Obama blames splintered media for preventing superstar Democrat from rising up
Former President Barack Obama said a splintered media landscape can prevent gifted communicators from breaking through the way he did on the national stage.
Former President Barack Obama blamed a splintered media landscape for the lack of a second Obama-like political figure emerging on the national stage during an interview on Tuesday.
NBC "Today" co-host Craig Melvin talked to the former president about the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on his "Glass Half Full" podcast and told him, "You’ve always represented a lot of different communities, but there has always been this singularity to your story. Earlier this week, one of your former aides was talking on one of these cable shows and said Democrats should stop looking for Obama 2.0. Not gonna happen."
"Do you think in the current climate that someone like you with your background and your story, do you think that you could break through now the same way you did back in ’07, ’08?" Melvin asked Obama.
"I do think it’s harder because of the nature of your business, the media, it’s more splintered," Obama said.
OBAMA CHOOSES SUPPORTER STEPHEN COLBERT FOR DEBUT INTERVIEW AT CONTROVERSIAL PRESIDENTIAL CENTER
"I hadn’t even been elected yet to the U.S. Senate," he continued. "I had won the primary. I’d won the nomination — Democratic nomination to be the senator of Illinois, but nobody really knew who I was except outside of Illinois. And when I gave that speech at the convention, suddenly I’m a national figure because all the networks covered it. And if you’re on the cover of Time magazine or Newsweek back then, suddenly everybody knows who you are because we all shared one culture."
Obama said that people "who are just as gifted or in some cases more gifted" than him were not breaking through because of a splintered media.
He suggested the country was in a transition period.
"So I think we’re in a transition period where there are a lot of Barack and Michelle Obamas out there doing cool stuff, but politics hasn’t quite given them the platform yet. Media hasn’t shined a spotlight on them yet. If we can help focus on the great work they’re doing, then that’s one of our core missions," he said.
Obama said during the dedication of his presidential center in Chicago earlier this month that America’s Founders fell "terribly short" of the Declaration of Independence’s promise, while casting the nation’s story as one of generations coming together to make the union "more perfect."
"The success of this experiment was never a given," Obama said in his speech, referring to the nation's founding ahead of America celebrating its 250th anniversary on the 4th of July.
"In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration's promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property," he said. "But in drafting a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, they did have the foresight, the genius, to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect."
CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE
The 44th president devoted much of his speech to outlining the work he believes America still has ahead, echoing themes he has emphasized in past appearances on the campaign trail and during his time in the White House.
Fox News' Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.
The post Obama blames splintered media for preventing superstar Democrat from rising up appeared first on FOX News Media
