Farewell to the reader in chief

“When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved ... for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.”

— Mark Twain, “The Prince and the Pauper”

Eight years ago, in these pages, the author Ishmael Reed wrote an essay about “a Celtic African American with a golden tongue and a golden pen” who was poised to assume the highest office in the land. Barack Obama, Reed posited, had the makings of a great literary president.

“Books can make you better,” Reed wrote. “Obama knows this and will perhaps help lead the nation back to literacy.”

So how did President Obama fare? And what will change under the new administration?

Even if you didn’t vote for the man and disliked his policies — even if you happened to buy into the race-baiting fabrication that he wasn’t born in this country, that he was somehow constitutionally unfit for his job — one cannot dispute that the president has been an exemplary ambassador for literature, a leader who has championed reading as a way to open our eyes to the world, to nurture understanding, to see ourselves in others.

This was abundantly clear in a conversation Obama conducted with the novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson that appeared last year in the New York Review of Books. Marvel at that for a moment: The president of the United States interviewed a deep-thinking author for a lengthy, two-part piece that was published in one of the nation’s most highly respected literary magazines.

“When I think about how I understand my role as citizen,” Obama said, “setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.

“It has to do with empathy,” he continued. “It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”

In countless ways, over his two terms, the president has endeavored to impart his passion for this power of books.

He has made routine outings to bookstores with his daughters, sharing summer reading lists that show a breadth of interests, from William Finnegan’s and Helen Macdonald’s inspired memoirs “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life” and “H Is for Hawk,” to Colson Whitehead’s genre-busting novel “The Underground Railroad” and Neal Stephenson’s 880-page science fiction epic “Seveneves.”

Among the Presidential Medals of Freedom he has given out — more than any of his predecessors — Obama has recognized the authors Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Gloria Steinem. He has also awarded the National Medal of Arts to Sandra Cisneros, Rita Dove, Maxine Hong Kingston, Harper Lee, Tobias Wolff and many others.

Earlier this year, the president nominated Carla Hayden as the 14th Librarian of Congress — she’s the first woman and first African American to lead the library.

Last year, Obama announced two book-related initiatives: one in which publishing houses offer $250 million in free e-books — roughly 10,000 titles — to low-income students, and the other to provide library cards to all students in the country.

Along with the first lady, the president has embraced his job as reader in chief with gusto, regularly giving impassioned readings to children of such favorites as Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.”

Obama has spoken about the importance of early-childhood reading for years. In a speech to the American Library Association in 2005, he said, “In a world where knowledge truly is power and literacy is the skill that unlocks the gates of opportunity and success, we all have a responsibility as parents and librarians, educators and citizens, to instill in our children a love of reading so that we can give them the chance to fulfill their dreams.”

He attributes his early love of books to his mother.

“As much trouble as I got into as an adolescent, she would constantly send me books,” he said. “That’s what I got every birthday. I was holding out for the basketball or the bike. And I’d get these big stacks of books. I’d be disappointed initially, but she knew that eventually I’d end up picking them up and reading them. That, I think, really laid the foundation for my subsequent success.”

Some would argue that bestowing awards on writers and reading to children is pro-forma stuff, easily done for the good publicity. But as with his interview with Robinson, the president has often gone out of his way to sing the praises of books in heartfelt terms. After Muhammad Ali died in June, for instance, Obama eulogized the champ in a video in which he leafed through his own copy of the enormous book “GOAT (Greatest of All Time): A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.”

Obama is not simply bookish. He is also, of course, an author in his own right. “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope,” the memoirs he wrote before he was president, are uncommonly thoughtful, for a politician, and touched a chord with many Americans. Soon after he leaves office, Obama — and not a ghostwriter — likely will write one of the most anticipated post-presidential memoirs ever.

As is amply manifest in his writing, Obama is someone who has done a lot of thinking about his place in the world, his upbringing, his uniquely American story. And, as president, he has proved himself to be just as reflective, viewing the world, as he says, in shades of gray, with nuance — qualities enhanced by a lifetime of reading.

President Obama, in sum, is a cultivated and self-made man who has striven to bring out the best in his country, holding it forth as an enlightened beacon to the rest of the world — much as John F. Kennedy did in a similarly youthful and aspirational administration — by celebrating its many artists, writers prominent among them.

All of this he has done with dignity, self-deprecation, wit and an easy smile, accepting blame for his mistakes and deflecting praise.

And what of his successor?

Aside from a TV game show that portrayed him as a master of the corporate boardroom, the president-elect became famous thanks in large part to the No. 1 best-selling, how-I-struck-it-rich book “The Art of the Deal” (1987), whose ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, has since condemned the man who claims to be its author.

“I put lipstick on a pig,” Schwartz said in a New Yorker profile by Jane Mayer. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.”

The man who will take office in January has his name on several other business-advice books. Each is as self-aggrandizing as the next (“How to Get Rich,” “Think Like a Billionaire,” “Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life”), extolling little other than a brash, Gordon Gekko-like pursuit of money and real estate holdings.

Despite all the books that bear his name, the next president, in fact, seems to care very little about books. He tweets obsessively, at all hours, about the most trivial matters, yet he claims he doesn’t have the time to read.

“I’m always busy doing a lot,” he told the Washington Post in July. “Now I’m more busy, I guess, than ever before.”

When asked by Megyn Kelly of Fox News to name the last book he read, he answered, “I read passages, I read areas, chapters. I don’t have the time.”

Plenty of goodhearted, intelligent people don’t read all that often. But this businessman, who has never held political office, is about to assume a position that will require him to have a grasp of a mind-boggling range of issues — matters whose complexity is explored in depth in the world of letters. His reluctance to read is a sign of just how incurious and impatient he is.

As David Greenberg, a presidential historian at Rutgers University, told the Post, “His attitude toward reading is hardly unprecedented. But when you combine it with the vulgarity and the authoritarian style, it shows a locker-room, business-world machismo that pervades his persona.”

Equally troubling are his Twitter outbursts over “Saturday Night Live” parodies and the “Hamilton” cast’s plea to Mike Pence to “uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.” The president-elect’s demand for an apology — “Apologize!” — made it clear he distrusts the arts as a forum for free expression, to say nothing of his proclivity for lashing out in anger over the slightest criticism.

And so how much importance will the arts hold for the man who will preside in the Oval Office for the next four — and possibly eight — years? One of the only indications we’ve had so far is a report saying he offered a top arts position, perhaps the chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Arts, to Sylvester Stallone — an offer the actor graciously turned down.

Writing about the future president’s possible positions on the arts, Randy Kennedy of the New York Times wrote, “Though he has been front-and-center in public life for more than four decades in the country’s cultural capital, Mr. Trump has left a meager trail to suggest what positions he might take on public arts funding and arts education, along with issues like censorship and economic policies that would affect creative industries.”

One thing is certain: There is plenty of historical precedent for great art being made during times of duress; one can argue that that is precisely when artists are most needed, and most profound.

And there is no reason that these coming years cannot be a time in which writers, and all artists, create meaningful works, works that celebrate the true wealth of the world in all its diversity of peoples and cultures and experiences, works that question and provoke.

As James Baldwin put it, “Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

Who is up to the challenge?

John McMurtrie is The San Francisco Chronicle’s book editor. Email: jmcmurtrie@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @McMurtrieSF