I have never held much regard for the presidency. As I was raised by leftist radicals during the Reagan and Bush eras, the office itself — and the men who held the office— were treated by the adults around me as objects of scorn.
Some of my earliest visual memories involve inked caricatures of Reagan in a cowboy hat, wildly riding a saddled nuclear bomb. The message my 7-year-old self received from such images was not to trust this guy, not to trust those in power at all.
That 7- or 10- or 13-year-old kid would have found it hilarious, and troubling, and also simply weird to have witnessed me out canvassing in New Hampshire for Hillary Clinton this fall.
And he would have found it even more weird to see me reduced to tears, eight weeks after the election of Donald Trump. I imagine that kid, my old self, squinting at this crying, middle-aged man. “Dude,” he’d say, “you knew the presidential apple was rotten. What’s up with all the grief?”
What is up with all the grief?
Despite the occasional surges of admiration I’ve experienced watching Barack Obama govern (or, as often as not, attempt to govern), my assessment of the office of the presidency hasn’t changed all that much in the years since my childhood.
The president, whoever he or she may be, holds far too much power, yet is reduced to ineffectuality on the things that matter most to humanity. It has always seemed apparent to me that anyone who actually wants the job shouldn’t be the one to have it. Trump in this sense is not an aberration but merely the epitome of that fact.
In November, our country’s racial history coincided with its ecological future, and the humans and the rest of the earthlings lost. But the terrible fact is that this election was a no-win game from the beginning.
Even during those heady months when Bernie Sanders was riding high, even if we had finally elected a woman to the highest office, we still would have lost, because there are a great many elected and unelected officials in this country who are hell-bent on going nowhere, and they are getting there fast. The fact that we as a citizenry have devoted two years of our civic lives to a series of political tantrums and diversions is as ominous and dispiriting as the outcome of the election itself.
Which is why I want to take a moment to examine this particular grief. Because its source is not merely the fact that my side lost the election, as awful as that is. It is not the misrule and the disdain we’ve been witnessing all along from Donald Trump, as awful as that also is. It’s not the concern I feel for myriad marginalized communities, human and non-human alike. All of those things are worth crying over, and probably I’ll do that sometime soon (and march, and write and organize), but this grief is much more personal and much less expected. It is — weirdly, given my disregard for his office — about saying goodbye to Barack Obama, our president.
He got plenty of things wrong, errors and misjudgments which were the fault of the exorbitant power inherent in the executive office, and which were his own fault, too. He spent precious months attempting to collaborate with a group of lawmakers who were in fact bent on his political destruction. His desire to be everyone’s president obstructed him from enacting more directly tangible benefits for people of color.
And although his personal life and his administration were scandal-free to an extraordinary degree —a true accomplishment — in a saner world the covert escalation of drone warfare, not closing Guantanamo and expansions of executive power would have been recognized as scandals worth paying attention to.
But it’s not his failings I’m grieving for. Rather it is this: having to say goodbye to our president’s sublime execution of style. Which is odd, right? The style should not be the thing that matters, but in Obama’s case it emphatically does.
For eight years we have had a good man as our president, who was able against the odds to retain and to exhibit — on an hourly basis — profound levels of decency, curiosity and wit. As a citizenry we came to rely on him for these characteristics, and that alone is an astonishing fact.
He was funny in all the small ways that mark a deeply felt sense of humor. This was obvious during his candidacy, but then he kept on being funny as president. His self-deprecation was real and generous; his barbs were sharp enough to hurt. And his timing got better as the years went along, which means — another astonishment — that being the U.S. president made Barack Obama a funnier man.
When the going got hard he chose to add problems to a situation. He made connections; he articulated complexity. That was his style.
He showed his admiration and deference and attraction to Michelle in ways that made me feel more alive. Also, he danced incredibly well.
He was thoughtful, quick, deliberate. He contemplated singing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral for the nine black men and women, and then he went ahead and sang “Amazing Grace” at the funeral, for all of us. He was a solid and tender father to his daughters. He still is that father; I know that. If it sounds like I’m delivering a eulogy, I am, but not for Obama, just for a president who’s also a good man.
I am prone to bouts of mild depression. Every few months or so it will descend upon me, a dull and cantankerous beast. And what I become aware of during those challenging weeks are the ways I must reconstitute myself each morning. Just to rise from the bed is an act of making, a new formulation. I think we all must do some version of this every day, but I notice the effort only when I’m low.
So here’s what I’ve slowly been realizing in these weeks since the election: for eight years I’ve been constituting myself daily in an image of Barack Obama. Not consciously, certainly not intentionally, but he’s been there. He has quite literally lifted me up. He has helped me be a citizen and a father and a man. If I have measured myself against him and consistently come up short, it is not envy I feel, but unbounded gratitude.
So thanks for being my president, Mr. Obama, and my kids’ president, too. You’re the only one my sons have ever known. May they again be as fortunate in their lifetimes. It’s a shame to see you go.
Ben James is a writer and farmer living in Northampton.