Obama: American Democracy Is Bigger Than Any One Person

Obama called the president-elect “uniquely unqualified”.

US President Barack Obama extolled the strengths of democracy from its Greek birthplace on Wednesday in a speech aimed at highlighting the values he sought to respect in office and prodding his Republican successor, Donald Trump, to follow suit.

Reducing inequality, he said, creates societies where people are “less likely to turn on each other, less likely to appeal to some of the darker forces” that tear people apart.

Obama said that during a meeting with Trump at the White House last week, he had told the president-elect that his actions can move markets, tanks and public sentiment.

Opening his final overseas trip as president, Obama acknowledged he was surprised by Trump’s victory – and said it stemmed from deep-seated anxieties among working-class Americans that government must do better to address. He then headed for Germany. Although Clinton was favored to win the election, Trump pulled a surprising upset victory.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who writes Obama’s foreign policy speeches, said the remarks in Greece were meant to echo some themes of Obama’s eight-year presidency: That globalization, technology and trade will ultimately lead to greater prosperity – but that it needs to be carefully regulated to mitigate the dislocation of workers and families that also can result.

Some 2,500 people brandishing banners denouncing USA “imperialism” and calling Obama “non grata”, or not welcome, were turned away by police firing tear gas and stun grenades as they tried to breach barriers and head toward the city center.

European governments, especially eastern countries close to Russia’s orbit, have been shaken after Trump appeared to call into question Washington’s near 70-year security guarantee by saying he would only help North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies if they paid their way. Obama spoke out in defense of his agenda: the Iran-nuclear deal, a global climate change pact, establishing relations with Cuba and more. President Obama knows that.

“We have very different points of view”, he said.

Published in Fortune, picking and naming the new Cabinet members are the first steps the Trump Transition Team is doing.

Obama insisted that people deserve the right to choose their governments and leaders.

Politico noted that Obama and Trump met for about 90-minutes following the election and the two leaders have toned down their comments about one another.

Obama has given similar warnings before, cautioning world leaders about a “crude sort of nationalism” that can manifest itself in populist movements from the left and the right.

Greece is now in its seventh year of an extreme debt crisis.

Obama entered the complex through the Propylaea and walked along the Parthenon.

The 5th Century B.C. Parthenon temple is surrounded these days by scaffolding as part of maintenance works.

Greece’s government has hailed Obama’s visit – the first official visit of a sitting USA president since a 1999 trip here by Bill Clinton – as being of massive importance.

The president added that the most important title in a country is not president, nor prime minister.

He said Greece should not have to bear the brunt of Europe’s refugee crisis, and expressed support for the International Monetary Fund’s demand for European creditors to give Greece debt relief.