Life

Obama, why are you doing this to us?

Obama, why are you doing this to us?
I don’t think I can take much more.

I mean, yes, Obama has been giving us “I love this man so much” moments for many years now; moments when we felt we were in the presence of a leader who, before the eyes of millions, could perfectly align his head and his heart, his intellect and his lived experience, who crystallized reason, emotion and ethics in a single, perfect speech.

The first moment that really grabbed me was his speech on race during the 2008 presidential race. Others, fast-forwarding, include his tearful speeches against gun violence and his calmly direct rundown of the daily ordeals of African Americans in the wake of the killing of the unarmed Trayvon Martin. (“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”)

And he’s been funny, charming, and shockingly contemporary for a president. Remember when he brushed dirt off his shoulder, invoking Jay-Z, during the 2008 race? When he and Michelle fist bumped that same year? When he sang Al Green?

But in recent months — in the final year of his presidency — Obama has been letting his #realme flag fly before the cameras. Hardly a day passes when he doesn’t send the entire left half of the social-media universe into sighing, crying fits of premature Obama-stalgia with his hilarious, moving, deft displays of, well, Barack-ness.

True, he’s charmed us in the past. But it’s still always seemed a bit measured, like he’s doing complicated black America vs. white America vs. other America algorithms in his head, always careful to remind us that he was all things to all people.

Now, when it comes to parsing how America will react, he gives — to quote his gleeful minions on Facebook — #zerofucks.

He’s “just being himself,” or a version of himself that’s exhausted by modulating his persona for so many years.

These days, he’s thoughtful one moment, sharp-tongued the next, then goofy and irreverent right after that.

Consider his recent trajectory: In a long NPR interview in December, he seemed to go ever deeper, almost into a kind of existential reverie, when asked what questions he would put to the presidential candidates:

I might just ask somebody, why do you want to do this? And I suppose they’d give a cliche answer because that’s what candidates do, but I will tell you as president, if you are interested just because you like the title or you like the trappings or you like the power or the fame or the celebrity, that side of it wears off pretty quick. At least it has for me.

And what sustains me, what lasts, what makes me happy, proud, frustrated sometimes, is the recognition that if you want this job then you really need to love this country and have a very clear vision and idea of what it is that you want to do to help make this country work even better.

I don’t think this country works best on fear. I don’t think this country works best on hate. I don’t think this country works best on cynicism. I think this country works best on community and hope and optimism and dynamism and change.”

Yes, it was one of those magical Obama moments. But since 2016 began, he’s been singing Ray Charles. He explained in a few devastatingly sharp and succinct lines why he believed Donald Trump would not be elected president. (“…because I have a lot of faith in the American people. And I think they recognize that being president is a serious job. It’s not hosting a talk show or a reality show. It’s not promotion. It’s not marketing. It’s hard. And a lot of people count on us getting it right. And these are the folks who I have faith in. Cause they ultimately are going to say, whoever’s standing where I’m standing right now has the nuclear codes with ’em and can order 21-years-olds into a firefight….”)

At a White House event for Black History Month, he actually said “Gurrrrrl!” (Definitely something I didn’t think I’d hear a sitting president ever say in my lifetime.) He was deadpan hilarious with Jerry Seinfeld on “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” even if White House security wouldn’t let them drive off the property and they ended up doing their kaffeeklatsch in a White House kitchen.

But I think the breaking point for me might’ve been a few days ago, when Obama did this interview with the adorable young openly gay YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen. He pulled out various things he keeps in his pockets at all time given to him by “people I’ve met along the way”: a rosary from Pope Francis, tiny Buddhist and Hindu statues, a poker chip from a biker “with a handlebar moustache and tats” who he met while campaigning in Iowa in 2007.

“When I’m tired or discouraged, I think that’s something that I can overcome,” he told her, “because somebody gave me this privilege to work on these issues that affect them. So I better get back to work.”

At this point, I almost lost it. Obama! I wanted to scream. Why are you doing this to us? Why are you assaulting us with your soulful humanity NOW, at a greater intensity than ever before, when we all know you are LEAVING in less than a year!?!?!? 

It just felt a bit perverse to me. I thought back to times when, frankly, Obama could’ve given us more humanity. I wasn’t alone, for example, in thinking that he wasn’t sufficiently talking to us enough about the racial turmoil that broke out in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore; New York City and elsewhere in 2014 after cop killings of unarmed black men. Where was the honest, cathartic Obama magic then?

Instead, we get it now, in almost daily doses, when the bulk of what he can do has passed. And when we are facing a daily torrent of hatefulness and encouragement of violence from Donald Trump.

Then it occurred to me. Perhaps the President is giving us his very best right now because he desperately wants to remind us what an American president can — indeed, should — be. He wants us to remember a good president’s power to bring us together in love and tolerance, despite our differences. He wants Americans — perhaps particularly politically indifferent or ambivalent Americans — to remember his final year in office when we go to the polls in November, so we err on the side of our better angels.

Of course, I have my own opinions about which of our current candidates would best uphold that spirit, as I’m sure we all do. (Frankly, none of them seem likely to do it with Obama’s special blend of moral clarity, suavity and wit.) But that’s not the point.

Obama isn’t just sadistically trying to drive us crazy with nostalgia right now.

He’s trying to remind us what we’re capable of.

 

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