President Obama’s ‘helpful’ exit

OPINION:

Barack Obama yearns to be the great explainer. He opened his first term with a tour of the Middle East to explain Islam to the world, and now he’s finishing his second term with a final, abbreviated world tour trying to explain Donald Trump to everybody. He got the lesson about Islam wrong, and he’s spreading misinformation now about the meaning of the American election.

Before Nov. 8, the president said the man from Manhattan was a hater, a divider, disrespectful of women and contemptuous of minorities. He was unqualified to be the president and a loose cannon to be feared at home and abroad. Mr. Obama has moderated his tone a little in the seventh day after the coming of the Donald, but patronizing the president and the American voters and offering himself to tutor the president-elect to help him “grow” in office.

Well, thanks, Mr. President, but no thanks. Presidential transitions are sometimes difficult. Franklin Delano Roosevelt declined every suggestion made by Herbert Hoover in the four months between November and the inauguration in March, that the two men work together to “resolve” the Great Depression. FDR resolved only to keep his hands clean before trying to make something of the ruins of the economy he inherited.

Mr. Obama, posing as the Donald’s eager little helper, wants to put a “progressive” spin on everything Mr. Trump promised during the campaign to “make America great again.” This includes the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature legislative legacy (such as it is).

There’s a lot that people don’t and can’t know about what happens during the changeover of one administration to the next. Like the making of sausage, it’s not a sight for delicate eyes. Even in their memoirs, presidents are wary of the advice they get coming in and the advice they give going out. It’s “a presidents’ thing” between men who share the burdens that must be borne by those who hold the highest office in the land. Despite what every president thinks, the president-elect doesn’t need him to learn the ropes. Mr. Obama felt no such help was needed from George W. Bush to show him the way. The Donald feels no need for President Obama to interpret his views on NATO, health care reform, taxes, and other issues that carried the day on Nov. 8.

An outgoing president speaks with a certain authority. He’s entitled to offer his opinions to the man who succeeds him. But Mr. Obama’s reflections and advice were effectively dispensed with when he became a has-been on Election Day. His duty now is to offer the support and prayers that every president is entitled to receive from his constituents. The president-elect suffers no shortage of designated men and women to speak for him. He doesn’t need one more. Mr. Obama should keep his counsel for the remainder of his days as president, and foreign leaders must wait with the rest of us to see what the Trump presidency will look like. Despite Mr. Obama’s fervent wishes and dreams, it won’t look a lot like his.