Barack Obama just said something so out of touch with how ordinary Americans feel about Washington that even sympathetic commentators are having trouble spinning it.
The former president used the launch of his brand new podcast to make a claim that will strike most Americans as detached from reality. Obama said that people are always surprised when he tells them the federal government is so much less corrupt than it probably has ever been, in terms of pure bribes, patronage, or favors.
Think about that for a second. At a time when trust in government institutions has cratered and Americans have watched a revolving door between Washington offices and corporate boardrooms spin faster than ever, the man who occupied the Oval Office for eight years wants Americans to believe corruption is basically a thing of the past.
The comments came in the first episode of Obama’s new six-part series. The show, called A Great Book with Barack Obama, premiered on Amazon’s Audible platform and features Obama discussing books that shaped his worldview with various public figures.
The specific episode paired Obama with a sympathetic media voice, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore, discussing Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 novel All the King’s Men, a book about a corrupt Southern political machine.
Obama’s argument was that old-fashioned bribery and patronage have declined so much that Washington actually functions worse as a result. He claimed reforms cutting down on old-school corruption also stripped away what he called lubrication that once helped bridge ideological divides in Congress and get people to vote for things they were not comfortable with.
Read that carefully. The former president is nostalgic for a system where lawmakers were bought off with favors in exchange for votes, because at least it got things done.
Obama pointed to a specific era of American politics to make his case, referencing Lyndon B. Johnson’s style of legislating and describing how cornering lawmakers and hustling them for votes worked not through physical intimidation but by asking what they needed.
The timing of these comments could not be more politically inconvenient for his own party. Obama’s remarks came just as Democrats have been trying to turn government corruption into a defining midterm election issue, particularly around President Trump’s business dealings.
It is hard to imagine a worse unforced error for Democratic strategists. Right as the party tries to hammer home a message that Washington corruption has spiraled out of control, their most prominent living former president went on tape insisting the federal government is cleaner than it has arguably ever been.
The numbers make Obama’s claim look even more disconnected from how Americans actually feel. A record 89 percent of American adults believe government corruption is widespread, according to Gallup polling.
Break those numbers down further and the picture gets even worse for Obama’s argument. Gallup found that 91 percent of Democrats, 90 percent of independents, and 83 percent of Republicans all described government corruption as widespread.
This is not a partisan perception gap that Obama can wave away as Republicans simply distrust a Democrat-controlled government. Nine out of ten members of his own party think corruption is rampant in Washington, and Obama just went on a podcast to tell them they are wrong.
To be fair, some outlets pointed out Obama was making a narrower point than the headlines suggest, focused specifically on bribery, patronage, and favors rather than the broader forms of corruption most Americans have in mind.
That distinction may satisfy media fact checkers eager to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but it will do little to change how the comments land with ordinary voters. Most Americans do not parse the difference between old-fashioned patronage and the modern forms of corruption they see every single day, from insider stock trading among lawmakers to federal contracts flowing toward politically connected firms.
