DeLeon: Dignified, funny, sincere, Obama will be missed
I'm going to miss President Obama. I was fired up with hope for change eight years ago when Obama was drawing rock-star-size crowds in Germany nearly five months before he was elected president of the United States.
I'm going to miss President Obama. I was fired up with hope for change eight years ago when Obama was drawing rock-star-size crowds in Germany nearly five months before he was elected president of the United States.
Hope, I've discovered, has a long shelf life.
Kaitlyn Tori Brookins had just finished her freshman year at Hallahan Catholic High School for Girls when Obama made that historic speech near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
Obama "almost floated into view, walking to the podium on a raised blue-carpeted runway, as if he were somehow, magically, walking on water," reported Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian on July 24, 2008. "Even from a distance, the brilliant white of his teeth dazzled."
In a cover story in that week's German newsmagazine Stern, Obama's photo appeared below the headline "Saviour - or demagogue?" It wasn't all hosannas in Europe.
Brookins has seen and heard her president called everything but a child of God by right-wing critics who denied not only his patriotism and fitness to be president but his very citizenship.
But on May 7, at Howard University's commencement, Brookins experienced that dazzling presidential smile in person.
And she, like her family and classmates and millions who have since watched on YouTube, shed tears of joy listening to Obama's heartfelt and uplifting words.
"It was pride on top of pride," said Kathleen "Cookie" Vaughn, Brookins' grandmother, who couldn't wait to show me the graduation photo of the 22-year-old with a newly minted degree in sports management and communications.
For the first black president of the United States to address this historically black university's graduation ceremony was momentous in itself, but his message was to all, young and old.
"One of the great changes that's occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there's no one way to be black," Obama said. "Take it from somebody who's seen both sides of debate about whether I'm black enough. In the past couple months, I've had lunch with the queen of England and hosted Kendrick Lamar in the Oval Office. There's no straitjacket, there's no constraints, there's no litmus test for authenticity.
"Look at Howard. One thing most folks don't know about Howard is how diverse it is. When you arrived here, some of you were like, oh, they've got black people in Iowa? But it's true - this class comes from big cities and rural communities, and some of you crossed oceans to study here. You shatter stereotypes. Some of you come from a long line of Bison. Some of you are the first in your family to graduate from college. You all talk different, you all dress different. You're Lakers fans, Celtics fans, maybe even some hockey fans."
Obama pointed at the deplorable voter turnout by young people in 2014. "Less than 20 percent," he said. "Four out of five did not vote. . . . You don't think that made a difference? What would have happened if you had turned out at 50, 60, 70 percent, all across this country? . . .
"And you don't have excuses. . . . You don't have to risk your life to cast a ballot. Other people already did that for you. . . . What's your excuse? When we don't vote, we give away our power, disenfranchise ourselves."
The speech was short on soaring rhetoric and long on commonsense advice learned from experience. Democracy, human relationships require compromise. And compromise requires listening.
"But listen. Engage," he said. "If the other side has a point, learn from them. If they're wrong, rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you - you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness, trifling folks. I promise you, you will have to deal with all that at every stage of your life."
It's this kind of unguarded directness I will miss. Of the presidents during my lifetime, Obama seems to be the most confident in his own skin, the most natural, the most in tune with swiftly changing popular culture. In a word, hip.
He is comfortable at everything from a White House correspondents dinner to a Medal of Honor presentation ceremony. He remains dignified while self-deprecating, sincere while jocular, effortless in shifting from the serious to the mundane tasks of the presidency.
I think we're all going to miss that come January.
"Now it's your turn," he told Brookins and the other Howard graduates. "And the good news is, you're ready. And when your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that you're being foolish to keep believing or that you can't do something, or that you should just give up, or you should just settle - you might say to yourself a little phrase I've found handy these last eight years:
"Yes we can."
Clark DeLeon writes regularly for Currents. deleonc88@aol.com