ALTER: We’ve had only two African-American governors and three senators since Reconstruction. Is America ready for a black or a woman president? OBAMA: I absolutely think America is ready for either. Stereotypes and prejudices still exist in American society, and for the highest office in the land a female or African-American candidate would, at the outset, confront some additional hurdles to show that they were qualified and competent. But what I’ve found is that the American people–once they get to know you–are going to judge you on your individual character. Whatever the flaws in the process, people get a fairly accurate read by the end of the campaign.
I’ve watched how crowds react to you. Why are you striking a chord? It’s hard to stand outside yourself. Some of it is that. I’ve become representative of the American people’s desire to turn the page and get beyond some of the harsh, sharply partisan politics that has ruled over the last 10 years.
You think this is generational? Our politics has very much been grounded in debates over the ’60s. There’s the ’60s, the backlash against the ’60s, the counter-backlash within the Democratic Party against the ’60s. We’ve been effectively talking about Vietnam, the sexual revolution, the civil-rights movement for a generation now, and it doesn’t adequately describe the challenges we face today. My peer group, I think, finds many of those divisions unproductive. We see many of these problems differently, on race, faith, the economy, foreign policy and the role of the military.
Part of the reason the next generation can see things differently is because of the battles that the previous generation fought. But the next generation is to some degree liberated from what I call the either/or arguments around these issues. So on race, the classic ’60s formulation was, “Is it society and institutional racism that’s causing black poverty or is it black pathology and a culture of poverty?” And you couldn’t choose “All of the above.” It looks to me like both. [The younger generation] is much less caught up in these neatly packaged orthodoxies.
How do you match up against Hillary Clinton? I’m not going to go there. I have tremendous respect for Hillary Clinton. She’s an outstanding leader in the Democratic Party. She’s earned her stripes.
