Obama Slams Founding Fathers at Presidential Center Debut: They ‘Fell Terribly Short’
“In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property.”
Rather than celebrating the extraordinary bravery and immense personal sacrifice of America’s founding fathers, former President Barack Obama used the debut of his presidential center on Thursday to emphasize their failures, telling attendees that the nation’s founders “fell terribly short” of the ideals they espoused.
He said:
The success of this experiment was never a given. In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property. But in drafting a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, they did have the foresight, the genius, to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect.
He knows very well why abolition was not included in the Declaration of Independence. The founders’ “failure” to abolish slavery at the nation’s birth was not the result of indifference to the contradiction between liberty and human bondage. Many recognized it. In fact, Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the document included a passage condemning the slave trade, but it was removed to preserve unity among the colonies.
The reality is that the American experiment likely never would have begun had the founders insisted on immediate abolition. The colonies were deeply divided on the issue, and without a united front, independence from Britain would almost certainly have failed. The founders made a fateful compromise, choosing first to secure the nation’s existence and leaving future generations to grapple with slavery’s ultimate abolition.
And, as Obama is also well aware, Americans fought a bloody war to end the scourge of slavery that left more than 600,000 mostly white men dead.
Obama went on to emphasize the work that lies ahead for America and the need to find points of unity in an increasingly divided political climate.
Oddly, and perhaps as a subtle jab at President Donald Trump, Obama invoked the “values” of John McCain and Mitt Romney, two of Trump’s most prominent Republican critics: “Every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold the values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did.”
He ended on a hopeful note:
It is our greatest inheritance. The story of America at its best, because it reflects a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens and the possibility that, despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together. That’s what I hope every visitor to this center takes away from their experience.
I would gently remind Obama that he, too, “fell terribly short” of one of his central campaign promises: healing the nation’s racial divisions.
While America was not a colorblind society when he took office, race relations had improved markedly over the preceding decades. The country had come a long way since my days as a student in the 1970s, when racial identity often defined how people viewed one another. By the time my children attended school in the 2000s, I saw something different. They didn’t describe their classmates as black, white, or Asian; they described them by their names. The progress was real, even if it was incomplete.
Obama was given a historic opportunity to build on that progress. Instead, neither he nor Michelle Obama appeared willing to abandon the identity politics that shaped their worldviews. The rhetoric may have evolved, but the underlying framework remained the same: black versus white, oppressed versus oppressor, grievance versus responsibility. Rather than encouraging Americans to see one another as fellow citizens, Obama often reinforced the notion that they belonged to competing groups with competing interests.
It is little wonder, then, that polls consistently show majorities of Americans believed race relations deteriorated during his presidency. For all of his soaring promises of unity, Obama’s legacy on race remains far more divisive than transformative.
His rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail, particularly his shaming of black men who would not line up behind Kamala Harris, made clear that he still sees the world through a rigid racial lens, and Americans, less as individuals than as members of racial voting blocs.
From Fox News:
While the Obama Presidential Center officially opens to the public Friday, the dedication featured a slew of former diplomats, officials and celebrities, such as former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Oprah Winfrey, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Steven Spielberg, Hillary Clinton, and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden.
…
Overall construction costs were reported to be $830 million in 2021 and have likely climbed past the $1 billion mark.
A recent Fox News Digital investigation identified multiple construction firms claiming losses ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions. [Matt covered this story here.]
Obama’s full remarks can be viewed below:
FULL | Barack Obama delivers heartfelt speech at grand opening of new pr… https://t.co/UpgJjBqRrj via @YouTube
— Mwaqar (@WaqarM2024) June 18, 2026
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Comments
And once more, the SCFOAMF doesn’t fail to disappoint.
Pay your damn contractors before you pontificate on the failings of the Founders, you grifter.
He’s less of a grifter, and more of a Marxist bomb thrower.
The single worst American that has ever lived.
I have nothing but seething contempt for this traitor.
As to his entirely erroneous view of the founders, let me say this. They were very cognizant of the fact that some day a man would come along with the desire to rob American of their birthright of liberty and went to great pains to construct a framework that would protect us.
As it turns out, that man was Barack Obama.
*spit*
Contrary to all the moral posturing, slavery was a good thing, and was worldwide for a reason. In a “hit the guy on the head and take his stuff” economy, it’s a win/win. Instead of killing your enemy, you enslave him.
It’s an inefficient economy because all your capital goes into defense and none into production. The West made slavery obsolete with a more efficient system: a slave contributes more working in his own interest than for a master. That’s from the free market and rule of law, a gift to the world from the West.
At that point slavery was economically obsolete and surviving on bogus “social” reasons like tradition and “naturally subservient race,” reasons which were doomed and in fact ended.
I’m so glad this prolapsed asshole is no longer President.
He’s running the Democrap party instead (read: rigging the midterms).
Obama’s blindness to his own failings is monumental. He not only failed as POTUS but set back race relations fifty years. The judges he appointed have done more harm than the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. His legacy is one of no responsibility or concern for the welfare of our people, only himself and his cronies.
That is absolutely correct.
Race relations had been making slow, but steady progress (albeit very slow progress) . DEI and critical race theory exploded during his term, setting up resentment and reversing much of that steady progress.
Obama the Divider-in-Chief. What a miserable POS, including his miserable POS “wife.” Problem with that monolith is there is no window from which to defenestrate the power-mad couple.
Hey Moose, Rocko- Help the former President find his checkbook.
Oh dear! We have disappointed Him again!
In Obama’s view, the founders failed to create the Soviet Union when given the opportunity.
Same as he ever was: Attack, Demonize, Divide. Insult. Demoralize.
What I do on Obama’s grave when he shuffles off this mortal coil won’t pass for flowers. Bless his heart.
Obama’s full remarks can be viewed below:
No thanks. I have grass growing to watch. WAY more important.
Barack Obama thinks too highly of himself as a Statesman, a Scholar and pray tell, a Philosopher.
He is none of those things.
He’s simply a pain in the ass and a big mouth that hasn’t a clue what he speaks of oftentimes.
He’s lucky he’s not spending the rest of his days in prison for what he did to this nation and the incoming administration.
If he had any sense whatsoever he would shut the hell up stay out of public view.
But he just can’t seem to help himself…
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