Obama Says 80% of Problems Are Aging Male Leaders

He wasn’t being diplomatic or vague. He was calling out a pattern that’s been destroying countries and killing people for decades. Everyone listening knew exactly who he was talking about.

Days before Obama gave that speech, Trump had installed what he called a “Presidential Walk of Fame” outside the West Wing. Gold frames, portraits of presidents, all of it just for show. The man is 79 years old, already serving his second term, and he’s still so desperate for attention and validation that he needs to build more monuments with his name on them.

This is the same person who spent his entire life putting “TRUMP” in massive gold letters on every building he could get his hands on. When Obama talked about old men building pyramids and putting their names on everything, Trump had literally just done exactly that. You couldn’t ask for a clearer example if you tried.

But Trump is just one piece of a much bigger problem. Putin has controlled Russia for 25 years. He’s made it clear he’ll never leave voluntarily. Xi Jinping got rid of term limits in China so he could rule until he dies. Look around the world and you’ll see the same thing everywhere.

Leaders in their 70s, 80s, even 90s who’ve been in power for decades refuse to step down. Right now there are 59 dictatorships and authoritarian regimes operating. Almost every one is run by an old man who thinks his country will collapse without him. They all tell themselves the same story about being irreplaceable and necessary. But, the real reason is they can’t stand the thought of being irrelevant.

These men don’t just fear being forgotten. They fear prosecution. They fear revenge. They fear that the moment they lose power, everything they’ve done while in power will come back to destroy them.

Think about it logically. If you’ve spent 20 or 30 years running a country, you’ve made enemies. Lots of them. You’ve hoarded money, ordered people killed, eliminated opposition, rigged systems in your favor.

The only thing protecting you from consequences is the power you currently hold. The second you step down, you’re vulnerable. Your successor might investigate you. Your enemies might come after you. International courts might indict you. Your own military might coup you.

This explains why so many dictators literally die in office. They can’t leave because leaving means facing justice or revenge. So, they hang on until their bodies give out.

Mobutu ruled Zaire for 32 years and only left when he was dying of cancer and rebels were about to overthrow him. Mugabe ran Zimbabwe for 37 years until the military forced him out at 93. Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years and ended up beaten to death in a ditch by rebels. These men knew exactly what would happen if they lost power, so they held on until the very end.

Trump is going down the same road, just in a more limited way

He faced multiple criminal investigations and indictments before returning to office. Those legal problems would have landed him in prison if he hadn’t won the 2024 election. His motivation to stay in power isn’t just ego, it’s survival. Now that he’s president again, he has immunity, he can pardon himself, and he can use executive power to shield himself from prosecution.

The criminal cases against him have been paused or dismissed because of his presidential status. Once the presidency is gone, so is his protection. And, he knows it. This explains why he tried to overturn the 2020 election results rather than accept leaving office, and why he fought so hard to get back into power.

For him, losing the presidency isn’t just a political loss, it’s a legal threat. There’s already speculation about whether he’ll try to find a way to run again in 2028 despite constitutional term limits. Because, leaving office means facing those legal problems all over again.

A study by political scientists Giacomo Chiozza and Hein Goemans found that between 1919 and 2004, 67% of deposed dictators faced jail, exile, or death. Only 33% got to retire peacefully. If you’re an authoritarian leader, losing power is genuinely life-threatening.

This creates a desperate reason to cling to power, which is exactly what we see.

Leaders in authoritarian systems stay in power an average of 15–20 years compared to 4–8 years in democracies. They almost never leave voluntarily. And, the longer they stay, the worse it gets. Leaders become more repressive the longer they stay in power because they accumulate more crimes and more enemies.

Bashar al-Assad took over Syria in 2000 and probably could have stepped down peacefully in his first decade. By 2011 when protests started, he’d already committed enough atrocities that stepping down meant facing trial or execution. So instead he started a civil war which killed over 500,000 people. The longer you stay, the more invested you become in staying, because the consequences of leaving keep getting worse.

The monument-building and name-plastering isn’t just about ego, though ego is part of it. It’s also about creating a personality cult that makes you harder to remove. If you can convince enough people that you’re indispensable, that the nation’s identity is tied to your identity, then any attempt to remove you looks like an attack on the nation itself.

This is why authoritarian leaders spend so much time and money on propaganda and public displays. They’re building psychological defenses against being ousted.

There’s also the money factor that doesn’t get talked about enough. Most long-term authoritarian leaders are stealing massive amounts of money. Putin’s estimated personal wealth is somewhere between $70 billion and $200 billion stolen from the Russian state. Mubarak stole an estimated $40–70 billion from Egypt. Suharto stole around 35 billion from Indonesia. The money these men steal while in power becomes another reason they can’t leave because the money becomes leverage against them.

This creates a system where the longer someone stays in power, the more impossible it becomes for them to leave peacefully. Early in their rule, they might have the option to step down gracefully. But as years pass and crimes accumulate and enemies multiply, that option disappears.

They become trapped by their own actions. They have to keep committing more crimes to stay in power, which traps them even further. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.

These men will do anything to stay in power because losing power means losing everything, possibly including their lives. They’ll start wars, kill thousands of people, destroy their own countries, whatever it takes. Assad destroyed Syria rather than step down. Putin is willing to keep sacrificing young Russians in Ukraine rather than accept defeat and risk losing power.

When your choice is between committing atrocities and facing prosecution or death, a lot of leaders choose the atrocities.

What makes Obama’s comments matter is that he actually left office when he was supposed to. He served two terms and then he stepped aside and let someone else take over. He didn’t try to change the Constitution to let himself run again.

He didn’t create some fake crisis to justify staying in power. He didn’t use government resources to build monuments to himself. He did the job and then he left, which used to be completely normal and expected but now seems almost unusual.

The fact that we’re surprised when leaders follow basic democratic norms tells you how degraded things have become.