Ten years ago, if you had asked me if we would see an African-American president in my lifetime, I would have said probably not. But if you had asked me twenty-five years ago, I would have thought that was impossible. Yet, today we’re watching the final few hours of a two-term black president who probably would have won a third term if he had been able to run again.
In 2008, Barack Obama ran on a slogan promising hope and change. His very election delivered on both points. For African-Americans and progressives, hope was all they had when it came to electing a president of color. By becoming the first black president, Obama has changed the country forever. He’s proven that any child can grow up to be President of the United States.
Despite the vehemence of his opponents, Obama has been a remarkable leader. He took over a country on the brink of economic collapse and guided it back to relative prosperity with the longest stretch of economic growth in history. He passed health care reform, an item on the progressive agenda since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Republicans may repeal the law, but they’ll pay a steep political price unless they keep in place major accomplishments like the end of pre-existing conditions and caps on coverage. He steered the economy from one based on carbon toward one based on renewable energy. He helped us achieve marriage equality. Internationally, he restored respect for America that was lost in post-9/11 Bush years.
He helped us get through some of the most horrific tragedies in our history. We’ll be studying his speech in the aftermath of the Charleston massacre for generations. The tears he shed in Newtown helped the nation begin to heal. The frustration he expressed in Orlando mirrored that of people who have been frustrated in their efforts to keep guns out of the hands of people who would cause such destruction.
He’s not always been successful, but nobody can ever say that he wasn’t willing try to make big differences. Few people like the Iran deal, but not many have alternatives, either. The Paris Agreement on climate change provides a first step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally. He normalized relations with Cuba. And, of course, he killed Bin Laden.
He also brought his unique dignity to Washington. He and his family were both likable and role models for young people. We’ll appreciate that aspect of his presidency even more because of the man that will follow him.
I’ve lived through nine presidents now. Not since Kennedy has there been such a sense of mourning at the prospect of changing leaders. While a small segment of society is cheering Trump’s inauguration, another segment feels a sense of fear and dread. We’re losing a decent, caring, intelligent man for a self-promoting narcissistic con artist utterly unprepared to lead the country.
I’m proud of America for having elected Barack Obama President of the United States. I’m proud of Obama for how he handled the job. I’m sorry to see him go. Now, I’ll fight to protect his legacy.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
When the United States, as a people, put Barack Obama in the White House in 2009, the nation put its bounteous grace on display. It was a quintessentially American moment, the prize earned from centuries of earnest belief in the goodness of these American people, a giant stride toward racial and social unity and the fulfillment of the promise of a better world for every American. In so doing, Americans gave hope to billions of people in darker, meaner, merciless parts of the globe. A change in circumstances was now possible. The moment of his inauguration injected a brighter vision of the future for vast numbers of Americans who knew mostly poverty, injustice and antipathy. Justice and mercy were back on our horizon, maybe prosperity would return to the rest of us.
In the decades leading up to Obama’s inauguration, fewer Americans had reaped all the benefits of economic expansion. Monopolies and oligopolies took control of our industries. Obama took office at a shabby time. The automobile industry was on the brink of collapse. Our banks had been 48 hours from collapse in Fall 2008. Our military had been duped into Middle Eastern killing fields by false intelligence. Our Congress had passed laws which violated founding principles assured in the Bill of Rights.
We had installed a Stassi-like system of listening to each other. We had secret courts; then we bypassed them altogether to commit grave atrocities at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Base. Worse treatment of people was outsourced to sites in countries explicitly known for their appetite for despicable conduct. We sent prisoners to places where they would boil a human being.
America was hemorrhaging blood and treasure halfway around the world. Our soldiers were going door to door in the Arab world taking people prisoner, torturing them and committing unspeakable acts of depravity on them. The photographic evidence of our perversion was smeared on the front pages of newspapers papers and television sets in every corner of the earth. Our then-president complained that “They hate us for our freedom,” when, in fact, they hated us for breaking into their homes in the middle of the night, raping their daughters, murdering their neighbors and torturing innocent people.
At the moment of his inauguration, malicious forces met in secret to thwart any improvement in the lives of Americans. The devastation of the nation’s economy during the waning years of the Bush Administration was profound, and the Republican leadership did not want to assist in the improvement of circumstances for Americans. They understood that the contrast would point to the ineptness of Republican economic policies. Making the rich richer, then richer still, then grotesquely richer than that does not work for everyone else. But that was all they had. Their campaigns are financed from the billionaire class. So the leadership of the GOP chose to heap abuse on the black president, and they decided to prevent any kind of assistance for the millions who were losing their homes, their jobs and their insurance.
