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How to Watch: President Obama’s Farewell Address How to Watch: President Obama’s Farewell Address
(about 7 hours later)
President Obama is returning to Chicago on Tuesday to deliver the farewell address of his administration. Here are the details: WASHINGTON — President Obama returns to Chicago on Tuesday night to deliver a farewell address in the city that nurtured his political career, a speech likely to be less a solemn accounting of his achievements than a celebration of the history he made on his improbable journey from Hyde Park to Pennsylvania Avenue.
When: 9 p.m. E.S.T. Mr. Obama was still rewriting the speech on Tuesday afternoon, one of his aides said, after being up late Monday night scrawling edits on what at that point was the fourth draft.
Where: McCormick Place in Chicago The White House has meticulously planned this event, from the location — McCormick Place, the cavernous lakeside convention center where Mr. Obama thanked supporters after his re-election in 2012 — to the tone and cadence of the speech, which his aides say will reach for the oratorical heights of his best-known addresses.
How to watch: If you did not stand in line to get a free ticket to the event, the major networks and cable news channels will broadcast the speech. If you are not in front of a television, the White House is offering a live stream. Dozens of alumni from the White House and Mr. Obama’s political operation have converged on Chicago to witness their former boss’s last major turn on the national stage. With parties and receptions all over town, the atmosphere feels like a nostalgic version of 2012, or even more so of 2008, when Mr. Obama’s election drew nearly a quarter-million people to a jubilant victory celebration in the city’s nearby Grant Park.
Until then: Brush up on your knowledge of Mr. Obama’s presidency by reading through the first parts of our Obama Era series. “Beers and tears,” predicted Ben LaBolt, the former national press secretary for Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign.
_____ Mr. Obama remains extremely popular in his adopted hometown. Thousands of supporters began lining up at McCormick Place at 6 a.m. on Saturday to pick up tickets to the speech. In the Hyde Park neighborhood where he lived before the White House, even residents whose lives were disrupted by the extra security precautions around his house spoke wistfully about his return to private life.
Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history. For his supporters, of course, there is a tincture of sadness to Mr. Obama’s leave-taking — the dread that his legacy will be undone by President-elect Donald J. Trump, and the disappointment that, for all his political gifts, he was unable to hand over his office to his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton.
More than health care, race or the economy, Mr. Obama says that his efforts to slow global warming will be the most consequential legacy of his presidency. The morning after the speech, Mr. Trump will be able to offer a rebuttal to Mr. Obama in his first news conference since last summer. That event, in New York on Wednesday, is likely to draw more attention than the president’s carefully crafted words, as Mr. Trump answers questions on issues like Russia’s hacking of the presidential race, the conflicts in his business dealings, and his plans for repealing Mr. Obama’s health care law.
A strategy that went from a “good war” to the shorthand “Afghan good enough” reflects the president’s coming to terms with what was possible in Afghanistan. The president’s aides suggested that he did not plan to attack Mr. Trump in his speech or to dwell on their policy differences. His plan, they said, was to evoke the themes of unity, not division, that first catapulted him to national prominence as a Senate candidate from Illinois in 2004, when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
A transformation of the delivery of health care may be an enduring legacy for the president, even as Republicans plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That speech will inspire this one, as will the speeches he gave in 2007 in Springfield, Ill., when he declared his candidacy for president; in 2008 in Nashua, N.H., when he told his supporters “Yes, we can,” after a primary loss to Mrs. Clinton; and in 2015, in Selma, Ala., on the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
To prepare for this speech, Mr. Obama’s chief speechwriter, Cody Keenan, pored over previous presidential farewell addresses. It is a tradition that goes back to George Washington, who used the occasion to disclose that he would not run for a third term and warned Americans to steer clear of entanglements in Europe, where Britain and France were then at odds.
Among the most famous of the modern-day farewells was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s, in which he warned of the influence of the “military-industrial complex.” Richard M. Nixon’s goodbye to the White House staff after his resignation was raw and revealing of his inner demons. “Always remember,” he told them, “others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
While less remembered, Jimmy Carter’s speech was “a succinct expression” of the values and goals of his presidency, said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
In words that would resonate with Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, Mr. Carter described the presidency as “at once the most powerful office in the world — and among the most severely constrained by law and custom.”