Not-so-fond farewell to Obama

We have a new president. Some of you are ecstatic, some suicidal, and the rest fall somewhere in the murky middle where anxiety meets hope.

If you see me in the murk, please say hi.

Donald Trump will have an opportunity to astound, confound, disgust or inspire us for the next four years, and I really don’t want to focus on him today.

I would rather spend the column saying goodbye to Barack Obama, who was far from my idea of perfection but who was my president for eight years.

When he was first elected, I wrote about my profound disappointment. I was an avid supporter of John McCain, the same man who has been ridiculed by both Donald Trump and John Lewis.

But as we all know, the maverick was defeated at the polls, and the community organizer constitutional scholar-best selling author took up occupancy in the White House with his wife and two little girls.

I sucked it up, and said to anyone who would listen, I’ll survive the next four years.

I did, barely, even as they turned into eight years.

Barack Obama did not learn that persuasion is often better than confrontation.

True, he was stymied at almost every turn by a Congress that wanted him to fail, and there is no excuse for Mitch McConnel stating that job one was to keep him from succeeding. That bit of candor cost him dearly, old Mitch.

And yet, Obama seemed to want to go it alone from the beginning, whether from arrogance, conviction or a combination of both.

For example, the president had once opposed gay marriage. He believed that the word and the social construct should be limited to one man and one woman.

Then, his vice president essentially forced his hand, and Barack Obama became the rainbow warrior, making it seem as if he’d always championed same-sex unions and bathing the White House in a colorful aurora borealis.

I can’t really blame the expresident for being such a changeling.

Adaptation is a necessary and beneficial human trait, and some might see his ability to “evolve,” as he would describe his position on gay marriage, as the sign of an exceptional mind and a guy who knows what it takes to make a good deal.

There were good things that happened on Obama’s watch. But on the negative side, we allowed Syria to become a hell on earth.

We saw an increase in urban violence, racial unrest and attacks on police officers.

We broke our promise to generations of Cubans by essentially folding our hand in the international poker game of human rights, reopening relations with a deadly and vicious regime without extracting any promises to free political prisoners.

And most recently, we (and by that I mean Obama) allowed an avowed traitor, someone who put countless numbers of soldiers and intelligence officers in the field in grave danger, to avoid serving the sentence he so richly deserved simply because he was confused about his gender and wanted to be able to wear a blonde wig without getting ridiculed by the other prisoners.

That last one is the thing that has, for me, marked the presidency of Barack Obama, an absolute tone deafness to certain norms and obligations of decency.

It is also a lack of humility, cloaked in misplaced compassion. Bradley-Chelsea Manning should have served the remaining three decades of his sentence.

That he will live the rest of his pathetic life in freedom is a last supreme flip of the bird to a country that deserved better.

Barack Obama is loved by many, and will be remembered as a man of dignity and intelligence.

I concur that he has dignity, and that he is quite probably the smartest president in modern times.

But in saying farewell to this brilliant, dignified man, I would also have to say with a great deal of sincerity: Have fun, be well, but don’t keep in touch.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and Delaware County resident. Email her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.