Barack Obama was the president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 (and Donald Trump’s predecessor in that role). During his presidency, the U.S. electorate and political system became more divided and polarized than ever before. Obama tried to encourage unity and reinforce democratic norms of civility and mutual toleration, but his Republican opposition painted him as an illegitimate leader and an existential threat to the American way of life. In response to Republican obstructionism in Congress, Obama also weakened the norm of institutional forbearance—for instance, he governed through an unprecedented number of executive orders.
Get the entire How Democracies Die LitChart as a printable PDF.
Barack Obama Character Timeline in How Democracies Die
The timeline below shows where the character Barack Obama appears in How Democracies Die. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: The Great Republican Abdication
Second, Trump denies his opponents’ legitimacy: he falsely claimed that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and called for imprisoning Hillary Clinton.
(full context)
...was an ordinary election. Because the U.S. electorate was highly polarized and very conflicted about Obama, this ensured that it was going to be a toss-up. If they hadn’t normalized Trump’s...
(full context)
Chapter 7: The Unraveling
After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, Republican senators refused to consider Obama’s replacement candidate, Merrick Garland. This was an unprecedented break with the Senate’s tradition of forbearance....
(full context)
...like Ann Coulter accused Democrats of treason and anti-Americanism. In 2008, conservative media painted Barack Obama as a treasonous, communist, Muslim terrorist. Troublingly, Republican politicians started echoing the same intolerant ideas.
(full context)
After the 2008 election, both Obama and his Republican opponent John McCain encouraged Americans to embrace civility and unity. But they...
(full context)
Meanwhile, the “birther movement” started questioning Obama’s citizenship. Its most famous proponent was Donald Trump, who learned how intolerance could win him...
(full context)
During Obama’s second term, the Republican Party increasingly embraced the Tea Party. It rejected mutual toleration by...
(full context)
The Democrats and President Obama responded by breaking more norms. The Democrats banned filibusters for most presidential nominees, and when...
(full context)
Levitsky and Ziblatt cite three key events that show how severely forbearance collapsed during the Obama administration. First, in 2011, Republicans decided to freeze debt ceiling negotiations and threaten defaulting on...
(full context)
Chapter 8: Trump Against the Guardrails
...is rigged against them. He broke norms of civility by attacking Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
(full context)
