2026-06-18T09:00:26.485Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
- 随着巴拉克·奥巴马耗资8.5亿美元的总统图书馆在芝加哥揭幕，尽管有部分人士批评他的执政时期，他仍是民主党内部最主要的团结性人物。
- 奥巴马仍在为11月的中期选举为候选人提供建议、谋划战略。
- 批评者认为奥巴马政府时期不够大胆激进，其执政遗产正引发争议。
本文由AI生成摘要，并经CNN编辑审核。
芝加哥——
当地时间周四，美国前总统巴拉克·奥巴马终于得偿所愿：他的文字被镌刻在石碑上，一座纪念其总统任期的纪念碑将融入芝加哥天际线。
过去几个月里，奥巴马在这座耗资8.5亿美元的多功能总统中心里四处察看，他在游乐场的滑梯上滑行，试坐各处座椅，并提醒工作人员给部分椅子加装防滑垫，以免刮花地板。他还要求重新制作一段关于体育主题展览的全部文案，因为原版文案读起来不像是真正的体育爱好者所写，这让他感到不满。
但在图书馆揭幕前夜，他对一场由其竞选团队和政府团队前成员参加的聚会表示，他并不沉迷于怀旧，也不打算沉溺其中。
“我认为怀旧意味着一种情绪，即过去的某段时光在某种程度上是黄金时代、更加美好，但如今已遥不可及，”他在周三说道，“这会让我们推卸责任，因为它会让我们产生‘好吧，那时候很棒，但现在是现实，我们对此无能为力’的想法。”
这位美国第44任总统还未准备好淡出历史。而许多民主党高层也不希望他如此。
“相较于如今美国共和党所代表的理念，‘希望与变革’仍是极具说服力的对立叙事，”众议院少数党领袖哈基姆·杰弗里斯对CNN表示。
在卸任 Oval Office 十年后，奥巴马仍是美国民众认可度最高的在世总统，也是在因领导层争端和关键议题路线分歧而陷入分裂的民主党内部最主要的团结性人物。但在周四揭幕仪式VIP观礼区之外，人们对他的遗产评价则更为复杂。
在部分人看来，在唐纳德·特朗普成功赢得两次大选之后，谈论“希望与变革”听起来显得天真幼稚，或是与现实脱节的陈词滥调。尤其是在左翼崛起阵营的批评者看来，奥巴马在总统任内被认为不够大胆激进，尤其是在外交政策和经济议题上，这正是导致民主党乃至整个国家当前处境的根源。
伊利诺伊州州长JB·普利茨克是奥巴马的旧友，他将这座总统中心描述为一项“积极投入的事业，旨在为未来培养和推举领导人”。
“我非常反对‘巴拉克·奥巴马应为后续发生的一切负责’这种说法，”他补充道，“我想我们所有人都在很多方面对当下的处境负有责任。我的意思是，我没有投票支持那些事，但我们都对如今国家的现状负有一份责任。”
整座总统中心里，处处可见奥巴马要求增设的标识，主题均为“未竟之业”——这个短语曾在他的第二任期演讲中出现，也贯穿了他卸任后的公开活动。
博物馆的多个展区都收录了不同声音，有人认为奥巴马执政期间走得太远，也有人认为他做得不够，涉及移民、气候变化、医疗保健和枪支暴力等议题——后者常被奥巴马称为其总统任期最大的败笔。
每座总统图书馆都带有圣徒传记式的叙事色彩。例如“经济危机与复苏”展区介绍了奥巴马接手的银行业崩盘状况，并解释了他如何“大胆采取行动拯救经济，并在新的增长与繁荣基础上进行重建”。根据CNN提前获取的预览照片，“未竟之业”牌匾将国会归咎为未能解决奥巴马认为存在的经济深层问题的原因，包括“让员工更易组建工会、保障带薪病假和家庭休假，以及提高最低工资标准”。
“他接过了民权运动的遗产，却将其拱手让给了华尔街，”经济领域作家马特·斯特勒尔说道，他领导着自由主义智库美国经济自由项目。斯特勒尔补充道：“他为唐纳德·特朗普的威权主义埋下了导火索。他创造了唐纳德·特朗普得以上台的环境。”
但民主党高层仍迫不及待地随时与奥巴马站在一起。
“时隔10年、20年再去评判是很难的。我年轻时是一名出色的运动员，但我能想到每一场比赛，如果能重来一次，我本可以做得更好，”新泽西州参议员科里·布克说道，他曾在斯坦福大学打过橄榄球，“但在当时那个时代，巴拉克·奥巴马是英雄，他拯救了我们的经济，并在一些具体指标上推动了国家进步，这些影响持久且仍在发挥作用。”
杰弗里斯经常与奥巴马通电话或当面交流。他们的谈话内容从私人话题到战略评估，再到政治建议，比如支持去年的政府停摆事件相关举措。
