Obama status

By Mohamed Hamdy

A few days ago, former US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, returned to the White House to reveal two official photos of them in a presidential tradition that stopped in the era of former Republican President Donald Trump.

Obama's return was a rare moment that brought back memories of a historical stage in the life of American political life, and perhaps for the American people, especially minorities and African Americans, when Obama won a landslide victory in the presidential elections that took place in November 2008 as the first African American president. No wonder Obama joined the top 10 most effective leaders in the fourth survey of historians conducted by the nonprofit Public Service Network C-SPAN in 2021 to rate each of the 44 US presidents on 10 qualities of presidential leadership, including public persuasion, crisis leadership, moral authority, and relationships. and the pursuit of equal justice for all.

The truth is that I was fortunate to live both terms of Obama's presidency in America, and it is to him that I loved the Democratic Party and felt that it accommodates the various ethnicities, despite my personal tendency to the Republicans in the beginning, due to their conservative nature, which is very similar to my Arab origins.

I still remember the tears of the famous American anchor, Oprah Winfrey, as she stood stunned in front of Barack Obama's victory speech, surrounded by thousands, mostly of African Americans and minorities. Obama gave hope to millions in America and around the world that nothing can break your dream.

 And if the smile never leaves the face of Obama and his wife Michelle on public occasions, and even the wax statues of them in the Presidents’ Hall at Madame Tussauds in Washington, D.C. have personified this moment, it does not hide a dark side of their lives and how they struggled to make their marriage happy and to overcome all the obstacles that almost made them Forgotten in Chicago's talk show.

Obama and Michelle are a beautiful story in the history of American politics whose chapters are still going on, even if their titles are the former president and the former first lady.