Obama: Still Hopeful. More Careful

Last night I went see Barack Obama at the O2.

My takeaways:

Obama admitted politics has failed people and there were many mistakes. The West and the left became too comfortable in an echo chamber, taking its eye off the ball in many areas

He frequently referred to values-based leadership as superior to material-outcome leadership. (His new media company is called Higher Ground Productions).

His view on social media is that it has become a force for bad. He carefully danced around who, what and where, but he believes it has lost its way - and he has not worked out what needs to be done.

Obama chose every word so carefully to not mention or criticise Trump directly. While his speech appeared to have slowed down, he referred again to kindness and hope as virtues to lead by - and said they will come around again.

Next to the juxtaposition of Trump’s speech to the UN, which was pointed, direct and named names, Obama could have gone harder on almost every point he made.

Perhaps the last point is where politics has moved on (or backward depending where you sit). Obama won his elections on virtues and values. “Hope” and “Change”. Exceptional words.

Trump won his on promises to deliver particular material outcomes linking them to words people use in every day, regular language. “Great.”

The enormous Obama memoir I received as a gift will have to be summarised somehow (cue GPT). After the yawnworthy diaries of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton’s, I’ll give it a go, but Crocodile Dundee 2 is far more appealing.