{"id":4850,"date":"2023-08-09T12:14:07","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T17:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=4850"},"modified":"2023-08-09T12:14:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T17:14:07","slug":"were-living-through-barack-obamas-third-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=4850","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re living through Barack Obama\u2019s third term"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20370%20247'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"zeen-lazy-load-base zeen-lazy-load wp-image-4851\"\/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"681\" src=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4851\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52.png 1024w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-770x512.png 770w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-370x247.png 370w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-293x195.png 293w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-120x80.png 120w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-240x160.png 240w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-52-390x259.png 390w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/noscript><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the big questions in Washington and across the country as Joe Biden\u2019s very public decline has accelerated is: who\u2019s actually running the show at the White House? There have been various answers, including Ron Klain and Susan Rice; even Doug Emhoff has been touted as having outsized influence. But the one name we ought to be paying more attention to is obvious \u2014 the man who cleared the 2020 field for Joe, tapped Kamala as his running mate and now hosts regular meetings at his 8,000-square-foot house just two miles from the Oval Office he used to occupy: Barack Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week\u2019s publication of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/arts-letters\/articles\/david-garrow-interview-obama\">an interview<\/a>&nbsp;with biographer&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thespectator.com\/author\/david-j-garrow\/\">David J. Garrow<\/a>&nbsp;by David Samuels in&nbsp;<em>Tablet&nbsp;<\/em>magazine went viral for a number of hot-button reasons, but this is the actual headline takeaway Americans ought to have for the piece: they\u2019re living through Barack Obama\u2019s third term. Samuels draws attention to this point particularly in the context of foreign policy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The rest of the year, [Obama] lives in a large brick mansion in Kalorama. Doesn\u2019t it strike you as weird that he\u2019s an ex-president, he\u2019s comparatively young and he\u2019s living in the center of Washington, DC? The original excuse was that Sasha had to finish school. Then you could say, \u201cWell, the opposition to Trump needs a figure to rally around.\u201d But now Sasha has graduated from USC, Trump is gone, Joe Biden was elected present, but he\u2019s still there\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Doesn\u2019t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama\u2019s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don\u2019t write about it because it\u2019s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama\u2019s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t follow the Iranian stuff super, super carefully, but I have been puzzled at the Biden administration\u2019s continuing attachment to the Iran deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn\u2019t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is an audacious violation of norms for ex-presidents. If true, it really would take allegations that Biden\u2019s presidency is merely an old man serving as an Obama puppet to a new level. And it would be consistent with other things Obama has said. As&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2020\/11\/barack-obama-stephen-colbert-president-third-term-1234635491\/\">he told Stephen Colbert<\/a>&nbsp;when discussing the concept of a hypothetical third term back in 2015:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony. I\u2019d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On its face, this would explain a great deal about the inconsistencies between the current president\u2019s past approaches to any number of areas of policy \u2014 domestic, economic and foreign \u2014 but it would also particularly explain Biden\u2019s embrace of modern wokeness as a trademark issue, despite not campaigning on it in 2020. It\u2019s hard to imagine Joe Biden, marked by moderation on many hot-button issues in his Senate tenure, would so quickly turn to divisive culture war stances. But he\u2019s done exactly that, without even an attempt to explain why.<ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Assuming that there is truth to this tale, why is the DC press corps so incurious about it? What would it take to stake out the Kalorama house of the president to track the comings and goings of major administration figures? This sort of reporting was ubiquitous to the Trump era in DC, where journalists tracked relationships and followed interactions constantly, measuring who was on the inside and pushed aside by the president on a daily basis. When Joe Biden returned, somehow they just lost all interest. Isn\u2019t it time to wonder: why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Original Article: <a href=\"https:\/\/thespectator.com\/topic\/living-through-barack-obama-third-term\/\">https:\/\/thespectator.com\/topic\/living-through-barack-obama-third-term\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the big questions in Washington and across the country as Joe Biden\u2019s very public decline has accelerated is: who\u2019s actually running the show at the White House? There have been various answers, including Ron Klain and Susan Rice; even Doug Emhoff has been touted as having outsized influence. But the one name we ought to be paying more attention to is obvious \u2014 the man who cleared the 2020 field for Joe, tapped Kamala as his running mate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4852,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850\/revisions\/4852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}