On August 2, two days before Barack Obama’s reported sixty-second birthday, the Jewish journal Tablet published an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights historian David Garrow. ......The exchange between the two deserves to be read in full. Rather than summarize that exchange, I will focus on a few key truths, both those they nailed and those that squirmed away. Most intriguing in the latter category are the questions about Obama’s literary talents and about his birth. Garrow’s opinion matters. His 2017 bio, Rising Star. The Making of Barack Obama, is easily the boldest and most accurate of the Obama biographies.
One thing Garrow and Samuels get right is their take on Obama as president. Says Garrow, “I think even the fanboy journalists would acknowledge, under a little bit of pressure, that it ended up being an underwhelming, disappointing presidency.” On the subject of race relations, Garrow does not equivocate: “There’s no question in anybody’s mind, that on that score, that scale, the presidency was a total failure.”
....Obsessed with Trump and still smitten by Obama, the Washington press corps failed, says Samuels, “to imagine, let alone report on, Obama’s role in government.” He believes that Obama is still the man in charge. He points out that Obama’s continued residence in D.C. is an historical first for an ex-president. Then too, “large parts of White House policymaking” belong to Obama in that they’re “staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him.”
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