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In the lead-up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, an old meme re-emerged on social media which claimed that former president Barack Obama had displayed an unprecedented level of partisanship and opportunism in his criticisms of President Donald Trump, in that Obama was the first ex president to publicly speak against a successor The meme was actually an edited form of an earlier version which first emerged on social media in 2017. The original included only the phrase First Ex President to Publicly Speak Against a Successor: The claim, that no ex-president before Barack Obama ever publicly criticized his immediate successor is false. There is ample historical evidence of ex-presidents doing just that. Here are a few instances: Barack Obama The 44th president offered what were widely perceived as thinly-veiled criticisms of President Donald Trump when he spoke in Johannesburg, South Africa, in July 2018, railing against what he called strongman politics, whereby those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning. He also criticized far-right parties with a platform of protectionism and closed borders as well as barely-hidden racial nationalism. Speaking at the University of Illinois in September, Obama criticized Trump by name, saying he was a symptom, not a cause of an effort by powerful elites to engender fear and division in the face of social change and progress: Obama had declined to openly attack Trump for the first 18 months of his presidency, following what, in his University of Illinois speech, he called the wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage. Obama said he had changed his mind because, in his view, the 2018 mid-term elections represented one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are, just what it is that we stand for. Bill Clinton In July 2007, the 42nd president took aim at the administration of his successor, George W. Bush, in its handling of the Iraq war, telling Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer There is no military victory here and criticizing Bush for attempting to filibuster Congressional efforts to bring about a withdrawal of troops: George H.W. Bush Although George H.W. Bush had a general policy of not speaking publicly against his successor, the 41st president did just that more than once while campaigning for Republican candidates during the 1994 mid-term elections. The Daily Oklahoman newspaper reported that Bush Sr. had offered a stinging counter-attack against Clinton during a visit to the state capital on 4 November 1994: During a Republican rally in Omaha, Nebraska, the same week, Bush attacked Clinton for having the nerve to blame the GOP for his own failures, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazettereported: In 1999, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives, Bush even appeared to accuse his successor of behaving in a way which demonstrated a lack of respect for the U.S. presidency, as the Associated Press reported: Jimmy Carter The 39th president more than once criticized Ronald Reagan, the man who defeated him in the 1980 presidential campaign, firmly defending his own record and offering relatively barbed comments about his successor. In September 1982, Carter responded to Reagan's earlier criticisms of the Democrat's legacy, accusing his rival of failing to accept his responsibilities as president, the New York Times reported: At a press conference two months later, Carter continued that theme, saying Reagan's efforts to deflect criticism onto him were irresponsible and ill-advised and that his Republican successor had made radical and unwelcome changes to U.S. foreign policy, United Press International reported: Gerald Ford Just as Carter publicly took aim at the man who replaced him in the White House, he was also the subject of repeated and sometimes very strong criticism by Republican Gerald Ford, whom Carter had defeated in the 1976 election. In April 1977, less than three months after Carter succeeded him, Ford ridiculed the Democrat's economic policies in a widely-syndicated interview with the Washington Post: Over the next three years, Ford also took aim at Carter's handling of negotiations over the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), his handling of the economic crisis, and in the summer of 1980 he launched a devastating attack on his successor's legacy at a Republican event in Indianapolis, as the Associated Press reported: Conclusion The examples highlighted above are far from exhaustive but serve to illustrate that Barack Obama's recent criticisms of President Donald Trump are far from unique or unprecedented and, especially when compared to the pronouncements of Gerald Ford, could even be argued to have been relatively tame. As such, the claim in the 2017 meme which re-emerged in November 2018, that Obama is the first ex-president to publicly speak against a successor is false.
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