So – I am going to give you my take, and it may or may not be true, but it is what gives me hope.
We had a brilliant, handsome, decent, dynamic man be president for the past 8 years, a real live constitutional scholar, who endured the slings and arrows of racism and obstructionism with more class than I could ever have exhibited.
Did he do everything right? I don’t know. He’s likely smarter, and more politic than me, and therefore I don’t criticize his decisions. I know that President Obama knows somet hings that we don’t know, and that’s the reason for no maneuvers and no dirty tricks at the end of his term. Of course, I could be wrong, he could be wrong, and we are all merrily going down the shithole. He could be asking for asylum in Switzerland tomorrow. He’d probably get it, what with his credentials. I just have hope knowing that he’s going to be a private citizen, and he ain’t going nowhere. He will fight on our side, and I think he’s a good ally.
What it comes down to is trust. I trust him. I don’t like all of anybody’s decisions, how could I? But I don’t doubt that I could change my mind if I were t have a conversation with him about it or was privy to the reasons, and then saw what the results were over time. (he’s a master of 11-dimensional chess, after all.)
One of the things that gives me confidence in his knowledge is his lack of bragging about it. Thinking back, I can’t remember a single instance of him saying “I know a lot about this” or that he ever said he was smarter than someone else. Ever. That’s one of the reasons he’s far ahead of me as a human being. I’d hold him up as a true role model, and I rarely think that about anybody. I don’t know a tenth of what this guy knows, and I certainly don’t have even that much of his experience dealing with any of this stuff. But he’s proven to me through his abilities and his behavior and his equanimity and his personal mien that he’s a man of great character who is completely capable of being an amazing President, and as far as I can see is an amazing President, and may look even more amazing through the lens of history. For one thing, he’s the first president in my lifetime who was actually a professional expert on the Constitution, as in that was his job. And more, a guy who came to the White House and spent eight years there with no scandals. Zero. Zilch. His enemies had to make up ridiculous shit about birth certificates and preachers because they couldn’t find anything in his actual life that a) would embarrass him and b) he hadn’t already admitted to. And you can’t gut a guy for smoking weed when the majority of the country wouldn’t care. He’s been upright, moral, compassionate, calm (I think we’re going to appreciate that far more in hindsight), knowledgable, humble, enthusiastic, simpatico, funny, deep, approachable, dedicated, and yes, cool.
Mr Obama is everything I’ve ever wanted in a president, with the exception of willing to engage in fisticuffs. But I keep telling myself that this is real life, not a movie, and I have no idea what that damn job entails day in and day out. I trust the guy because of who he’s proved himself to be, so I trust that his decisions were the best ones for the moment he made them. And that’s all anyone can expect from the President – that he make the very best decisions possible. That’s his job, and Obama won out.