Four Years Ago, a Visit from the Future President

Four years ago my wife, my oldest son and I went to see Barack Obama speak at the Bangor Auditorium. Obama doing well early in the election was looking to take advantage of the passion of his supporters by doing well in the Maine caucuses. That same weekend we ended up having a visit from Hillary Clinton to Orono. Suddenly Maine was important to the process of electing a President.

The future President gave a good speech that night. We were high in the bleachers but still saw well. My son was excited. It was a good first look at the political process. Later that night, thankfully after my son had gone to bed, I watched then Senator Obama give a speech in Virginia that was a duplicate, down to the laugh lines, with the speech he gave in Maine. After the excitement of the day I did not want my son to see that politics is not as personal as it seemed to him that day.

Even after seeing him speak in person I was not a full convert. I felt that Hillary Clinton might be a better candidate. In short I felt he would not be able to convert the election. It proved out I was wrong about his electability but correct about the fact that Hillary would have been the better President.

My disapointment in the President is profound. I try not to be too negative around my children because I want them to be involved and interested in politics and too much negative will not be good for them. Still they know that I am now a hold your nose and vote Obama supporter.

It is a sad, sad thing to see a person with such a mandate do so poorly. Four years later I still do not know what the President really, truly will fight for. I am not sure we ever will know.