As President Obama takes us to the mountaintop

By Sam Salifou

Our country has had great and not-so-great presidents. Typical of our diverse society where out of many we make one, there is really no consensus over who the greatest presidents – or the worst ones, for that matter – were, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and a few others who have made most of the lists of the ten greatest U.S. presidents available. But it goes without saying that all the greatest presidents achieved greatness while in office. Barack Hussein Obama – who is yet to be judged by history as a great president or not – by virtue of winning the nomination of one of the two major political parties to, later, become the first black president of the United States, is a groundbreaking president who made history even before being sworn in on January 20th, 2009. I remember a co-worker telling me during the 2008 campaign: “Some of the candidates are unrealistic. Americans will never elect a man with the name Barack Hussein Obama as their president.” The statement did not shock me and obviously did not deter me from carrying out my planned role in that “campaign of wild emotions” as I described it in this very magazine at this same time four years ago.

After becoming what my friends called an “Obamamaniac,” I signed up to donate $20 per paycheck to the campaign and engaged in political debates at various social events throughout the primary. I stepped up my involvement after Obama won the nomination. After signing up at my local Obama office, I went canvassing with other volunteers, passed out flyers and registered people to vote. Having knocked on so many people’s doors to get them out to vote, I decided that it would only make sense that I get my own young brother, Ahmed, 19, to register to vote. Of course, at that age, it would be his first time voting and he wasn’t that particularly enthused by the election, although he liked Obama. I did get him to vote a week earlier so it wouldn’t disturb his work schedule.

At the end of the well-structured process, even though we, Obama supporters, had the feeling that it was our night, there was a lot of fear that maybe we didn’t do enough. But relief came when, at 11 p.m. EST, all the major networks called the Election for Barack Obama. History was made, and although I later welcomed my mother’s prediction that the second swearing-in ceremony held at the White House after the Supreme Court President, John Roberts, “mishandled” the first, public one, meant that Obama would win a second term in office, a second term did not matter much to me at first. I was content that I could point to President Obama and tell my future children of mixed African and German ancestries that in America, everything sublime was now possible for them and millions others, including becoming president of the greatest nation on earth.

However, after it proved harder than anticipated to deal with the stubborn economic crisis the president inherited, which drove unemployment rate up to 16 percent in parts of the African American community, and with Africans from virtually all walks of life literally angry at the president for “neglecting” them by making only one quick trip to one single African country during his entire first term unlike his (white) predecessor, I became convinced a second term was a must.

Although at the end of the day President Obama won easy re-election, we must reflect upon what could have been, had the result been different as we, his supporters, dreaded it might have, after his October 3rd lackluster debate performance that made many of us literally sick.

Sure, on the night of November 6, 2012 the president would have “graciously” conceded defeat and made a nice concession speech without shedding tears, with his family, aides, friends and the rest of us pretending that it was ok, that defeat was a normal part of the electoral process. But Obama’s defeat would not have been the defeat of one man alone. He would have taken down with him an entire race spanning several continents. While it would not have erased the history that was made on November 4, 2008, it would definitely have lent credence to the debilitating assertion that Obama’s election was just an accident in history, a fluke. His laudable achievements – that earned him the American people’s trust for four more years – would have been widely dismissed, including the historical Obamacare.

That did not happen and Obama now has a chance to earn a spot in the exclusive circle of America’s greatest presidents and make us and the other several components of our diverse society even more proud of him, as he takes us to the mountaintop.

Sam Salifou is a marketing specialist in a communications firm in the Washington, D.C. area.