Their insane alt media invented the most outlandish stories – Obama was a Muslim, a Kenyan, a homosexual, a lizard from Planet X, light years past our Solar System. Obama greeted all that nonsense with intelligence, calm and restraint. He was the Jackie Robinson of politics. At times, we wanted him to strike back, to show more temper and berate the racists, the fascists, the obstructionists. We wanted to see some Samuel Jackson all up in there, but he was ever the professor, always courtly, always the picture of dignity and grace under fire. Eventually, we learned to trust his composure and his ethics. As the Obama years passed, there was a substantial improvement in the economy, stability returned, and many jobs appeared. Corporations recovered from the excesses of Wall Street speculators, and some jobs returned. Economic statistics show that, in spite of Republican obstructionism, there was vast improvement across the country.
There are segments of the economy still unimproved. The rising tide did not lift all boats this time. The Republicans managed to prevent jobs growth in the rust belt, in manufacturing and in many areas where unions had once been strong. Non-college graduates did not bounce back this time. The disaffected were encouraged to blame black people, Mexicans, and Muslims. They were encouraged to blame the rise of women in the workplace. In Obama’s second term, the forces opposing the Democrats relied on stupidity to grow a base of support for their agenda. On the internet, on cable propaganda networks and on talk radios, they pounded the uneducated with mind-bending false narratives which the uninformed chose to believe. With headlines grabbed from supermarket tabloids, the alt-right media spread hatred of the races, Jews, and Muslims. A rising tide of hatred grew on the right. Rallies featured violence and angry rhetoric.
This is also America, a vindictive, angry, ugly, unschooled America. They love their guns, and they hate their fellow Americans. They want revenge. This was the genius of Trump. He saw them when everyone else ignored them. He promised them jobs, a wall, a jail cell for Hillary, a resumption of torture and waterboarding, war crimes, and nuclear war. Someone somewhere would feel some pain. People with insurance would lose it. The poor would go hungry. Disabled people would become laughable. Women could be grabbed by the pussy. Blacks could move to the back of the bus, and Mexicans would be sent back to Mexico, even if they had lived their entire lives in Los Angeles or Texas.
Thank you, Mr. Obama. You gave us hope and changed the world for the better. It was a nice respite from the long march of the oligarchs. They spent eight years seething and strapping on their jack boots.
Re: “did not help by HIS unwillingness to work across the aisle.”, there is no amount of working across the aisle that would have mad a difference. Republicans were dedicated to creating his and Democrats’ failure, then blaming them for it. They were not interested in compromise on anything. It was a dysfunctional strategy that worked for them because of a combination of poor Democrat marketing and right-wing fantasy-based media. Republicans won, but the country lost. We’ll be a long time recovering from 2016.
Post-fact democracy: truth is based on what you can convince people to believe, not facts, evidence and reasoned argument. I’m guessing that this might work for a few rich and powerful people for a while, but in the long run a lot of people will suffer.
perfect response!
I wouldn’t go that far. The Reps fell all over themselves to help Obama pass the Trans Pacific Partnership and he was able to greenlight a lot of his Judicial picks through a Republican Senate as well as his last Attorney General.
Thank you for your on time reply. Republicans decided from the day President Obama was elected that they would be in solidarity that they would do everything in their power to make him a one term president. They put their hatred for him over the interest of the country…then blamed him. President Obama came repeatedly to the
American people to sell his agenda. We should have put those legislators out of office who were lame duck for years…their only thought was to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The Republicans DID NOT intend to reach across the aisle and they told the president that was there intentions from the start!!!! I learned from this time around how limited the presidential office is. Our country has been held hostage for 8 years! I can not believe these con artists are still in power and are now wrecking all that is so dear to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that our country is suppose to represent.
If we have not learned from the past, the past will be revisited upon us. Imperialism, Race bigotry and superiority lead to the rise of Nazism. .. We need to take a lesson from the past. America is /has been always great from the world standpoint. We say we are the Greatest Nation in the world. What does it mean to make America great again…Does this mean going back in time, race baiting, Jim Crow, KKK, high tech lynching , withdrawing women’s rights, disregarding civil rights…the list can go on and on.
