by Kevin Powell
Dear President Obama:
I pray that you, Michelle, and your daughters are well during these very difficult times in America’s history. It has been three momentous years since you swept into the presidency of the United States on a wave of hope and change, and God knows you, and our nation, have been through much in that time. There is no denying, Mr. President, that your place in history is secure simply because you inspired a nation and an entire planet to say “Yes we can” and believe, in our core, that anything is possible if we come together as a people—all people. Indeed, sir, your very being symbolizes the majestic heights any of us can reach if we simply try. But even on that Tuesday night in November 2008, as I held a party, as many of us did globally, to celebrate your victory—our victory—and the DJ cued up Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” something in me said this was as good as it was going to get. That, like Dr. King after his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in August 1963, you would never see this level of popularity and mass adoration again. I had no idea what was going to happen to you, but I did sense a return to reality for most of us, and to the business at hand.
And what business you inherited: a devastated economy near collapse; a broken health-care system; a nation increasingly divided by race, class, region, and political ideology; a people, Americans, desperately seeking a savior. Absolutely no one person, no one man or woman, could meet those great expectations.
You have, Mr. President, had some major victories along the way, be it the passage of the health-care bill—watered down or not, no president before you had ever achieved such landmark legislation. You have provided some relief to homeowners, to middle-class and poor people, to small businesses. You got “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed as the official policy on homosexuals serving in the American military. You’ve signed into law new educational funding for persons with disabilities. You appointed the first Latina to the U.S. Supreme Court, and with your hiring of blacks, Latinos, and gays, you have perhaps the most diverse and inclusive presidential administration ever. You signed a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia, putting off potential nuclear war, we hope, for another generation at least. You signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers. You have forcefully challenged banks, corporations, and the wealthy in America to pay their fair share toward our national economic crisis. And you’ve led an administration largely free of scandal, which is rare in American presidential history.