Barack Obama Could Have Had THE Greatest Legacy of All Time

Looking back to a post I wrote way back in 2008, "Righting the Woes of Black America Starts at Home," it makes me think about how much of a missed opportunity was presented during the presidency of Barack Obama.

At the time, race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were not at all too pleased with certain comments that Obama made on the campaign trail which put some of the onus of many black problems in America back unto themselves.

He did not pass all of the blame on black America mind you, and rightly so. But he did acknowledge that not all problems in black America are the fault of society or the government. 

"We've got to demand more responsibility from Washington. We've got to push aside those special interests and let the voices of the American people ring out," said Obama. He even said that we needed to demand more responsibility from Wall Street. 

"But you know what," he added. "We also have to demand more responsibility from ourselves." 

I thought Barack Obama was right about the comments he made. These were powerful words. These were words I actually wanted to hear. And when he uttered them, I thought, even though I did not support his presidency, that if he could accomplish nothing else, if he could be the force which can turn around all of the past issues facing black America—it would be the greatest accomplishment of all time.

He would have left a legacy as powerful as Abraham Lincoln's freeing of the slaves. Of the historic marches for freedom of Martin Luther King, Jr.

If nothing else, the strong words of Barack Obama at that time gave me hope, despite his running as a democrat, despite his clearly being a liberal, that perhaps we might finally see a voice (potentially coming from the podium of the highest office in the land) that would speak for black America in a way that would encourage a newfound path forward instead of against them as so many in the leagues of people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did for so long. 

And frankly, that so many in the democrat party did and continue to do to this day.

I am not saying that Barack Obama would have had the power to change everything. But he certainly had the power to foster change quite powerfully among society as a whole. Especially in the black community. It was a message that could have been powerful in that it would have said, "We have the opportunity and the ability and the strength to become what we have always known we can become—that we know we are and rather than be victims, to be leaders of our own destinies."

Words not unlike many spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. frankly. Powerful words that lift a people up. Not hold them down. Words that strengthen the heart and solidify the resolve rather than soften the heart and weaken the resiliency of purpose.

Because that's been my biggest complaint of so-called leaders like Jackson and Sharpton and even of the democrat party. Their message is always one of despair and failure and blame. 

Not for one second will I deny that there aren't a multitude of issues that help to support at least some of the arguments people like Jackson or Sharpton have made over the years, as well as others in their camps. But to deny the internal portion of culpability is to deny, ultimately, the real change that can be made to actually foster progress.

It's sort of like the historical words of John F. Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Those were powerful words as well. It put the onus of America's problems in the hands of everyday citizens and said basically, "We cannot expect the world's problems to be solved by someone else. We must strive to see within ourselves what we can do to help solve those problems together."

Isn't that sort of what Barack Obama said? And how could those words have been interpreted as talking down to black people, as Jesse Jackson suggested, or even anger a people as a whole? Shouldn't words like that provide for an aha moment? A revelation of possibility? A moment of realization of a key ingredient that had been missing all along to finally make the real change achievable?

The key takeaway here for me is that Barack Obama left this massive idea on the table when he made history and became the first black president and took his oath of office. He unfortunately, and frankly sadly, missed the greatest opportunity the world has ever known to rise up black America in a way that would have presented a very different landscape today for all of America and society even today.

The question becomes, when does that opportunity ever come again? And how did he so poorly miss it?

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