杰弗里斯有望在11月民主党夺回众议院多数席位后出任议长，他用芝加哥体育界的比喻来形容奥巴马在民主党中持续发挥的核心作用。
“奥巴马总统在任时就像迈克尔·乔丹，”杰弗里斯说，“卸任后他就像菲尔·杰克逊。”
64岁的奥巴马曾在公开和私下场合对自己在政坛的参与度感到不快，部分原因是特朗普的持久影响力，以及前总统乔·拜登执政期间的表现。
但尽管奥巴马每年都不愿在每个选举周期中奔波超过数日竞选，他仍享受着自己在民主党政坛的主导地位——即便他的多位密友顾问（其中几位接受了CNN的本次采访）认为，他的参与不仅仅是出于虚荣心。
“这当然令人受用，但背后指向了更重要的事实：美国民众大体上仍认同他的愿景和主张，”埃里克·舒尔茨说道，他曾在奥巴马白宫团队任职，之后一直协助奥巴马规划卸任后的活动，“如今是黑暗时期，但如果全国各地的民选官员都在寻求他的发声，这就很好地证明，他的整套理论仍能引起广泛共鸣。”
衡量民主党候选人对奥巴马态度的一个简单标尺，是向其办公室提出的背书请求数量——据知情人士透露，这一数字始终居高不下。另一个标尺是去年加州的焦点小组调查，结果显示他是民主党推动该州新选区划分提案的最佳代言人。还有各种场合的引用：从洛杉矶共和党市长候选人斯宾塞·普拉特声称“我觉得我和他有着相同的经历”，到佛罗里达州众议员黛比·沃瑟曼·舒尔茨在一段视频中宣布将参选一个非裔人口占多数的选区，背景墙上就挂着一张复古的“HOPE（希望）”竞选海报。
当奥巴马参与今年春季弗吉尼亚州民主党成功推动但随后被推翻的选区划分公投活动时，杰弗里斯指出，该议题双方的广告都引用了这位前总统的言论。
2025年6月，佐赫兰·曼达尼在纽约市市长初选中获胜后不久，奥巴马就打来电话，就如何开展治理工作提供建议，并提出愿意充当他的倾听者。这一举动让双方都提升了公信力：曼达尼赢得了当时33岁的民主社会主义者怀疑论者的认可，奥巴马则赢得了他一直希望与之并肩的年轻变革者的支持。
据知情人士透露，在今年早些时候的一次会议接近尾声时，奥巴马照例提出，如果需要更多帮助可以随时告知。曼达尼起初提出的一个想法并不契合，之后又回来请求协助推广他推动的全民育儿计划。
奥巴马随后与曼达尼一同在布朗克斯的一家托儿中心为学龄前儿童读书、合唱《公共汽车轮子》，这场活动安排在奥巴马夫妇前往纽约观看他们联合制作的百老汇戏剧期间。这与曼达尼2013年的推文形成了鲜明对比：当时这位21岁的鲍登学院学生还在网上写道，“奥巴马不是已经证明了， lesser evil（较小的恶）其实也坏得要命吗？”这条推文至今仍在。
尽管奥巴马并未像2020年大选前那样正式接待潜在的2028年总统候选人，但他已经在华盛顿办公室接待了马里兰州州长韦斯·摩尔和宾夕法尼亚州州长乔希·夏皮罗，进行了长时间的会谈。
“我理解人们当下对事态发展的不满，”摩尔说道，“我也有同感。我认为有人对政府的防御姿态感到不满，有人对国家当前的发展方向感到不满。奥巴马总统不是问题的根源。正是像他这样的领导，才是我们此前见过的这类问题的解药。”
不仅仅是在博物馆里，人们正在辩论奥巴马的个人遗产。
“当然，我本希望能有更好的结果，比如单一支付者医保体系之类的，”亚利桑那州众议员亚萨明·安萨里说道，她去年在众议院民主党新人会议上介绍了奥巴马，并描述了奥巴马生动讲解2010年通过《平价医疗法案》时的政治博弈过程，“但那是2000年代，那时候不可能实现。”
安萨里高中时期就曾为奥巴马的竞选活动挨家挨户拉票。她说，20年后在会议室里见到他，而她自己也刚拿到国会徽章几个月，这种感觉 surreal（超现实）。
“我们这一代新领导人正在崛起，现任议员、全国各地各级参选的候选人，他们代表着当下新一代高中生的希望与变革，”安萨里说道，“这就是奥巴马的全部遗产。”
希望与特朗普
据了解奥巴马想法的人士透露，奥巴马目前将自己的角色定位为：通过精心选择的发声时刻，确保另一种世界观取得胜利。他正在推进“奥巴马学者”公民参与项目。他希望继续践行小马丁·路德·金所说的“道德宇宙的弧线终将弯曲”（他经常引用这句话），同时也试图为民主党掌舵，避免其走向他认为会适得其反的方向。
奥巴马和特朗普都不愿放过对方，医疗保健和中东等议题贯穿了两人的总统任期。特朗普经常在社交媒体上提及奥巴马的中间名侯赛因。而就在周三，特朗普在对比两人与伊朗的谈判时说道：“他们都嘲笑奥巴马，说他是个愚蠢的狗娘养的。”
