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Some clever fellow asked on this, US Presidents Day, who is your favorite.
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
28 writing prompts for February for the Challengedmedium.com
So he owes you an answer.
We’ve had forty-seven presidencies, with twenty-one men serving more than one term.
Political Scientists rank presidents, with Lincoln first and Trump last. (source)
Barack Obama is tucked in at #7 between Truman and Eisenhower.
Political Science was my day job for forty years. I love politics and I loved teaching this vital subject. In fact, even at 75, I can’t stop. This past year, I taught short courses on the 2024 US presidential election in America, Romania and Mexico.
Honestly, I’m as gobstruck as you may be as to what is going on in my country. I read books and articles, listen to podcasts, and watch documentaries. In my courses, I put together learned sounding lectures with thoughtful power point images.
I won’t repeat, with two exceptions, any of that here. I’ve paid my dues. And will again. But not today. It’s all just too sad. The best I can say is that we really don’t know how it is going to turn out. In the moment, it is dire, very dire.
But I believe two things.
The fact of Barack Hussein Obama, as America’s 44th President, is more important than any of his policies or decisions as president. This is true in the sense that the fact of Jackie Robinson transcends his brilliant baseball skills. As Kamala Harris said, over and over, “We aren’t going back.”
This reality— a Black man and a Black family — as the face of America, led inevitably to the rise of Donald Trump, on the shoulders of the birther lie, Trump’s political ignition spark. He’s been motoring with low octane, calculated deceptions for a decade.
As James Baldwin wrote forty years ago, “America changes all the time but doesn’t change at all.”
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Proudly published by Adrienne Beaumont in The Challenged.
