Barack Obama’s new memoir, A Promised Land, details not just his time in the White House, but his unconventional journey into politics. The book’s main character isn’t just the former president of the United States. He’s also the biracial kid navigating the hierarchies of race and class in his native Hawaii, the bookish college student who read Marcuse and Marx to flirt with girls, the young community organizer in South Side, Chicago, who earned a real-life education in the limitations of slogans and big promises. Obama’s book is dedicated, in part, to hope that it might inspire more young people to enter public service.

Obama joined Vanity Fair contributor Peter Hamby this week for his Snapchat show, Good Luck America, to talk about youth politics today, the constraints of labels and ideology, his advice for old guard Democrats, his daughter’s SoundCloud, and why some young Black men decided to vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in November.

Vanity Fair: President Obama, thanks for joining us.

Barack Obama: It’s good to see you again. How was your Thanksgiving?

It was good. How was yours? 

I didn’t cook but I ate a lot. 

Do you even cook?

You know, I used to cook, I’ll be honest. I don’t fake it. It’s been 10 years. I haven’t made anything other than an omelet.

So you write in the book about how your grandmother instilled a certain worldview in you that you ended up taking into politics. Values like modesty, humility, hard work, marrying passion with reason. Today, though, if you’re becoming politically sentient on the internet, those aren’t really values that apply. Are you worried that young people on the left today are engaging with politics in a way that is too combative, in ways that value attention and emotion, and that is kind of unhelpful for them as they enter politics and the political conversation? 

Well, you know, Malia and Sasha, my daughters, we talk about this. Malia’s 22. Sasha’s 19. And it’s interesting. Even they, and among their friends, notice that sometimes because you’re responding so quickly and trying to be clever or snappy that they sometimes feel as if we’re not really listening to each other as much as we should. We’re just trying to score points. And I think the one thing that I’d like to see all of us do—and shoot, old folks are worse than young folks in many ways about this—is to use social media to make initial contact. But then at least post-COVID, once we get through this pandemic, try to have conversations with people face to face afterward. 

You know, I’m dating myself. But when we think about my original campaign, we were early adapters, but we were using, you know, MySpace and Meetup. We’d use social media to initially get people information and to contact them. But then we tried to say, Hey, let’s meet at a bowling alley, or, Let’s meet at this coffee shop and actually have a conversation. And so, you know, that’s where relationships deepen. You start listening to people, you get a better chance to know folks who maybe on the surface seem like they’re different. But maybe if you get to know ’em they might have a point of view that is worth considering.

You write about when you were a community organizer. And a lot of the folks in the communities you were dealing with really just cared about modest change. They want to do better for their families. If you’re a young activist today and you believe really passionately in a slogan, like Defund the Police, what is your advice to that activist? Knowing that a lot of politicians won’t go near that phrase, even if the nuts and bolts of the idea might be popular. 

It’s interesting. We take for granted that if you want people to buy your sneakers, that you’re going to market it to your audience, right? We take for granted that if a musician drops a record, that they’re going to try to reach certain audiences by speaking to folks where they are. It’s no different in terms of ideas, right? So if you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan, like Defund the Police, but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done. But if you instead say, Hey, you know what? Let’s reform the police department so that everybody’s being treated fairly. And not just in policing, but in sentencing, how can we divert young people from getting into crime? And if there was a homeless guy, can maybe we send a mental health worker there instead of an armed unit that could end up resulting in a tragedy? You know, suddenly a whole bunch of folks who might not otherwise listen to you are listening to you. So the key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with? And if you want to get something done in a democracy, in a country as big and diverse as ours, then you’ve got to be able to meet people where they are. And play a game of addition and not subtraction. 

