Former President Barack Obama has been out on the campaign trail offering very direct criticism of President Trump, something most ex-presidents haven’t done with their successors. “The president said he was going to pass a middle-class tax cut before the election. Congress isn’t even in session before the election.” That sort of violates the tradition that former presidents have had in recent decades, where they might get out there and campaign for members of their party, but they’d more or less avoid directly attacking their successor in the White House. A lot of Democrats have been saying that the only way to counter Trump is to be a little bit more like Trump, and that’s not Barack Obama’s style. He’s at his strongest when he’s most inspiring. “You can be saving somebody’s life just by voting. That power rests in your hands.” He’s at his strongest when he is directly taking on some of the arguments of the other side. He talks about rule of law, and the norms that President Trump has basically violated. “It should not be a partisan issue to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the F.B.I. to use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents.” It’s kind of a mismatch. Harvard Law School Review president against the reality show host. And it’s just a very different style of campaigning. I think the problem for President Obama is he won pretty convincing elections when he was on the ballot twice, and then the other three times he was campaigning while he was president, the Democrats lost. “The Republicans will take control of the House.” “Republicans will take control of the Senate.” The challenge for the Democrats is they don’t have a single leader right now who has the stature to go up against an incumbent president. And Barack Obama is the only one, basically, who can fit that role. He in effect represents the past, and they have yet to find somebody to be their leader for the future.