“My presence on this stage is pretty
unlikely. My father was a foreign student born and raised in a small village in
Kenya. He grew up herding goats”. With these words, a skinny kid with a funny
name charmed a nation and a world was enthralled.
In 2006, two years after that Democratic
National Convention keynote speech, The New York Times columnist, David Brooks,
wrote. “The next Democratic
nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would
come from defeating Barack Obama”.
On the night of November 4, 2008 Barak Obama
hailed “Hello, Chicago” as he stood in Grant Park in Chicago – before an
adoring, tearful crowd – as President-elect. A world was both ecstatic and
incredulous. Was post-racial America at hand?
On January 20th 2009 a man whose father less than 60 years
ago might not have been served in a local restaurant took a most sacred oath.
Barack Obama became the 44th
President of the United States of America.
On January 10th 2017 Barack Obama
was back in Chicago. This time he hailed “Hello, Chicago” for the last time as
president. The curtain will fall on Obama’s presidency in just three days. On January
20th 2017 Donald J. Trump will become the 45th President
of the United States of America.
Everyone is talking about Obama’s legacy.
Politicians and pundits are bloviating. Presidential historians are reflecting.
Many believe that President Obama will be obliterated under a Trump presidency.
The Patient Protections and Affordable Care
Act nicknamed Obamacare is in peril.
Obama’s executive order to reduce gun violence through background checks and
research in smart gun technology will be out the window under President Trump. Marriage
equality could be history. President Trump will scrap the Iran nuclear deal.
The Paris Climate agreement is off under Trump because climate change is a
Chinese hoax. More consequentially, another conservative judge will replace the
late Antonin Scalia in America’s Supreme Court.
It would be specious to imagine that Obama’s
legacy has been revealed. Presidential legacies are more than policies or
orders or infrastructure projects. Presidential legacies shift and bend through
the tide of history. Presidential legacies are complex and often contingent on
unknown and unknowns.
But we know this. Obama’s presidency
revealed America. Decades of neo-liberal policies pummeled the American dream.
The surge of the knowledge economy and the dawn of automation undermined
America’s working class and chipped the middle class. In the rust belt coal
mines shut down and factory jobs dwindled, leaving in their wake angry white
men. Racial tensions boiled over. America was ready for a populist
demagogue.
But Obama the man embodies qualities we all
desire. He is smart. He governed with vitality and integrity. He is perhaps one
of the most charismatic public figures of my time. The power of his personal
story and example will endure through the ages. Obama will be dearly missed on
the world stage.
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