It might be helpful if we had a link to Obama’s direct wording, I tried to find a transcript of recent speeches but don’t see the line. With wording like that even the slightest transcription error and you’re misrepresenting what Obama actually said.
Nevertheless, it is an interesting subject, I gave an opinion on this matter before in a pretty good thread on the topic:
Yeah, definition will be the hardest thing to really get past here.
Iceland has had a legislative body for ages, since like 1000 AD. However for much of the period 1000-1874 Iceland was under the thumb of the Danish Crown. The Danish monarchs until probably the last 200 years were not constitutional in any sense, and essentially ruled based on whim. Denmark had the right to overrule any legislation Iceland passed, so in essence it was a Democracy in a manner similar to the Roman Empire (in that it maintained a legislative body that lacked real power.)
I don’t really know how I would define democracy. To me, if it’s a representative style democracy, if an unelected monarch has the ability to freely stop legislation and essentially control that legislature I don’t view it as a true democracy.
The English had a legislature in the age of Henry VIII, and if they did not pass laws exactly as he requested, then the representatives would find themselves being executed on trumped up charges. It wasn’t until after the English Civil War I’d say England had a democracy, of course if you’re hung up on the franchise , then you probably have to wait til the latter 18th century or even 19th century to consider the United Kingdom a democracy. (I’m not using England/United Kingdom imprecisely here. Under Henry VIII it was just England, Wales was not given much regard as an entity at the time and Scotland was a different country with a different monarch.)
Also:
The Tynwald has a similar problem to the Althing, though. In that at some points in its history it didn’t wield any actual legislative power over its little island, despite actually meeting continuously.
San Marino looks like it could be a good bet. Prior to the late mid-1200s it appears it was (despite its status as an official Republic) ran by a council of powerful families–the Arengo (thus an oligarchy, not a democracy.) However since 1243 the “Grand and General Council” which was elected by the people appears to have run the country.
However San Marino suffers from the theory versus practice debate. During the early 20th century powerful land owners made the Grand and General Council more and more oligarchical, and this culminated in the San Marino Fascist Party running the country for twenty years, so it becomes questionable if it was a true democratic state during that time.
I would not immediately discount a state just because of franchise issues, I think you can have a functioning democracy without a totally inclusive franchise. To me it’s about decision making, where is the primary decision making power, in the hands of unelected powers or in the hands of powers beholden to the people? At some point if the franchise is super small, like 1% of the population, or just a small cabal of potentates, that is an oligarchy and at that point the franchise issue would disqualify the country from being a democracy.
However I think that as long as the primary decision making power of a country is beholden to the people, even if just say, 25% of them, that’s enough of a benchmark to call that country a democracy.