Each elected U.S. president is in some fashion a reaction to his predecessor. Let’s consider how the nature of President Obama may have led to the nomination and election of President Trump.
Consider three facts: none of Barack Obama’s ancestors were slaves; his father’s people were colonial subjects. As a expat child Obama lived in Indonesia, a one-time Dutch colony. While there he had an Indonesian step-father whose family name Barack used for several years. He is said to have claimed “foreign student” status at Columbia U.
It shouldn’t surprise us that, as president, Obama proved more interested in fostering third-world anti-colonialism than improving the lives of African-Americans. Much of the time President Obama’s reactions were more those of a UN Secretary General than of a national leader. So much so that many Americans experienced him, though a citizen, as vaguely “foreign.”
The 2016 attractiveness of avowed patriot and nationalist Donald Trump may be explained, in part, as a reaction to Obama’s “otherness.” Trump’s “America first” attitude makes him Obama’s polar opposite. Like Trump or hate him, he’s unmistakably American.
How ironic that a reaction to President Obama’s “world citizen” persona helped Donald Trump win first the nomination and then the presidency.
