Listening to the second inaugural speech of President Obama, I am left with this one searing question:
Is he really one of us?
He looks like us: Mid-aged, and greying.
He talks like one of us: His social justice rhetoric seems sincere, smart and inclusive.
He seems to think like one of us: Equity of access to healthcare is essential.
He appears to share our values: Family and protection of constitutional and human rights.
Okay, that said: why is it that I've got a gnawing feeling that something is amiss?
About three days into his first term, something happened to the Barack Obama we had elected. It was a subtle, but visible tension in his facial muscles, a not-quite palpable feeling of restraint in his stride, perhaps a sense that he was now facing the reality of government in its truth from inside the walls instead of the view from outside. Whatever it was, it changed him on a very visceral level and he has never been the same. I have suspicions of my own, but his first term proved without a doubt that he was more a puppet than a puppet master of government and military agendas formerly issued.
Yesterday, his tone was clicked back four years while simultaneously shooting forward five or ten. The inclusion of an openly gay Cubano poet, an Episcopal pastor who spoke Spanish in his blessing, and the swearing in of Vice President Biden by Justice Sotomayor were all indications that not only was the president reaching back to his own values, but reaching forward to a new kind of America.
I can't forget that this is the same president that has outwardly encouraged the feverish, deadly drone program which has become the new normal in this new era of digitized war. I can't forget that we still have poverty, disparity, and unemployment at unconscionable levels. I can't forget that this president ordered pay raises for Congress at the end of a year when millions of students can't afford college and elementary schools are being closed for lack of funding. I can't forget these things. These things do not feel like the "one of us" president President Obama appears to be.
However, I have a stronger sense that his second term will reveal a renewed enthusiasm for the "one of us" president President Obama is. For that, to my original question, I am left with a resounding, hopeful "oh yes, please!"
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