I saw my president and his family land at the Cuban
airport Sunday night and step off onto Cuban soil. Even the need for umbrellas,
because of the driving rain, did not blur my television view.
I saw my president, Barack Obama, last week Wednesday step
before the cameras in the Rose Garden at the White House and officially name Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court
nominee.
I saw my president and
the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, hold a joint news conference at
the White House the Thursday before, March 10the.
Three times in eleven days. Almost amazing because
most every television broadcast for months and months has begun with words and
pictures of potential presidents, not the president we have now. I watched the
Obama-Trudeau joint news conference with my granddaughter, Jennaya, age 11, who
was at home recovering from surgery. She watched the entire broadcast with
great interest.
Disappointed to see that the evening news covered only 30
seconds (what Obama had to say about a presidential candidate), Jennaya decided
to write a story about the entire news conference on what her president and the
prime minister had said. She included a sentence: “The whole news conference
was a treat considering usually the media is all about Trump!”
Some might say that President Obama may be able to do
more during these final months of his presidency without being under the
constant eye of the people of the United States. But I, for one, would like to
see him. And hear him and learn from him.
Some commentators have been calling Obama a lame duck
president since the day after he won the election for his second term in
office. (Only now do reporters use that term in the more accurate narrow sense
to refer to the days after November 2016 before the inauguration of the next
president in January 2017—raising the possibility of the Republicans in the
Senate confirming Judge Garland’s nomination at the last minute.) As for Obama? No lame duck is he!
Of course he has not been able to accomplish all he or
we would have hoped. However, Barack Obama has been leading consistently in a
way that has made it a joy for me to not only watch but also to be engaged in
this participatory democracy. The words he used to describe Judge Garland might
well be words to describe President Obama himself: a man of “decency, modesty,
integrity, even-handedness and excellence.”
Young Jennaya’s news story on watching President Obama
and Prime Minister Trudeau address reporters’ questions together said:
“Reporters from both countries asked questions. They spoke in both French and
English. Children in Canada learn both languages. The men spoke of friendly
relationships between the two countries and the importance of a strong
partnership. There is a long border between the United States and Canada. They
talked about the importance of working together on Climate Change issues and
being leaders in the world on this use. They stressed being good neighbors with
each other and helping countries in the world all be good neighbors.”
My husband and I watched President Obama land in Cuba.
(Burton and I had been married less than two months when the Cuban Missile
Crisis in the fall of 1962 made us extraordinarily fearful for two weeks if we
would wake up the next morning.) We are not unaware of the work it takes to
have good neighborly relationships, particularly with huge power differentials.
There are risks. There always are risks. Human rights. Embargos. My
responsibility as a columnist and as a professor is to dig deep, to critique, and
to help people understand issues. But for now, I give thanks that President
Obama is my—our—president. He has been ignored, ridiculed, derided, vilified,
and threatened. However, every time I have heard him speak, in news conferences,
speeches, or when giving words of comfort to families of victims of gun
violence, I have been appreciative and inspired.
In spite of what he has and will endure, he is a man
of diligence, collaboration, and reconciliation. I have seen that. I want to see him more.
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