The 2008 campaign was the first presidential campaign that I covered. And I was covering the other team. I was in Arizona the night you won. But I remember one problem you didn’t have, that it feels like Joe Biden kind of has today, is that the young left was with you more or less. You were the cool anti-war guy. You could brush the dirt off your shoulders like Jay-Z. But today, you know, if you’re 22 years old and you’ve gone through, economic difficulties, you’ve got two wars, there’s racism all around us, socialism is cool. Bernie, AOC, they’re cool. The Democratic Party isn’t really cool anymore. What’s the pro-capitalist message that Democrats can offer to young people? 

Well, look. Socialism is still a loaded term for a lot of folks. Once again, instead of talking labels and ideology, we should focus on talking about getting certain things done. So Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders both agree about raising the minimum wage. Nobody really cares about the label. They care that that is something that is important to a lot of young people and a lot of older people alike. Joe Biden and AOC think we should do something about climate change. It’s probably better if we don’t burn up the planet. Let’s figure out what are the concrete steps that we can actually take to get that done. So my advice for the Democratic Party is what I tried to follow in my campaign, which is telling a story. Because people, young people, folks my age, people generally don’t listen to a bunch of policy analysis. And I’ve been guilty of this sometimes, you know, people have said, Obama gets too professorial sometimes. And he’s giving people a bunch of data points and everybody’s eyes glaze over. But they do remember a story that I tell about how, you know, let’s unify the country. Or here’s how I understand race based on my relationship within my own family that has people of different races. That’s what folks can relate to. If you want to move people and they are moved by stories that connect with their own lives. They are not moved by ideology. Now one thing I will say about the Democratic Party, promoting young people is really important. There have been times where we stick so long with the same old folks and don’t make room for new voices. 

The Democratic National Convention I thought was really successful considering the pandemic, and really used technology wisely. But, you know, the fact that an AOC only got, what? Three minutes or five minutes? When she speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say, even if they don’t agree with everything she says. You give her a platform, just like there may be some other young Democrats who come from more conservative areas who have a different point of view. But new blood is always good. And I say that as somebody who used to be the young, shiny cool guy. But now the gray-haired, old grizzled vet.  

On that note, you know, Dianne Feinstein just gave up her ranking member position on Judiciary. Do you think more older Democratic leaders in Congress should step aside and make way for new blood?

I think it’s a mix here. Look, part of the reason I wrote A Promised Land the way I did—tracking my early career, how I started as an organizer, mistakes I made, doubts and uncertainties I had—is because I just want young people generally to be able to read the book and say, Oh, the guy seems pretty smart, but he’s not Albert Einstein. He’s not the greatest speaker of all time. It’s not like he never makes mistakes or doesn’t have doubts, but, he seemed to care about these issues and was able then to have a career that made a difference. And I just want young people to say their voice, their agency, their actions can have an impact and make a difference. Not everybody has to go into electoral politics. You can go into a nonprofit organization. Obviously all the young people who did remarkable work with Black Lives Matter did it through much more informal mechanisms. But the bottom line is that in a democracy, this thing doesn’t work unless people of goodwill decide, You know what, I can figure this out. I’m going to get involved. I’m going to try to have an impact. And you’ll make mistakes along the way. Just as I recorded in my book, I made a bunch of mistakes. And you’ll be disappointed and you’re not going to get 100% of what you want. 

What you can’t do is, I think, get cynical and just say, You know what? I’m not going to be involved because it’s not going to make a difference. Because that’s just not true. And what that then does is it leaves a vacuum for people [who] are self-interested, greedy, and power hungry to dominate the discourse, dominate our lives and make decisions for us. You know, Michelle, she always had the best line when she talked to young people. You don’t wanna let your grandma decide what you wear. You don’t let your dad build out your playlist. So why is it that you’re going to allow them to make a decision about the country you’re going to be living in? The environment that you’re going to have to deal with, a big economy that you’re going to have to try to find a job in. You don’t leave it to somebody else to make the decision. You go out there and try and make a decision yourself. And if more young people insist on getting involved, older folks are going to get out of the way. 

