Barack Obama<\/a>. \u201cAnd of course there\u2019s been this continuing contest throughout our history around those who would try to interpret those original documents as being able to accommodate caste and hierarchy and privilege and preferences to exclude versus an idea that says no, no, we the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tNone of the conversations explicitly named current President Donald Trump or directly criticized the actions of any particular administration. Instead, the former leaders largely presented a unified front that reflected a shared understanding of what they believe are the necessary principles of holding the highest office. They also discussed the general successes \u2014 and occasionally the regrets \u2014 of their respective administrations and their own nation. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf the only time you love your country is when you win \u2014 what is that? It\u2019s not democracy,\u201d Biden said during a joint panel with the former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden. \u201cDemocracy is people who collectively decide what\u2019s in the best interest of themselves and their country, and if you only love your country when you win, then what happens to this place?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cA lot of things that happened are part of the truth of who we are, but the whole idea is to keep trying to form a more perfect union and to keep moving forward in a positive direction,\u201d said former First Lady and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile many of the conversations remained hopeful, even while discussing personal or national adversity, Biden and other speakers still addressed how aspects of modern politics have become less unified and more challenging amid, among other things, competing understandings of the role individualism versus collectivism across American life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIn my sixth or seventh year as vice president, things began to get a little tough in the Senate. They weren\u2019t treating Senators the way they used to,\u201d Biden recalled. \u201cSo I went\u2026 to have a lunch in the Senate dining room. I walked over to the dining room and it\u2019s not there anymore. There\u2019s not a single place in the United States Senate, other than a Senator\u2019s office, where a Democrat and Republican can sit down in Washington. They don\u2019t know each other. I think it\u2019s one of the major problems we have. We don\u2019t talk to each other, we don\u2019t engage one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tObama, while talking about the role of storytelling in his campaign and presidency, noted how stories are a powerful tool for shaping or reshaping the country\u2019s collective experience, Americans understanding of a unified identity and ultimately democracy\u2019s present and future. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve got competing stories at all times, right? We\u2019ve got stories that encourage us to be greedy or encourage us to be afraid and mean,\u201d Obama said. \u201cThose are a set of stories. And then there are another set of stories that encourage us to be kind and generous and thoughtful and truthful and serious and responsible. A lot\u2019s at stake in what story captures people\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile discussing his post-presidency work with former First Lady Michelle Obama through production company Higher Ground, the 44th president of the United States noted that \u201cI think we are going to get through these challenging times, but we will get through them not simply because we have a better 10-point policy. It\u2019s going to be because we find a way to reset course on these moral commitments to treat other people as we would like to be treated,\u201d he told the Philly audience. \u201cThat we are caring for the poor and vulnerable and that we recognize our duty to something larger than ourselves and to the next generation, and we don\u2019t think about things like war in terms of glory or denomination.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf we have to engage in things like that, we do so with a soberness and a sense of sorrow and loss,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen we tell those stories and when those are felt by citizens, not just by a president, then we\u2019re going to be alright.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSeveral conversations pivoted to how guests\u2019 personal and professional relationship to American history, constitutional rights and national leadership shaped their overall perspective of what makes America the country and democracy it is. \u201cI was the only white kid that I knew that played with Black kids. I never thought of it as any big deal, but it prepared me as I watched other people react to living a life where some people want to be inclusive and others don\u2019t,\u201d Bill Clinton recalled about growing up poor in rural Arkansas. \u201cAnd here we are today, all these years later, and it\u2019s the number one question facing us. Do we believe on our 250th anniversary, are we willing to stake our lives on the fact that we are all created equal and that our diversity is a blessing, not a curse?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tUltimately, Saturday\u2019s conversations covered how rights have evolved in America since its founding, how various presidents have interpreted that and how the country\u2019s evolution over two and a half centuries consciously reshaped opportunities as well as what one could hope for within greater American society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s so much controversy right now. There\u2019s so much divisiveness, so many lines being drawn, as Bill said, to include people, exclude people. So we\u2019re living through a challenging time. There\u2019s no doubt in my mind that we\u2019ll get through it, but [this moment] is one that\u2019s posing a lot of new questions about power, unaccountable power, and some very old questions about how we organize ourselves and whether we stay faithful to our founding values and the rule of law \u2014 everything that got us to where we are today. So I remain hopeful,\u201d Hilary Clinton said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI do see lots of things to be optimistic about, but it doesn\u2019t come just because we wish it,\u201d she added, before recalling a conversation with Warren Buffet about the scope of human history. \u201cAs he likes to say, \u2018Would you have picked any other time in which to live?\u2019 Because really, when you think about it, despite all of our problems, if you look back at everything\u2026 we are so lucky. We still live in the greatest country in the history of the world. We have so many opportunities. And it is, as Benjamin Franklin said while coming out of the Constitutional Convention and he was asked, \u2018What have you created?\u2019 He said, \u2018A Republic, if you can keep it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hollywoodreporter.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe and Dr. Jill Biden, Bill and Hilary Clinton and George W. Bush convened in Philadelphia on Saturday alongside leaders in media, sports and entertainment as part of a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.\u00a0 The historic convening of every living former U.S. president and three out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2379563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22466,352943,27653,36290,348301],"class_list":["post-2379562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-barack-obama","tag-colin-jost","tag-michelle-obama","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-tina-fey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Obama-Nicole-Kidman-Tina-Fey-Jason-Kelce-Attend-HISTORYTalks-2026.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2379564,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379562\/revisions\/2379564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2379563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}