During the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, writer Matthew Honan created a single serving website called Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle, which shared short satirical phrases painting the then junior Senator from Illinois as modern, tech-savvy, and a generally good dude. The intention was to parody how, at the time, people would fawn over his every word, and paint the future President as a mythic figure. I was one of those people. And while I’ve certainly had my share of disappointments with our now former president, it’s clear to me that Barack Obama has been more important to me than any other person that I’ve never met.
Barack Obama’s presidency has been symbolically meaningful to me personally in relation to many of my identities. I think it’s common for Black people to be filled with a little something extra every time Hail to the Chief plays and a Black face emerges. I know I am. But it’s also much deeper than that: the most powerful person on the planet saw Spider-Man as a childhood hero. The most powerful person on the planet has important feelings about the Chicago Bulls. The most powerful person on the planet lived in the same neighborhood as I did when I was a kid, and loves the same music that I do, and makes the same stupid dad jokes that I do, and had the gut instinct to give different but equally reverential handshakes to John Glenn and Kevin Durant like I would. Every time I see President Obama, I see myself. As a young black man, a geek, a nerd, and a Chicagoan, that has been life affirming.
Similarly, President Obama has been key to the formation of my political and professional identity. I came to politics as a teenager during the Permanent Republican Majority of the second Bush Administration, with much of my early politicization spent defending to my more conservative peers the need for compassion and solidarity with society's outgroups. To have that experience followed by a leader who argued forcefully for an aggressively progressive agenda was nothing short of game changing, even if that argument wasn’t as forceful as I’d always have liked it to have been. I was so moved by President Obama’s vision that I decided to actually be the “Change We Can Believe In” and get more involved in politics. That journey has led me to do professional political fundraising work across the Midwest and the Southwest. Although that 8 year chapter of my life has seemingly come to a close, I’ll never stop trying to make the communities I’m a part of a better place because of him.
He didn’t just have smooth words and cool ideas. President Obama followed up with actions to, among other things, increase legal protections for non-cishet persons, push back against the carceral state, increase access to healthcare for millions of people, expand environmental protections, and provide new opportunities for undocumented people to live outside of the shadows and thrive. To have the President follow up that progressive vision in such a way that Americans of every background can enjoy a more full conception of their rights as residents or citizens of the United States feels no less than a minor miracle.
And now all that’s in the past. As we stare down the barrel at a Trump administration and get to worry about all that could mean for black and brown folks, LGBTQIA people, women, immigrants, non-Christians, old people, kids, and basically everybody else, I’m choosing to hold on to the feeling of being swept off my feet by a big eared biracial Hawaiian with a funny name. Thanks Obama.