So Donald Trump did marginally better among Black voters this time compared to past elections. I believe you won 95% of Black male voters, and exit polls need to be validated, but Biden only won around 80%. Polls heading into the election showed that Trump actually had some marginal support among young Black men in particular. Obviously you saw some big-name rappers come out for Trump. But there’s also research showing that young Black men track slightly more conservative than young Black women. What’s going on there in your mind? Why have those numbers moved a little bit? 

Well, look, I think men generally are more susceptible to public figures who act tough, you know, try to project sort of a stereotypical macho style. I don’t think Black men are immune to that any more than white or Hispanic men are. And as I mentioned, the other day when I was in a conversation with some folks, a lot of the values of popular culture are constantly extolling wealth, power, frankly greed, and not really thinking about other people because you’re so ruthless that you’re just looking out for yourself. And again, African American popular culture is not immune to that. So if there are some in the hip-hop community who are, you know, constantly rapping about bling and depicting women in a certain way, and then they hear Donald Trump basically delivering the same version of it or another version of it, they might say, Hey, you know, what? That guy, you know, that’s what I want. That’s what I want to be. All of which is to say that the Black community, like every community, is complicated. And it means that those of us who are progressive, who think, for example, that women should be treated with respect and dignity and not physically accosted, or those of us who believe that wealth isn’t the measure of worth, and that we should have a more equitable society, we can’t take for granted any group. We can’t generalize, just assume, well, we got Black folks in our pockets or we’ve got Hispanics locked up. And for that matter, we shouldn’t assume that we can’t win white men. Because the one thing that the presidency taught me, and something that I try to project in the book, is that the country’s complicated. And the media simplifies it. There’s certain kinds of memes and GIFs and tropes and stereotypes that we all operate in and carry around in our head. But when you actually get on the ground and you talk to people, you know, you go into some small, rural town and suddenly, you’ll find out that there’s some huge, you know Vietnamese population that you didn’t expect. Or you go into a Black neighborhood and you sit in the barbershop and you’ll find out that a bunch of folks who are churchgoing folks got some pretty conservative views about a lot of things. And that’s all for the good. And that’s one more reason why I say that my biggest advice for progressives is to get out and talk to people, because folks are always simpler, you know, in the 140-character version. And when you actually take the time to hear their stories and where they’re coming from, why they think the way they do, why they feel the way they do, it turns out that they’ll surprise you…and that gives you, then, an opportunity to build bridges, build coalitions, and eventually, move the country in a better direction. 

Yeah. I’ve always felt that about journalism too. The journalists who spend time traveling have a better sense of the texture of this place than your average keyboard jockey. So this is the last thing, but this playlist you put out to accompany the book, it’s kind of old school. You’ve got Bruce and you’ve got Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis. Not, like, DaBaby. Did you consult Sasha Malia on this playlist? Or was this all you? 

No, this one was the list of music that is featured in the book. So, you know, I write about Paul McCartney singing “Michelle” to Michelle. That’s in there. Or U2’s “Beautiful Day” is what we played during the campaign after I finished speaking at a rally. My year-end playlists, those are the fresh cuts. There, I will confess that I do consult with Malia and Sasha throughout the year. I’m constantly listening to their music, sometimes by request, and sometimes just because that’s what’s blaring in our house. So, you know, I pick up on some trends. Sasha is more protective of her music. There’s certain things on SoundCloud. She has like a private playlist. She won’t share all of them with me, because she’s not sure I’m hip enough. But nah man, I’m keeping up for an old guy. 

Jason Goldman [Obama’s former White House chief digital officer] told me about the time you did your first Spotify playlist off the top of your head. I thought that was impressive. It sounded legit at least. 

No. It was legit. I was still president then, and I think he wisely commented that maybe we shouldn’t have “O.P.P.” (Naughty by Nature) in there as a song. I think that one didn’t make the vet. 

Wouldn’t pass a vet. Alright, sir, thank you again for doing this. We appreciate it.

A real pleasure. Thank you very much.

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