当然，在此之前，奥巴马在图书馆揭幕前夕接受《早安美国》采访时批评了特朗普对伊朗的战争政策，并表示：“毋庸置疑，未来达成的任何协议，都不太可能比我们最初达成的协议有显著不同或显著改善。”
奥巴马决定不邀请特朗普出席揭幕仪式，摒弃了总统图书馆揭幕的传统两党合作惯例，上一次此类惯例还是在2013年乔治·W·布什的图书馆揭幕仪式上。特朗普则在社交媒体上发布了一张AI生成的图片，显示一个垃圾袋堆在奥巴马的塔楼顶部，并配文称这里将成为“仇视美国者的‘麦加’！”
奥巴马对特朗普连任的担忧依然强烈，尤其是在共和党人不愿加以抵制的情况下。但当他得知共和党参议员比尔·卡西迪两周前未经宣布前来参观中心时，感到十分欣慰。卡西迪因在弹劾特朗普的审判中投下定罪票，未能重新获得特朗普阵营的支持，上个月在路易斯安那州初选中落败。
卡西迪当时正在该地区参加孙女在芝加哥大学的毕业典礼，距离中心仅几个街区，工作人员为他预留了预展门票。两人并无活跃的私人关系，事后也未交谈。据了解奥巴马反应的人士透露，奥巴马表示，这正是他希望这座中心所承载的精神。
周三晚间，米歇尔·奥巴马与丈夫一同出席了前竞选团队和政府团队成员的活动，她提出了更为尖锐的目标。她表示，这座中心的意义在于“将这段遗产留存下来，让任何人——任何人——都无法装作这一切从未发生过”。
Barack Obama confronts the work that remains for Democrats — and for him
2026-06-18T09:00:26.485Z / CNN
- As Barack Obama opens his $850 million presidential center in Chicago, he remains a primary unifying figure in the Democratic Party even as some criticize his time in office.
- Obama continues advising candidates and shaping strategy ahead of November’s midterm elections.
- His legacy faces debate from critics who see his presidency as insufficiently bold.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
Chicago—
Former President Barack Obama on Thursday is getting what he wanted for so long: his words carved into stone, a monument to his presidency entering the Chicago skyline.
Walking through his $850 million, multiuse presidential center the past few months, Obama went down the slide in the playground and tried out the chairs, noting which ones needed stoppers to keep from scuffing the floors. He asked for the whole text of an exhibit on sports to be redone, frustrated that the original text didn’t seem written by a true fan.
But he also told a gathering of his campaign and administration alumni, the night before the center’s opening, that he didn’t believe in nostalgia and didn’t intend to wallow in it.
