JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — President Barack Obama’s eulogy was for Nelson Mandela, but it laid out for a global audience the work that Obama himself would like to be remembered for: an unending fight against injustice and inequality. Obama acknowledged he sometimes wonders whether he is doing enough to live up to Mandela’s historic legacy.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands at a rain-soaked memorial service — and millions more on television — Obama said it was crucial that progress in the US and South Africa not “cloud the fact that our work is not yet done”. He said that struggles to come “may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important.”

Behind Obama’s words was the difficult political reality he and Mandela both faced. They became their nations’ first black presidents, shattering racial barriers that once seemed impossible to break. But their groundbreaking electoral success came with sky-high expectations that proved difficult to fulfil, on problems like poverty and injustice.

For Obama, yesterday’s focus on global inequality dovetailed with an agenda he is trying to revive in the US, as he seeks to steady his standing with middle class Americans after a trying presidential year. Obama’s renewed attention to the issue of income inequality in particular is popular with his liberal base, though he stands little chance of gaining support for items such as a minimum wage increase from congressional Republicans.

“With honesty, regardless of our station or our circumstance, we must ask: ‘How well have I applied his lessons in my own life?” Obama said of Mandela. “It’s a question I ask myself, as a man and as president.”