Happy Obama Day!

I was 8 years old when the Berlin wall came down. I remember sitting in my living room on Florence street glued to the TV, watching a crowd of people cheer for a man while he swung at the wall with a sledge hammer; I remember thinking in an 8 year old way ‘that’s pretty inefficient, they should use machines, it’ll be much quicker’. I did know what was going on and that this wall divided a city but I didn’t fully comprehend the significance of the event. I hadn’t lived through the heart of the cold war, I wasn’t alive during the Vietnam war, I couldn’t fully appreciate the historical importance, to me it was just a wall, a wall that was going to come down, and very slowly by the looks of it, I probably had to go to sleep soon, me and my G.I. Joe action figures had a big date planned for the next day.

There are other events I conjure up and marvel about what it must have been like to live through, the moon landing, MLK, JFK, etc etc. But now thanks to this year’s election, for the first time in my adult life I have something truly historic to tell my future children about. But when I think about the amazing progress America has made going from George Bush to Barack Obama, I have trouble thinking of it as simply historical because of his race; even if that is the reason he makes the history books. Because Barack Obama might be a whole lot more than just the best candidate this go round, he might go down as one of the great Presidents of all time. He may also turn out to be crap and end up doing fuck all but just by getting elected he’s already changed the game.

I’m sure you’ve all seen his election night speech so I thought I’d share his ‘More Perfect Union’ speech instead, which he gave in response to some negative press about his former pastor, for me this speech marked the first time I was moved by a politician: