The First Black President

Author's note: I published the original version of this shortly before the election. I present it to you again, edited and lengthened for the inauguration and maybe with a funny parenthetical line here or there.

I am very, very disappointed in the administration of President Barack Obama.

"Yeah, no kidding," you're probably telling yourself right now.  It is not a secret I find the current administration contemptible. I could fill an entire book on why (something I will leave to those actually good at writing books).  By disappointment, however, I do not mean my usual angst against his policies or behavior.

I refer to nothing more than a deep, profound sadness.

Let me tell you a story. When I was a little boy in Irvington, New Jersey (not as long ago as I make it sound), I attended a school that was, as I recall, majority minority.  Thus we always had presentations regarding the heritages of various minority groups. “African-American heritage” was stressed in particular.  We even had a yearly assembly for Kwanzaa.

One thing that always seemed to stick in my mind, though, was the suggestion that we could, one day, have a black president.  We were told the usual childhood encouragement ("If you work hard, one day, you could even become president!").  I was taught about our nation's “racist heritage” and how we had yet to have a black man in the White House.  The racism never really stuck, though it was approached in a subtle, subversive way.  Historical racism stayed just that for me: historical. I automatically assumed that it was gone and dead.  However, for a long while, there was a little place in the back of my mind that always hoped to one day see a black man in the Oval Office.

At the beginning of 2008's primary season, long before Barack Obama became a viable contender for the presidency, I finally stamped out that little corner of my mind.  I had come to recognize that it did not matter what the person in the White House looked like.  Only their character mattered.  So I found myself immune to his charm and his teleprompter-based style when Senator Obama ascended as the candidate of the Democrat Party.  That immunity kept my eyes open as I saw all the warning signs of radicalism, despite the media's shameless attempts to hide it.

Yet, on election night 2008, when it became clear that Barack Obama had won the presidency, I saw my Facebook page explode with friends who were excited to have made history. Obviously, it is a silly way to think, as “making history” can be both good and bad.  Yet I will admit that, on the inside, I felt a small resurgence of pride in that a black man had just been elected president of the United States, just as I would have as a child.  Like most conservatives, I resolved to give him a chance, despite my apprehensions.  Perhaps it was the old dream that allowed me to soften my heart just a bit and hope for the best.

That dream has made the past four years all the more painful, disappointing and shameful.  Instead of being a beacon of hope and an example of America's greatness, the past four years have been dismal. Instead of bridging divides between Americans, the president has intensified them. He lies about and impugns the motives of his opposition, preferring to beat up strawmen than debate facts.  He has ignored the Constitutional limits on his power time and again and deceived the public on matters ranging from gun running to terrorist attacks.

With his first term having drawn to a close, his only major accomplishments will prove far more destructive to the country than those of his predecessor. With each day that passes, the country becomes a little more in debt, a little poorer. We, the people of this great nation, become a little less free with each dollar that binds us to creditors and foreign nations. For a man that promised change and promised that our best days are ahead of us, he has failed to deliver on both.

Despite his policies yielding negligible or bad results, Barack Obama refuses to take responsibility.  He blames his predecessor incessantly, even after being in office for four years.   He spends more time golfing and hobnobbing with celebrities than he does in intelligence briefings.  His office is empty more often than not as he speaks at rallies filled with screaming fan boys and girls, rallies that are easier than even fielding questions from a (very friendly) press corps.

I feel that Barack Obama has been robbed of his sense of personal responsibility.  A man with no real accomplishments, he has been handed nearly every position he has held in life.  Some will say he excelled in college, but he has never released his transcripts.  Judging by how peculiar that is and a lack of real accomplishment in his professional life, that leads me to believe he did not do well at all.  Penning no papers on the Harvard Law Review, considered intellectually lazy as an adjunct professor and voting present more often than not in elected office, he is little more than a self-entitled shell.

I often hear older black people say they were taught by their own parents and grandparents to be a "credit to their race."  They had to endure racism and thus had to work harder to achieve and succeed.  Yet now, the president seems to be nothing but the antithesis of a "credit to his race."  In the end, the first black president has been everything he should not have been.

And it is a shame.