelled to insist that we live up to it. What explains his near absence from the political stage, where he might argue publicly against the reversals of his policy accomplishments, and also from American life more broadly? What is keeping him from speaking more frequently about the need to protect democratic norms and the rule of law, to be decent people? Where is the man who cried after Sandy Hook and sang in Charleston, who after each mass shooting tried to soothe an outraged nation, who spoke of American values in his travels across the globe? And, tactically, what is behind the relative silence of one of the most popular figures alive just as American politics appears to so many to be on the brink of breaking?

Obama’s reticence is more than simply a matter of communications strategy. He has mostly opted out of liberal America’s collective Trump-outrage cycle. Though he reads the Times and other newspapers, he doesn’t follow daily Trump developments on Twitter or watch television news. He is upset by the administration’s actions, and he’s confided to friends that what worries him most is the international order, the standing of the office of the presidency, the erosion of democratic norms, and the struggles of people who are suddenly unsure of their immigration status or the future of their health-care coverage. Still, in conversations with political allies, Obama insists that today’s domestic mess is a blip on the long arc of history and argues that his own work must be focused on progress over time — specifically on empowering a new generation of leaders. He says his legacy is not what concerns him. (“Michelle and I are fine,” he tells those who ask about it.) And while he often says he misses the day-to-day work of fixing people’s problems, he has even less patience for day-to-day politics than he did as president.

One of Obama’s friends repeatedly described the former president as newly “Zen-like,” a striking descriptor given that Obama’s impossible calm has been a hallmark of his entire time on the national stage. To those who’ve known him longest, his confidence in the decision not to wade back into the political muck is the product of the same hyper-self-aware posture he’s had since childhood, growing up straddling worlds and then writing a book about himself in his 30s. “This has been a difficult thing for him, and for me, to see what this administration has done to the policy initiatives that we put in place and that were proving to be successful,” says Eric Holder, Obama’s friend and former attorney general. “But I think it’s really been true — we’ve had conversations about this — he’s been encouraged by the amount of progressive energy he’s seen around the country.”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/where-is-barack-obama.html

(06-25-2018 01:27 PM)Gakusei Wrote:  Happens with all presidents. Barring occasional appearances at Rangers games, W. fell off the map when he left office. Probably a combination of having the most stressful job in the world for 8 years, and realizing that their presence fills a vacuum that would otherwise be filled by the next generation of would-be Presidents.

(06-25-2018 01:27 PM)200yrs2late Wrote:  surprisingly, he is somewhat respecting Trump's presidency by not injecting himself into every issue. I'm sure he is trying to rile up as much opposition as he can behind the scene though.

(06-25-2018 01:24 PM)TechRocks Wrote:  

(06-25-2018 02:35 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  As long as it's not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave I don't give a fat rat's ass where Obama is.

(06-25-2018 02:35 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  As long as it's not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave I don't give a fat rat's ass where Obama is.

(06-25-2018 03:02 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  

(06-25-2018 02:35 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  As long as it's not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave I don't give a fat rat's ass where Obama is.

...or behind a microphone. Oh, how I hated to hear his voice. He speaketh with forked tongue, only one fourth of it believable. I hope he's gone back to Hell for a rest.

Hey, don't go into a tiff, there's a Hell Texas you know.

(06-25-2018 03:23 PM)stinkfist Wrote:  

(06-25-2018 03:02 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  

(06-25-2018 02:35 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  As long as it's not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave I don't give a fat rat's ass where Obama is.

...or behind a microphone. Oh, how I hated to hear his voice. He speaketh with forked tongue, only one fourth of it believable. I hope he's gone back to Hell for a rest.
Hey, don't go into a tiff, there's a Hell Texas you know.

that's why the DNC chose him Ollie......we all knew it going in.....
what was screwed up was the RNC not having a solid platform to combat the gift of his gab.....
the end result became #henceDJT......
to end, for the first time in my life, there is a opportunity to implement structural change......
whether that happens has yet to be seen.......DJT had fruit laying all over the ground

(06-25-2018 05:04 PM)thespiritof1976 Wrote:  Where's Dumbo ?

Probably sitting on his lazy ass watching ESPN.