Why I’ll miss President Obama

I’m going to miss President Barack Obama.

Very much.

Ever since he started campaigning nationally, about a decade ago, he’s entertained, inspired and impressed me.

It’s not just his positions on the important issues, although I agree with him on most of them. It’s what kind of man he is.

Despite his prodigious intelligence and his leadership at the top of the American government, Obama seems like an ordinary guy. He makes me feel comfortable, and it’s clear in watching him interact with people of all kinds that they feel the same. The things that seem important to him are the ones that are important to me.

In a recent TV interview, he was asked what he was thinking on the dais on the west steps outside the Capitol in the minutes just preceding his first inauguration in 2009, with the world watching.

His answer: “Boy, I better not screw this up.”

That’s absolutely believable. That’s what I would think in that spot at that time.

He’s the most down-to-earth and “human” president within my memory. And he seems totally comfortable within his own personality.

His fine-tuned, self-deprecating wit is a key part of his likability. It comes across big-time at events like the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, where government and media folks roast each other: Obama has always convulsed the crowd at that get-together. I know he has plenty of ghost writer help with his patter, but I fully believe that much of his shtick is of his own devising.

He consistently shrugs off the vituperative, poisonous, personal attacks that he has borne ever since he entered public life. His admirable strength of character in that regard enhances his stature, counter to the aims of his enemies, racist and otherwise.

Obama is a model family man. That’s evident in everything he does and says, and the respect his wife Michelle and their children show him is proof.

The first lady needles him often in interviews, but it’s clear she’s enormously proud of him and in love with him, and he reciprocates with her.

He would be a great Scoutmaster or youth basketball coach, one I would have been delighted to lead my kids.

I suspect his greatest disappointment in his presidency is his inability to breach the thick walls of resistance that divided him from his political opponents. Not since President Andrew Johnson in the late 1860s have we seen such fierce resentment of the nation’s leader.

With a two-party political system and the division of authority between the executive and legislative branches, the United States operates under a balance of power that demands some struggles. But past Congresses and presidents were able to work through the thicket to some degree.

The current state of affairs has increased Obama’s burden, with take-no-prisoners politics adding to the heat of personal vindictiveness he has faced.

How he has remained cool in the face of all that is a mystery to me.

It’s easy to forget that when his former pastor in Chicago, who had married the Obamas, became a national story because of his own racist invective, the Obamas left that church in search of one where the spirit of forgiveness and cooperation prevailed.

Obama has made mistakes. His failure to follow through on the “red line” he drew in Syria over the use of chemical weapons by Bashar Assad cost the United States significant credibility around the world.

Yet he finishes his presidency with the United States held in higher regard by other nations and peoples than when he entered the nation’s highest office, according to public opinion polling worldwide.

His pole star, I think, was that he entered the presidency as he did his earlier career moves, including as a community organizer: to help people with their lives.

In the TV interview I noted earlier, he reflected that he was gratified that someone born to a single mom, with no special heritage or economic strength, “could rise to a position where I could make a difference.”

That’s in sharp contrast to someone who might say it was wonderful to rise to become the most powerful person in the world. For Obama it’s not a boast; it’s an acknowledgement of the true purpose of the presidency.

My greatest hope is that I will be able to say the same things about Donald Trump when he prepares to leave office.