Washington: President Barack Obama made clear on Wednesday that he will not go silent after leaving office later this week, promising to speak out whenever he feels America’s “core values” are threatened.
While he said he was looking forward to taking a break from politics, Obama said at the final news conference of his presidency that certain major issues would be important enough to draw him out of retirement and back into the national conversation after President-elect Donald Trump takes over on Friday.
“There’s a difference between that normal functioning of politics and certain issues or certain moments where I think our core values may be at stake,” he said.
In highlighting instances when he would feel compelled to engage in public debate in the future, Obama signalled that he intended to follow a different course than his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, who largely withdrew from public life eight years ago saying his successor deserved his silence.
Obama has expressed respect and appreciation for Bush’s approach, but has told friends that he did not intend to remain a mute bystander to the dismantling of important democratic ideals that he championed for eight years.
Obama used his final meeting with reporters in the White House briefing room to defend his decision a day earlier to commute the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst convicted of leaking American military and diplomatic secrets in 2010.
Dismissing concerns that he was sending the wrong message to others who then might divulge classified information, Obama pointed out that Manning had already served seven years in prison.
“First of all, let’s be clear,” he said. “Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence. So the notion that the average person who was thinking about disclosing vital classified information would think that it goes unpunished, I don’t think would get that impression from the sentence that Chelsea Manning has served.”
He added: “I feel very comfortable that justice has been served.”
Obama leaves with rising approval ratings but an eight-year legacy that is already under attack even before Trump is inaugurated. He declined to comment on the decision of dozens of congressional Democrats to boycott Trump’s inauguration. “All I know is I’m going to be there,” he said. “So’s Michelle.”
