‘Our divisions run deep’
Obama, in new book, says Biden’s win encouraging, but one election isn’t enough to mend the divide in US
Former president Barack Obama has said in the first volume of his upcoming memoir that the divisions in America "run deep" and the departure of Donald Trump from the White House would not be enough to bridge the divide.
In an excerpt from "A Promised Land," which goes on sale on Tuesday, Obama, America's first Black president, reflects on the four years since he left office.
"Our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis -- a crisis rooted in a fundamental contest between two opposing visions of what America is and what it should be," the 59-year-old Obama said in the excerpt published on Thursday in The Atlantic.
The crisis "has left the body politic divided, angry, and mistrustful," he said. It has also "allowed for an ongoing breach of institutional norms, procedural safeguards, and the adherence to basic facts that both Republicans and Democrats once took for granted."
Obama said he was "encouraged" by the election victory of Joe Biden.
"But I also know that no single election will settle the matter," Obama said. "Our divisions run deep; our challenges are daunting."
"If I remain hopeful about the future, it's in large part because I've learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation," he said.
In his memoir, the former president also addresses the "birther" lie peddled by Trump that Obama was not born in the US, according to CNN, which also obtained a copy of the book.
"It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted," Obama writes. "Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president.
"For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety," he said.
Obama also likened Indian opposition figure Rahul Gandhi to a hapless student. In the book, Obama writes that Gandhi has "a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who'd done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject," according to a review in The New York Times.