“I think nostalgia implies this sentiment that there’s this thing in the past that was somehow golden and better, but is unattainable now,” he said Wednesday. “And it lets us off the hook, because it makes us feel like, ‘Well, you know, that was wonderful, but now, this is the reality, and there’s not much we can do about it.’”
The 44th president isn’t ready to fade into history. And many top Democrats don’t want him to.
“Hope and change still remain incredibly powerful as a counter-narrative to what the Republican Party at this moment stands for in America,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN.
A decade after he walked out of the Oval Office, Obama is still the most popular living president and the primary unifying figure in a party racked by leadership disputes and fights over its direction on key issues. But his legacy beyond those elbowing for their spots in the VIP section of Thursday’s opening is more complicated.
To some, talk of hope and change can come off as naïve or a disconnected relic after President Donald Trump’s two successful campaigns. Particularly to his critics on the rising left, Obama’s perceived lack of boldness while president, particularly on foreign policy and economic issues, is exactly what led their party and the country overall to now.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, an old Obama friend, described the presidential center as an “active, engaged endeavor to lift up and train leaders for the future.”
“I really reject the notion that somehow Barack Obama is responsible for what came after,” he added. “I guess we’re all responsible in many ways for where we are. I mean, I didn’t vote for it, but we all have a share of responsibility for where the country is today.”
Throughout the presidential center, there are signs Obama asked to be added throughout, all on the same theme: “The Work That Remained,” a phrase that popped up in his second-term speeches and throughout his post-presidency.
Voices are featured in several spots through the museum arguing that Obama went too far or didn’t go far enough, including on topics such as immigration, climate change, healthcare and gun violence — the last of which he has often cited as a great failure of his presidency.
Hagiography comes with every presidential library. The “Economic Crisis and Recovery” exhibit, for example, notes the banking collapse Obama inherited and explains how he “responded boldly to rescue and rebuild it on a new foundation for growth and prosperity.” The “Work That Remained” plaque blames Congress for not addressing what Obama believed were the underlying problems of the economy, including “to make it easier for employees to form unions, for guaranteed paid sick and family leave, and for a higher minimum wage,” according to a preview photograph shared with CNN.
“He took the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and traded it to Wall Street,” said Matt Stoller, a writer on economics who leads the liberal American Economic Liberties Project. Added Stoller: “He lit the fuse for authoritarianism under Donald Trump. He created the world for Donald Trump to come into.”
But top Democrats are eager to stand with Obama whenever they can.
“It’s very hard to sit 10, 20 years later and cast judgment. I was a beast of an athlete back in my day, but there’s not a game that I played that I can’t think of things I could have done better if I could go back and relive them,” said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who played football at Stanford. “But in the time, Barack Obama was a hero and saved our economy and advanced our nation along really specific indices that are lasting and still are making a difference.”
Jeffries is frequently on the phone or in rooms with Obama. Their conversations range from the personal to gut checks on strategy to political advice like supporting what became last year’s government shutdown.
Jeffries, who is on track to be House speaker if Democrats take the majority in November, offered a Chicago sports reference to describe how central he sees Obama’s ongoing role for the party.
“President Obama was Michael Jordan while he was in office,” Jeffries said, “and he’s Phil Jackson out of it.”
Obama, 64, has bristled publicly and privately about how involved he’s been in politics, in part due to Trump’s enduring influence and the way that former President Joe Biden’s time in office turned out.
But despite his annual reluctance to campaign more than a few days in each election cycle, Obama still loves the dominance he has in Democratic politics – even as his closest advisers, several of whom spoke to CNN for this story, argue his engagement is about more than ego.
“It’s certainly flattering, but points to something more important: the country is still largely aligned with his vision and his story,” said Eric Schultz, an adviser who’s been helping Obama craft his post-presidency since working for him in the White House. “It’s a dark time, but if elected officials from across the country are seeking his voice, that’s a pretty good sign that his theory of the case still very much resonates.”
An easy measure of how Democratic candidates feel about Obama is the rate of endorsement requests coming into his office that, according to people familiar with the matter, has remained as high as ever. Another is the focus groups in California last year that showed him the best messenger for Democrats’ ballot proposition to newly gerrymander the state. Or all the ways he’s invoked, from Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt arguing, “I feel like him and I have the same experience,” to Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz announcing she would run in a majority-Black district in a video with a vintage “HOPE” poster displayed over her shoulder.
