~a column by Colleen O’Brien
After eight years of pride in my president, I am reluctant as well as nervous to let President Barack Obama go.
I understand I have no choice, what with the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution limiting presidents to two terms, but for so many of us it’s been such a civil ride, at least on his side.
I have been able to be proud of his stature physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. Let me count the ways: as a husband and father; as a funny fellow, amusing and full of wit and sometimes just plain silliness; as a smooth-movin’ pick-it-up basketball player; as an a cappella singer of “Amazing Grace” in the deep sadness after the Charleston church slaying in 2015; as the fellow who liked children and engaged with them; as the boyish man who learned from his mother and his grandmother the absolutely no-compromise rule of being polite, courteous and gracious to women of any age . . . and to people wherever he meets them.
To my point of view he was always easy to like, listen to and watch. I never once turned off a TV or a radio to block his voice or his visage. I never once shuddered at something he said. I never had to be chagrined at his spewing retribution, envy, anger, ignorance or crude words – I can’t even come close to imagining his saying “crap,” a word I heard coming out of the President-elect’s mouth the day after President Obama’s very different sort of words in Chicago. For eight years I really liked that he spoke his native tongue with such familiarity, articulate above a fourth-grade vocabulary
From President Obama I learned ways of being: forbearance, for one. If I’d had to put up with eight years of denial of my person in the position to which I was elected as the top public servant in my government, I doubt I’d have dealt with it with the grace and humor he did. Whatever he thought, he did not dignify any insult. To be able to watch this kind of self-control for eight years rubbed off.
His deep grasp of every issue – because he studied it, brought his comprehensive education and knowledge of history to it and then thought about it all – thinking first, getting a firm foundation from which to speak and then speaking . . . this was a repeated lesson in adult behavior.
Even when he used Twitter, he wasn’t talking off the top of his head, a way of life in our digital age. Although he, like anyone else, had immediate access to an audience through Twitter, he managed to think before tweeting. This is an admirable behavior for all of our conversations, whether we’re tweeting, texting, emailing, phoning, talking in person or speaking from a podium. It carries such civility within it, such respect for whoever’s listening.
My belief is that President Obama will go down in history as one of the great ones. Despite a running game against him he accomplished many saves for his countrymen, women and children. (See below*) He made mistakes, as do all presidents, as do all of us; and he acknowledged them.
But he invariably came from a place of goodwill and serious thoughtfulness. He had a world view wrapped around his clear-eyed view of his own native land. He knew exactly what had transpired with the black half of his heritage and yet he never failed to talk about his love of his country and of us, the people he was hired to work for and believed in.
Like Martin Luther King, he knew what would save us and it wasn’t anger, it was compassion. Compassion for one another no matter our color, our background, our gender or our faith.
I like the way he walks – a lanky, rambling lope that is full of grace and purpose. He is a man with definitiveness, a man of reason, of man of such a giant belief in the goodness of us humans. He thoroughly believes we can fix things if we work together. He knows within his heart and shares with us an ideal that encourages the raising up of all people. He operates without rancor or name-calling. He believes in compromise. When he finally realized that the other side wouldn’t play, he rolled up his sleeves and made decisions and changes from the legal power of his office. That he could say to us in his good-bye “…every day, I have learned from you. You made me a better president, and you made me a better man.” That statement raised me up, made me a better woman.
I don’t believe I ever heard him whine.
For most of my adult life I have thought the American experiment noble, a mind-bending, world-altering idea that I was privileged to be born into and that millions from all around the globe wanted a piece of, if not through immigration then through revolution in their own countries.
Barack Obama epitomizes to me this truly soul-stirring originality of my United States. However many times in this country the equality of all humans has had to live through prejudice and fascism, has been trashed and scarred, has come close to faltering and failing, it keeps bobbing up with the joy and hope, the truth and decency of its message. President Barack Obama of all the people I’ve ever admired has come closest in my life to living it, buoying it up, reaffirming to me what it’s all about.
That he’s black dignifies my country and the hope of its dream all the more.
∞∞∞∞
P.S. A snapshot of how so many of us feel now and have felt for eight years about Barack Obama: It is the summer of 2013 — my sister Dee and I are traveling north from Texas. We are on our way home to Iowa, having spent the night in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the early morning, the porter lugs our luggage into the back of my sister’s car; he is a friendly fellow, chatting to us about the “lovely dawn.” He shuts the door, and suddenly smiles like a kid. We watch him, this skinny little old black guy — as he kisses his two fingers and lays them on Dee’s bumper sticker that says OBAMA.
∞∞∞∞
*A brief beginning of the list of accomplishments of our 44th President:
- Saved the auto industry and a million jobs within it (bit.ly/ibhpxr)
- Increased infrastructure spending after years of neglect (bit.l y/f77aOw)
- Created a $15 billion plan to encourage in. creased spending to small businesses (1 usa.gov/eu0u0b)
- Wrote an Executive Order instructing federal agencies to review all federal regulations and remove the unnecessary or burdensome ones from the books (1.usa.gov/Lpo5bd)
- Worked with Apple to build two large production plants one in Texas, one in Arizona (bit.ly/1mXY5Vg)
- Ordered all federal contractors to pay a minimum $10.10 per hour (wapo.st/1iaU5kd))
- Reduced the federal budget deficit from 9.8 percent in 2009 to 2.9 percent in 2014 (gov/publications/45653)
And about 400-plus other worthy efforts that you can look up using the websites listed above.
