It felt a bit like back then at the Victory Column, only with less sun and fewer people. When Barack Obama entered the stage of Berlin’s Mercedes-Benz Arena on Wednesday evening, the approximately 6,000 visitors in the hall cheered for a long time and with standing ovations – a mood similar to that in 2008, when the young Senator Obama met more than 200,000 fans in the Berlin Tiergarten appeared.
Now the now 61-year-old was back in the capital for an “Evening with Barack Obama” – and one could guess why thousands had come to the hall to see him. The 44th President of the United States has lost none of his entertaining qualities. “Thank you Berlin, it’s good to be back!” he greeted the audience.
And he directly told about his excursions in the capital. “Yesterday evening I met an old friend”, by which he meant the visit to a noble Italian in Schöneberg with ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Today I made a stop at the chancellor’s and said ‘Hi'” – over lunch at the chancellery.
Berlin is the third European stop for Obama, in the past few days he has performed in Amsterdam and Zurich. He is already in the German capital for the fifth time.
In a democracy, there are rules for disagreements.
Barack Obama
The conversation led by entertainer Klaas Heufer-Umlauf then had a rather serious course. Above all, Obama’s concerns about the state of global democracy took up a lot of space. “We’re going through an extraordinarily difficult time,” Obama said, especially in view of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. There is a competition between autocratic systems and those who uphold the values of democracy.
However, he is also very concerned about the tensions within the democracies, and there are not only challenges from outside. “We also have to question our own social practices” and oppose racism and disinformation, for example. Among other things, it is important to be able to tolerate differences. Referring to the notoriously divided USA, Obama said: “In a democracy there are rules for differences of opinion.”
Here he also spoke about the dynamics within the American media landscape. Broadcasters such as Fox News and social media fueled the disinformation, so that one could not agree on the clearest facts. Especially people who feel left behind are prone to disinformation, certain media still fuel their fears, for example of migrants or homosexuals. These fears are being exploited by the right in particular – with which Obama is clearly alluding to the US Republicans.
He is also concerned about the development of artificial intelligence (AI), which produces fake news and deepfakes that are so convincing that you have to be very careful about what you can still believe. “We have to train our young people here in particular in media skills,” Obama said. Therefore, clear rules and a digital fingerprint are needed for the use of AI, so that one can distinguish what is real and what is not.
Heufer-Umlauf then steered the conversation to the qualities that a leader, say of a large country, needs. “As President, could you be told earlier that you were wrong?” asked Heufer-Umlauf. “Ask Michelle, I’m wrong about 10 times a day,” Obama replied, before going on more seriously that being a responsible leader requires listening to and empowering your employees.
If we had women in positions of power everywhere for a few years, a lot of the world’s problems would be solved.
Barack Obama
In the White House, he made sure to hear as many perspectives as possible when he had to make a decision. “And I always had to make difficult decisions.” A young person sometimes had better prospects than an old one. “When it comes to truth, there are no hierarchies,” Obama said. You can only make good decisions if you have competent people with many different backgrounds around you.
However, he is particularly proud of having brought many women into high positions during his presidency. “If we had women in positions of power everywhere for a few years, a lot of the world’s problems would be solved,” Obama said, earning prolonged applause from the audience.
He is also hopeful when he looks to future generations. Many of them are frustrated, especially with a view to climate change, which is making some of them hopeless. But: “They have values and ideas that will help us.”
The problem is the institutions, the young people have the feeling that they are broken. “And you’re right. We must now give them the baton. And I say to the old people: Make way!” And so the evening ended as it began: with standing ovations.
