First, the USA definitely had an apartheid. Though that may be backwards, since apartheid in South Africa was based in part on the social order of the US south. But segregation and Jim Crow laws were a very clear example of "apart-ness" (apartheid). There has been a steady march to dismantle that apartheid including such major events as the civil war and the civil rights movement. When Barack Obama was elected, explicit apartheid had been largely dismantled, though there persists a large amount of implicit apartheid that remains.

Obama was hardly a man with no experience. He was a constitutional law scholar, a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, state senator for Illinois, and a US senator before he became president.

This isn't radical or leftist. The US had segregation (such systems are typically known as "apartheids" in today's vernacular), which continues to have large systematic repercussions.