When Obama got involved with the spring campaign for Virginia Democrats’ successful but since-overturned gerrymandering referendum, Jeffries noted that ads on both sides of the issue featured comments from the former president.
Not long after Zohran Mamdani won his primary for New York City mayor in June 2025, Obama was on the phone, giving advice on getting governing right, offering to be a sounding board. Both got a credibility bump: Mamdani with skeptics of a then-33-year-old democratic socialist, Obama with the young change-makers he always wants to be counted with.
According to people familiar with the matter, toward the end of a meeting earlier in the year, Obama made his standard offer to let him know if there was more he could do to help. Mamdani pitched one idea that didn’t gel, then came back asking for help promoting his push for universal childcare.
Obama joined Mamdani to read to preschoolers and sing “Wheels on the Bus” at a childcare center in the Bronx, arranged around a trip to New York the Obamas were making to see a performance of the play they are co-producing on Broadway. It felt an especially long way from Mamdani’s 2013 tweets, like the one still up from the then-21-year-old Bowdoin student, “Hasnt Obama shown that the lesser evil is still pretty damn evil?”
Though he has not been officially bringing in prospective 2028 presidential candidates as he was already doing at this point ahead of the 2020 election, Obama has hosted both Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at his Washington office for longer meetings.
“I understand the frustrations that people have right now with the way things are going,” Moore said. “I share them. I think there are people frustrated with the level of defensiveness, I think the people frustrated with the direction the country’s going right now. President Obama is not the reason for it. It was leadership like his that was the antidote when we saw this before.”
It’s not just in the museum where Obama is debating his own legacy.
“Of course I would have wanted something better and single-payer and the rest,” Arizona Rep. Yassamin Ansari, who introduced him last year at a meeting with other freshman House Democrats and described his eye-opening rundown of dealing with the politics of passing the Affordable Care Act, which passed in 2010. “But this was the 2000s and that wasn’t going to happen.”
As a junior in high school, Ansari was knocking on doors for Obama’s campaign. She said seeing him 20 years later in the room with her, just a few months after she got her own congressional pin, was surreal.
“We have a new generation of leaders coming up right now, current members, people running for office at different levels across the country who represent hope and change for the new group of high schoolers that are out there right now,” Ansari said. “That’s Obama’s entire legacy.”
Hope and Trump
Obama sees his role at this point more as ensuring a different worldview will win out through carefully chosen moments of speaking out, according to people familiar with his thinking. He is building his Obama Fellows civic engagement programs. He wants to keep doing more of the bending of “the arc of the moral universe,” as Martin Luther King Jr. said in a quote he often cites, while also trying to provide a rudder to keep his party from moving in directions he fears will be self-defeating.
Neither Obama nor Trump is letting the other go, given the issues like healthcare and the Middle East that shaped both their presidencies. Trump often posts about Obama using his middle name, Hussein. And just on Wednesday, Trump said in comparing their respective negotiations with Iran, “They laughed at Obama and they said, ‘He’s a stupid son of a bitch.’”
That was, of course, after Obama in an interview with “Good Morning America” leading up to the library opening criticized Trump’s war in Iran and said, “It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place.”
Obama decided not to invite Trump to the opening, eschewing the traditional bipartisanship around presidential centers last seen at George W. Bush’s library in 2013. Trump posted an AI-generated image showing a garbage bag atop Obama’s tower and saying it will be “a ‘Mecca’ for those who hate America!”
Obama’s despair about Trump’s second term remains high, particularly around Republicans not pushing back. But he was pleased when he heard GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost his Louisiana primary last month after failing to re-ingratiate himself with Trump for his vote in an impeachment trial to convict him over the January 6 riots, made an unannounced visit to the center two weeks ago.
Cassidy was in the area for his granddaughter’s graduation from the University of Chicago a few blocks away, and staff reached out for advance tickets to the soft launch. The two don’t have an active relationship and didn’t talk after. According to a person familiar with his reaction, Obama said that’s part of the spirit he wants for the center.
Appearing with her husband on Wednesday night at the campaign and administration alumni event, Michelle Obama offered a more pointed goal. She said the center was there “to lay this legacy so that nobody — nobody — can act like this didn’t happen.”
发表回复