So much attention is being given to the fact that Barack Obama is the first Black/African American to be elected President. That’s a milestone. However, we are still a backward species in that we have to note the fact that Barack Obama is the first anything to be elected. Any human being with the credentials and drive should be eligible to be elected, and if we were a few steps above the other primates, we wouldn’t have to bat an eye about it.
Barack Obama is also the first person with a first name beginning with the letter “B” to be elected President, as well as the first with a last name starting with “O.” Nobody mentions that. Instead we bring up the history of America being built on slave labor brought over from across the Atlantic and so forth, and make this election a microscopic examination of how somebody with darker skin behaves when endowed with a world leader title. I’m sure he’ll do just fine.
He will make speeches, come up with policies, sign bills, go on walks with the First Pet (which I think should be a Labradoodle, thereby making it the first such pet in the White House), shake hands with other world leaders and address large bodies of officials about issues vital to worldly life on planet Earth.
He will also face challenges both familiar and new. And yes, he will probably make a false move here and there. We all do that, and his heritage will not make him more or less immune or susceptible to any of it. He will be our new President, and we will call him Mr. President or Commander in Chief: one lady will call him husband and two little girls will call him Dad.
Once the Obama term ends, firsts of anything in that most honored seat of our nation will seem ordinary: even the idea of a Mrs. President.
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