Drowning

III.

If people really want
to know how Obama
became president, if
anyone opened up a
legitimate opportunity
for a black man to win
significant political
office, they only need
to look to his predecessor,
G, who put Condi and Colin
front and center, more
than anyone else had done
before him.

But G's a martyr more obviously
than his own predecessors,
because he stuck to an unpopular
course as far as he could, even
though just about everyone
by the end said he was dead wrong.

No, he didn't actually pay
the full price, but he might
as well have -- at no other
point in US history has a
president become such a
pariah in his own time, not
Johnson, not even Nixon,
who at least knew a mandate,
but his own paranoia did him in.

No, G's problem developed from Dick,
but it was entirely his own burden,
a course he chose to take because
he knew it was right, despite
what everyone around he grew
to think, no matter how ugly
the world became for him, and
seemingly for his counry.

No, he was never out to make
an empire, just a better world,
do the best he could. Maybe
he wasn't eloquent, or a great
statesman, but he was better
than that, he was a man,
the last man in the room,
who knew principle when
he saw it, and it wasn't
even about his own country,
but about the world around him.

He had been bitten, so he
sought to make sure, no
matter the snake would not
bite again.

He didn't drown, not
even when the levees broke,
but rose above.

Mission accomplished indeed...