Eight years without a President

Finally, we have a President after eight years of unelected, disastrous leadership from a political party whose ranks are, for the most part, filled with white neo-conservatives. This writer has not spoken the word "president" in those eight long years. Now I can. What a relief. The fact that The President is half black and half white is however, an even greater relief, especially for a recovering racist such as myself.

It seems like we've come full circle. The Middle Passage has led to that immaculate passage going into the Oval Office, the one Barack Obama will walk through in a White House built by black slaves; the house that was home to more than a few slave owning white presidents. His wife, Michelle, descended from slaves, will walk through that same passage; will live in that same house. So will their children.

Now, one day after the national holiday recognizing Martin Luther King and the struggle for civil rights, the nation's first African-American gets sworn into the highest office in the land. Soon, the first African-American Attorney General and the first African-American EPA Administrator in the nation will take office. All this and more, two-hundred and thirty three years after the words "all men are created equal" gave birth to this nation.

There's more. The President's mother was white, his father, black. The President was a senator from Illinois, the Land of Lincoln. The President quotes Lincoln, FDR, JFK and he just traveled to Washington for his inauguration as the 44th President of these United States in a parlor car on a train, just as Lincoln did. On a recent evening Obama took his family to the Lincoln Memorial to pay homage. Now, hundreds of thousands gather by that memorial for three days of celebration, jubilation, in the very place where Dr. King led the March on Washington in 1963 and revealed a dream "that (his) four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The content of Barack Obama's character looks pretty good so far (though I take issue with some of his positions on the issues). I look forward to saying that often about his character in the future. I look forward to saying President Obama, often as well.