Balch Barbara - Obama: the historic presidency of Barack Obama: 2,920 days

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA takes the oath of office, January 20, 2009.

FOREWORD

History will be very kind to Barack Obama. His administration will go down as one of the most consequential in all of American history: its achievementsoften overlooked or reflexively rejectedare among the three or four most transformative presidencies in the last turbulent century; his personal conduct, discipline, and rectitude reminiscent of the Founding Fathers; his oratorical gifts and passionate empathy unequalled in American letters; his breakthrough election a watershed moment as the nation tried to escape the specific gravity of its troubled racial past.

Black Man Given Nations Worst Job, the Onion satirically joked after his election in November 2008. But in many ways it wasnt funny, rather terrifyingly prescient. It prefigured the retrograde forces that would relentlessly try to derail his progressive agenda from the moment he took the oath of office, suggesting to us now in retrospect that this malevolent counter-narrative of the Obama years must be given equal weight with the optimistic narrative he tried so heroically, and mostly successfully, to write.

Though many will try, the democratic energies he releasedso hopeful, inclusive, fair, and muscularwill not be kidnapped and reconfined. The bells of hope he rang cannot be unrung. And though many will want to go backward, Americans will not accept anything less than universal healthcare, equal pay, marriage equality, wise environmental stewardship, infrastructure improvements, a robust economy combined with job creation, and a rational relationship to the world. He moved us forwardpermanentlyin so many ways big and small. And he did it all while remaining an extraordinary father and husband. This is his enduring legacy.

Dont Do Stupid Stuff was his mantraand he didnt. Period. For eight complicated years there were no scandals or headline-grabbing investigations, only a thoughtful approach to every problem, every day. He was inspiring, confident, funny, loving, and so blessed with an appreciation of the American promise he had gracefully inherited that he paid it forward, helping to mint an entire generation of citizens dedicated to achieving positive changeactivism within the system. All of it heralded a new persuasive expression of American possibilities.

He spoke to us with words so carefully crafted that comparisons to his hero, Abraham Lincoln, are not only appropriate but accurate. He cried with us when grief was our only outlet, sang with us in common sorrow, danced with us in collective joy, and made his administration look like the diverse country he was charged with representing. He was fearless but moderated, assiduously avoiding the foreign entanglements George Washington had warned us about, but when it mattered, did not hesitate to take out our most dangerous enemy. Like Lincoln, he understood how far we (and he) had come on our collective journey, but as our religious teachings constantly try to remind us, he also understood in his bones that the greatest enemy is often ourselves, our ancient animosities and stubborn prejudices so hard to shed.

The great early twentieth-century African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois liked to challenge the talented tenthbetter-off black Americans who would assume the difficult task of lifting the rest of the race upward. That, of course, would require enormous sacrifice, and focus, and dedication. Ten decades later, Barack Obama, along with his remarkable wife, Michelle, had to work ten times as hard as that to do the job. But he has shown us allblack, white, brown, every one of uswhat a talented 1 percent might look like. We are all the beneficiaries of his exquisite example. He will be missed.

Ken Burns

Walpole, New Hampshire

January 26, 2017