The Validation of Barack Obama

When the election of 2008 ended and it was apparent that the son of a Kenyan immigrant and the daughter of a Kansas W.W. II vet who had fallen in love with Hawaii and decided to raise his family there it was to be the next President of the United States. It was evident that America had made some astonishing leaps in the course of a generation. In 1972 when New York Congress woman Shirley Chislom had declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination no one had taken her seriously. When Jesse Jackson ran in 1984 and again in 1988 he was dismissed as were Al Sharpton and conservative Alan Keyes.
         Men and women who as children had attended segregated schools and vividly remembered "Colored" and "whites only" signs over the entrances of restaurants, affixed to drinking fountains and on the doors of restaurants and even on the doors of public restrooms. Black men and women of the baby boom generation could remember their parents not being allowed to vote, being called stinging pejoratives and being told that certain schools and professions were off limits to them for no other reason but the color of their skin.

            In their lifetimes they saw change in the form of the civil rights laws passed by President Lyndon Johnson and the often violent resistance that accompanied that change.  Martin Luther King Junior before his assassination once opined that "You can not legislate people to love one another." When a tall, skinny bi-racial senator from Illinois spoke of hope, and change it resonated not only with them, but with Americans who truly judged men by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. As a candidate Barack Obama offered Americans the promise of an America we COULD be rather than the America we were. Not all however embraced the president elect. On the eve of his inauguration former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gathered GOP legislators and  outlined a plan to derail President Obama and anything he could hope to accomplish. Their plan was simple enough, to vote in a unified block against EVERY piece of legislation the newly elected president proposed even if he simply used one of the GOP's ideas i.e. The Heritage Foundation's health care alternative to Bill Clinton's health care bill.
        
        GOP legislators would vote no to anything he proposed and would denounce pieces of legislation which they had penned if only to make it appear that he was a partisan incapable of "reaching across the aisle." In addition to this legislative hurdle, the GOP's media outlets lead by Fox News would assail the president at every opportunity. They would question his place of birth, whether or not the proper oath of office had been given to him and whenever possible question his loyalty to the country of which he was President. Any legislative victory he attained was minimized and those who opposed him were aggressively disrespectful. The GOP's mission was to affix the mantle of one term Democratic president Jimmy Carter to him.

                 The far right had taken over the GOP and in 2012 the litmus test for those seeking the GOP's presidential nomination was for far to the right they could veer. At the end of a lengthy primary Massachusetts moderate governor Mitt Romney had become the GOP's standard bearer and all he had to do was to sell out every principle he'd ever had and denounce the health care law he had signed into law in Massachusetts which had become the model for the Nation's first comprehensive health care law. Conservative Super PACs and the GOP ran one of the dirtiest, campaigns in modern history to unseat the president but when the final votes were tallied president Obama had been re-elected to a second term.

             Why is the re-election of this American president so important?  Had Barack Obama failed to win re-election he could be minimized. His term could be painted by the right as a national collective err in judgement. He could be dismissed and vilified in the same manner as Democratic President Jimmy Carter and when history books written and his name mentioned.  His defeat would have been a resounding victory for the subtle old guard who reminds those whom they don't regard as American "enough" that they can achieve anything they wish in the greatest country in the world...within certain limits. and provided those limits didn't upset the status-quo. 51% of Americans giving Obama a chance to finish the job he started on that cold November day in January of 2009 sends several messages.  To baby boomers of color of the civil rights generation it says once and for all that the America in which their mothers and fathers were second class citizens has FINALLY accepted them as Americans. It was not merely a validation to black America, but to ALL Americans who stove for the promise made to them in this great nation's constitution and best surmised by Lincoln's iconic Gettysburg address when he spoke of a nation "Of the people, by the people and for the people".  To those who have long practiced the politics of division it is a reminder that the America in which there was a nefarious person of color, foreigner or communist behind every bush will soon take it's place with the horse and buggy in America's past.

        America's electorate is changing as is America itself. We have long touted ourselves as a great "melting pot" and now we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that we are in fact becoming one.