Crossposted from the PeoplesView
I support President Obama because he is the most trust worthy politician I have come to see in my life time in national politics. He is a man of integrity and his candor makes politicians wish they can be born again to mimic who he is. He is indeed gifted, smart, intelligent and most of all he is honest. Moreover, President Obama is one of the most well informed, deliberative, methodical and measured person who listens to not only those he agrees with him but also those who disagrees with him. He definitely is not "I am going with my gut" kind of President like Bush but he thinks with his head. He is well informed and makes his decisions based on information and not emotions.
The last two and half years had been a bitter sweet time for me. To see an African American man become the most powerful man in the world is not something I would have imagined in my life time. I had worked hard to elect President Obama like many of you because I believed in him then and I still believe in him today. Most of all, considering what the President has promised he would do during the campaign, he has delivered many of his promises against all odds we see everyday in our politics. This time much more harsher.
However, what bothers me the most is that in this historical times in our nations' history, where we have made the impossible possible electing President Obama to the Presidency, where not so long ago African Americans were considered personal property living in a segregated American under Jim Crow laws, punished for being found to learn how to read and write, punished for talking to white women or found in a whites only area after sundown, lynched and hanged at their masters' will, with all of the hardship since the emancipation and the civil right movement, I have not had yet a chance to celebrate this great man and what he exemplify. We all have worked hard and yet we look at what we have done as just electing another President and forget we have made history. For some, their work was finished after inauguration. For some of us, it is business as usual but we forgot business is not as usual when you have the first Black President in a society that lives in racial curse.
Stephen Marche writes How Can We Not Love Obama? Because like it or not, he is all of us:
Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.
Due to the specific nature of his political calculus, possibly not a single person in the United States — not even Obama himself — agrees with all of his policies. But even if you disagree with him, even if you hate him, even if you are his enemy, at this point you must admire him. The turning point came that glorious week in the spring when, in the space of a few days, he released his long-form birth certificate, humiliated Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and assassinated Osama bin Laden. The effortlessness of that political triptych — three linked masterpieces demonstrating his total command over intellectual argument, low comedy, and the spectacle of political violence — was so overwhelmingly impressive that it made political geniuses of the recent past like Reagan and Clinton seem ham-fisted. Formed in the fire of other people's wars, other people's financial crises, Obama stepped out of Bush's shadow that week, almost three years after taking over the presidency.
Stephen Marche notes the role Obama has played so far and how his long list of successes cannot fully explain "the immensity of his appeal" by American People mainly because he cross path one way or another in intersectional ways. He notes that Reagan the movie star has got nothing on Obama and how Obama has played so many roles we all relate to be him because he indeed large and contains multitudes, as the Walt Whtman saying goes.
While Obama's story is ancient, it is also utterly contemporary, perfectly of the moment. His gift — and it is a gift that makes him emblematic — is that he inhabits all these roles without being limited by them. He has managed, miraculously, to remain something of an outsider while being the president of the United States of America, the most inside man in the world. He's African-American, but he's not African-American. He's from Chicago, but he's from Hawaii.
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In 2011, it is possible to be a levelheaded, warmhearted, cold-blooded killer who can crack a joke and write a book for his daughters. It is possible to be many things at once. And even more miraculous, it is possible for that man to be the president of the United States. Barack Obama is developing into what Hegel called a "world-historical soul," an embodiment of the spirit of the times. He is what we hope we can be.
We love Obama — even those who claim to despise him — because deep in our hearts and all over our lives, we're the same way — both inside and outside our jobs, our races, our cities, our countries, ourselves. With great artists, often the most irritating feature of their work is the source of their talent. Obama's gift is the same as his curse: He's somehow managed to be like the rest of us, only infinitely more so.
Someone the other day called me a "hero worshiper" often used in a condescending manner. No, I am not a hero worshiper but Barack Obama is my hero and my children's hero. He is what I hope I can be. The sad part of it all is that I have yet had a chance to celebrate him and our achievements yet because of the State of our country. May be I will in the second term when everything he does will not be politicized to make him a one-term President.
Stephen Marche eloquently referencing to Christopher Booker's 2004 book, The Seven Basic Plots, which has a great narrative for how Obama has fulfilled the role of a hero in ancient story form. Please give the article some clicks to see how President Obama fits into these Seven plots (Quest, Comedy, Rags to Riches, Tragedy, Killing the Monster, Voyage and Return and Rebirth) that made Stephen Marche call him a hero.
Thank you for reading.
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A message left by U.S. President Barack Obama in a book of condolence for the victims of two separate attacks in Norway last week is seen during his visit to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington July 26, 2011.