Story highlights Sally Kohn: I wanted Obama to use remarks to show he's the action figure to take on Trump

His focus is a new initiative, but his civility shows how political discourse should look

Sally Kohn is an activist, columnist and CNN political commentator. Follow her on Twitter: @sallykohn. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) Barack Obama's first post-presidency public remarks were defined as much by what he didn't say as what he did. Except by inference -- as in when he joked, "So, uh, what's been going on while I've been gone?" -- Obama didn't really mention Donald Trump let alone attack him.

I suspect that many, like me, wanted much more and are disappointed that he's holding back -- so far -- particularly as the country faces the disaster that is Trump's presidency.

I desperately want Obama to be an action figure -- the kind I always had with me as a child, in my pocket or tucked under my pillow -- that with the push of a button on its back would scale tall buildings in a single bound or perform precision karate chops. I want Obama to karate chop Trump, if not literally than at least rhetorically.

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But Obama is not an action figure, he is a human being -- with all of the faults and foibles that usually entails. And while he is a pretty exceptional human being, his biggest handicap as a politician has been his aversion to conflict. He's not the guy in the tights and cape who's going to plunge into the inferno.

This guy -- certainly the guy we saw today in his first public remarks since office -- is the guy who wants to narrate the story, bring together all the characters, solve the tensions and resolve the plot lines and tell us all the moral. If there's a button on his back, the most it does it cause professorial reflection and self-deprecating jokes.

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