XLIV

Barack Obama's presidency ends tomorrow.  Another way to measure the passage of time, among other things.  I am 37 years old.  Tomorrow I will be 7 presidents old.

Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump.  

As Obama's presidency comes to an end, I am drawn back to the person I was when it began, and I am drawn towards the urge to assess his tenure as opposed to what I imagined it would have been.

When Obama was elected, I was still in my 20's.  Barely, but still.  I had just met my future wife and had just begun training for my future career.  I had not yet purchased my future house, nor the house after that.  I had not yet met my future son, nor my future daughter.  But I simply knew that electing Barack Obama would solve a great deal of America's ills, if not the entire world's.

In other words, I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

Synergy much?

To be honest, I am more embarrassed than nostalgic when I think of how I sacrificed my beliefs, my common sense, and my knowledge of history to indulge in the cultish Obama worship of 2008.

But context is important.  Obama would not have been possible without Bush, just as Trump would not have been possible without Obama.  And just as Hillary would have been possible without either or both of them.

Nope.

Nope.

Obama was the perfect rebuke to Bush.  Obama was articulate, erudite, not from a dynasty, opposed to the Iraq war, etc.  And, obviously, he was black.  So here was a chance to undo the worst of Bush's Reign of Error and prove to the world what I already believed; that prejudice was more an exaggerated indulgence of losers and professors than a day-to-day reality in 21st century America.

I cried when Obama was elected.  I cried the next day when my African-American landlord came to the door of my shitty apartment in the shittiest neighborhood in a shitty city and banged on my door, yelling my name.  I knew exactly why he was fired up, and when I opened the door, we instantly jumped into a bearhug.  No words necessary.

I cried when he was sworn in and danced with his wife to "At Last" by Ella Fitzgerald.  In retrospect, that's alot of crying, and perhaps quite pathetic.  But it happened.  I will tell my children about how those days felt.  But I will also tell them about what the object of my embarrassingly naive adoration did once in office.

Obama was a good president by some measures, but there are a few decisions he made which, at this moment in time, seem the most important of his presidency.

1)  Obamacare

Ooof.  Stereotypical liberal nonsense.  Great intentions.  Very expensive.  Does it work?  No, but now that we have it, it would be cruel to undo it.

This was the worst of both worlds.  It used the power of the State to compel people to 1) buy a product from a private company and 2) pay for other people to be able to buy a product from a private company if said other person could not afford it.  Replace "health insurance" with "car" or "iphone" or "blu-ray player" and consider the constitutionality of such a scheme.

If health care is a right, it must be guaranteed by the government and paid for with taxes, not bought from private companies via government coercion.

2)  Libya

Come On.  The primary reason I voted for Obama was that he claimed to be against the Iraq war.  The case for war in Iraq was actually far stronger than the case for the war in Libya, which is like saying that Terminator Genisys was better than Terminator Salvation; damning with faint praise.  Turns out that if you liked George W. Bush's foreign policy, you probably loved Obama's.

3)  Image

Image matters, but not in the way our popular culture supposes.  Obama carried himself with a style and grace that, while not sufficient, were very important.  He presented such a consistent image of poise, measured speech, empathy, and virtue, that it could not have possibly been entirely fabricated.  Nobody can fake it for that long.  This is a good man.

Obama, like all presidents in the last 100 years, has ignored the constitution, rained sudden death upon people and nations without legal sanction, kept secret huge swaths of what should be public information, and fancied himself uniquely endowed to shape history to his whims.

But he was, by some measure, the best president of my life.  There are many moments that make me feel this way, not all from those heady, romantic days of '08 and '09.  Consider:

What a man.  The president cheapens every person.  But what a man.

What the Prequels Got Right

There is, among Star Wars fans, a generational divide that almost always accurately predicts how the fan in question feels about the prequels.  For fans over 30, the prequels were a huge disappointment, a betrayal of their very childhoods.  For fans under 30, the prequels are simply Star Wars movies, and while they may not love them, they see no clear demarcation between perfect originals and awful prequels.

But as time passes, and as the Disneyfication of Star Wars takes shape, certain truths about Star Wars have occured to me.  First, the originals are not perfect.  Second, the prequels got some things right.

The things the prequels got decidedly wrong are in no short supply.  10-year old Anakin.  Awful. A whiny, hairless Ewok. Every line of dialogue spoken between Anakin and Padme.  Unbearable.  Just really, deeply, profoundly terrible.

 Killing Darth Maul in Episode 1.  Idiotic.  Imagine how different the prequels would have been if Darth Maul had survived and stalked Obi-Wan and Anakin for two more movies.  Imagine the tension that would have built over the arc of the story.  Instead, Darth Maul was replaced with this guy:

Sign up now for Medicare part D!

  And, of course...

The official end of my childhood.

But there are many things, in retrospect, that the prequels got right.  Here they are in no particular order:

1)  Politics.  The story-line of how the Emperor (probably the best character in the prequels) came to power was very well done.  The manipulation, the intrigue, the misdirection, were very compelling.  It was House of Card in space, and it added heft and depth to the backstory, making episodes 4 through 6 even better than they already were.

2)  Scenery.  While the prequels are often derided as relying too much on CGI, which is a fair assessment, they are still beautiful to look at.  They bring the universe to life and add exotic and wildly original flair to the setting of the saga.  All lovers of The Empire Strikes back, of which I am absolutely one, should remember that the original version of Cloud City's interior look like it was filmed in the bowels of a sports stadium.  While the CGI scenery of the prequels did not make the movies good, it absolutely made them better than they otherwise would have been.

3)  Originality.  Episodes 1 through 3 are the only 3 consecutive movies in the saga without a Death Star, which should serve as further proof that episodes 4 through 6 were far from perfect and that episode 7 was, without a doubt, the least original film in the franchise by FAR.  (Let's all just stipulate that Starkiller Base was Death Star 3)

4)  Music.  Episode 1, as disappointing as it was, managed to do at least 2 really remarkable things.  The first was introducing a bad guy perhaps as terrifying as Darth Vader.  And again, imagine how much more terror and suspense could have been added had Darth Maul stalked the Jedi throughout 3 movies rather than just 1.  Inversely, imagine the original trilogy if Luke killed Vader in episode 4. 

The second one was introducing a piece of music perhaps as evocative and memorable as any score from the originals, which boasted some of the best scores in movie history.

So while the prequels remain disappointing overall compared to the original trilogy, true fans should reconcile with three truths:  The originals are not perfect.  The prequels are not entirely without merit.  And if Episode 8 ends up being the same paint-by-numbers bore-fest as Episode 7, the prequels will continue to retroactively look better and better.