Former President Barack Obama suggested that the pressure he feels to assist the Democratic Party in response to the Trump administration’s policies have caused tension in his marriage.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Obama said President Trump’s administration has pulled him into policies “more than I would have preferred.”
The outlet described Obama’s schedule as being “of great concern” to former First Lady Michelle Obama: “She wants to see her husband easing up and spending more time with her, enjoying what remains of our lives,” he said. “It does create a genuine tension in our household, and it frustrates her. I’m more forgiving of it, in the sense that I understand why people feel that way, because people aren’t looking at me in historical comparison to other Presidents. They don’t care about the fact that no other ex-President was the main surrogate for the Party for four election cycles after they left office.”
“The fact that people want me to be ‘doing more’ is a good sign,” he stated, explaining that it suggests that “there has not been as decided a shift in American attitudes as we are making out. And that’s part of the reason people are frustrated. Sometimes it’s directed toward me, which is fine because they kind of sense, Wait, how can we be doing this when I know that’s not who we were? And I don’t think it’s really who we are now.”
One of Obama’s more recent political involvements came through his comments surrounding a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Louisiana congressional district as an illegal racial gerrymander. He said the decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities, so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias.’”
