I didn't vote for him, I haven't supported his policies, and I don't agree with most of his views. But as the first black President, think what could have been if Obama had really been a black leader for all the people.
Remember his first election eight years ago? He was going to heal all wounds; the seas were going to rise and the people were going to link arms and he was going to guide us into a great big beautiful future full of fulfilled promises and the beginning of a brave new world. If one believed his passionate words (and bought into Oprah crying, and celebrities swooning and keening at his feet ) we could almost see how a black President was indeed just what the country needed.
And we did need a black President - it was high time for this nation to elect a person of color to the Oval office. But we needed a President more -- one who could elevate black citizens and also be a staunch ally of law enforcement; a real Commander-In-Chief. But he has been too quick to see wounds that may not even exist, too slow in letting facts develop before making pronouncements on the root causes of racial tensions as well as individual situations. He is not a President for black people or white people -- he is a stylish but hollow genie lamp that overpromises and under-delivers.
He has been curiously opaque; a President we have never really known. A loving husband and father, he seems curiously absent when it comes to his care and affection for the rest of us. He always seems to be somewhere else when big things go down, and he inevitably takes to the podium after a tragedy with an attitude of derision and disgust, seemingly forgetting that this is the America he himself has had a huge hand in making.
The president could have done much to heal the nation's racial wounds, with a steady and impartial hand and an insistence on rights for all the people. But with a liberal agenda to push, actual Americans came second.
We will have to turn to each other to sort out or troubles. With Obama, his stubborn, eloquent but ultimately childish insistence on blacks being the objects of predjudice at every turn has led to a brand of racism against whites and an abandonment of justice and even common sense -- with America the frustrated benefactors of the divided country he soon leaves behind.
