Getty 'Hope' poster artist: Obama let me down

Shepard Fairey, the street artist behind the famous “Hope” poster that went viral during Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential run, said that the president has not lived up to his expectations.

In an interview with Esquire, Fairey acknowledged that “Obama has had a really tough time” but said he’s “not even close” to having lived up to the “Hope” poster created for him.


“I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he’d support],” Fairey added in the interview, posted Thursday.

He tempered his response saying that he’s met the president a few times and that he thinks he is a “quality human being,” adding that his presidential record has been largely dictated by things out of his control.

“I’m not giving him a pass for not being more courageous, but I do think the entire system needs an overhaul and taking money out of politics would be a really good first step,” Fairey said.

“We also need a public that isn’t so uneducated and complacent. I hate to say Americans are ignorant and lazy, but a lot of them are ignorant and lazy,” he added. “But what frustrates me to no end are people who want to blame Obama or blame anything that is something that if they were actually doing anything as simple as voting, it might not be as bad as it is.”

When asked who he will back in 2016, Fairey said that though he agrees with Hillary Clinton on most major issues, “campaign finance structure makes me very angry” because it has “narrow[ed] the field dramatically.”

“There are only certain kinds of people that either have the preexisting resources or the willingness to work in way that will get them a lot of money from donors,” he said. “Then there’s the idea that the people who you are going to have to listen to are the people that are going to give you the biggest donation. That means lobbyists, special interest groups, and corporations are going to have politicians eager, disproportionally.”

“I’m not anti-capitalism. Capitalism just needs better referees,” Fairey said.