If Michelle Obama had been a “Centerfold” Model do you think there would have been any chance for the Obamas to have made to the White House? Do you think If Obama had been married three times and have children from all three wives, that he would have made it to the debates? Some were so concerned about his religious beliefs….And Mr. Trump’s religious beliefs have not even been questioned!!! Mr. Trump has/is married to two immigrant wives…but they happen to be white. Just think about how certain people would have reacted to a candidate Barack Obama who might have been married three times. Double Standards indeed!
We are on a downward spiral with this new administration. Businessmen are out to make money for themselves… not their employees. Laws had to be enacted in order to provide protection for employees. And here we have billionaires running the country! Tell me how they are going to related to middle class people. Look out for our health care through our employers, look out other fringe benefits that we may have, LOOK OUT! Trump says he will put America back to work….where has he demonstrated that in his business practices. He just did not come under scrutiny like he should have. Do you think he is honesty not going to be in communication with his businesses some way. He is in violations of conflict of interest. An we have a legislative body that is surely going to take us on a ride that will take probably two or more generations to recover from.
Secretary Clinton Won the election! We need to do away with the Electoral College.. It has outlived its original purpose.
Mr. Trump can ridicule people with disabilities or make fun of special needs children, but come to the defense of his own son when someone else does this to him. What a hypocrite! He can dash it out but can’t that it when it comes back to him! If you give it out you must know how to take it.
I doubt we’ll see a woman President in my lifetime or that of a baby born today.
Given the results of this election, most women will be increasingly trapped by the virtual elimination of choice in child bearing and of universal access to birth control. The only possibility is to find a woman in the very wealthy classes with unlimited choices because of it who will champion individual liberty for all her sisters.
The Republicans are likewise thanking him for the near destruction of the Democratic Party. The Democrat losses over the last eight years are staggering, and certainly the November election was as much a referendum on the Obama legacy as it was a repudiation of Clinton. If the middle of the country believed the last eight years had been as successful as you claim, it would have been a Democratic landslide – just like we were told it would be.
While I don’t think it all can be laid at Obama’s feet, he surely did not help by HIS unwillingness to work across the aisle. Yes I said “his”, because the guy at the top has to at least appear to make the larger effort to compromise whether in a company or a government. Obama may be popular, but he completely lost the middleclass of the country at the polling place.
As I’ve said here before, I come from a large family that were nearly all registered Democrats eight years ago. Most still are REGISTERED Democrats, but while most voted for Obama in ’08, less did in ’12, and only one voted Clinton in “16. They mirror very closely the Democrats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan who voted for Trump. And mirror NC as well. in ’08 Obama won NC by about 20,000 votes, Romney carried NC in ’12 by 100,000 votes, and Trump carried our state by almost 200,000 in ’16 yet registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 650,000. Certainly not a good sign for a Democrat resurgence.
Truth is Reagan needed a Carter in order to be elected, and surely Trump needed an Obama/Clinton.
You are conveniently overlooking the reality that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. had those 2.8 million Clinton votes been distributed differently, what explanation would you give for the Trump loss? Also, minor point, the average income for Trump voters is $70,000. That is hardly a poor wage, even in expensive cities like NY. It was not the middle class that put Trump over the top. It was uneducated, white males, many of whom had seen good jobs disappear. Personally, that painful reality does not to me excuse them for putting a sexual predator in the White House. But at least they had a serious problem. Most Trump voters from the middle class did not. Unless, of course, they really just did not like having a black man in the White House, and having that reality followed by a woman was just too much to accept. Just a thought.
And by the way, the latest employment figures show that weekly first time applications for unemployment are averaging 246,750, the lowest since November 1978. Those applications are a proxy for layoffs, and if you are one of them, it hurts. But given the size of our economy, it is a very small number. Also, that figure has been below 300,000 for 98 straight weeks. To quote the Observer, “the last time this key indicator stay so consistently low was when President Elect Donald Trump, now 70, was 24.” The middle class is not doing so badly it seems. The source of their anger, if that is what it is, would not seem to be explained by economics.
You nailed it.
But of course, it was those “uneducated white males” whose “good jobs have disappeared” who put Trump over the top. But if $70,000 is the average income of Trump voters, which you say is “hardly a poor wage,” then those unemployed and uneducated rednecks must be living pretty high off of unemployment comp or disability. And 53 percent of white women nationwide voted for Trump. They must have been intimidated by their “uneducated” spouses. LOL
Morris is dead right. Obama’s tenure obviously didn’t impress a majority of NC voters. But I guess those almost 200,00 voters who put Trump over the top here were those “uneducated white males.” What sophistry!