BlackLiberalBoomer

In 1998, Morgan Freeman starred as President Tom Beck in the movie “Deep Impact”, in which a comet hit the earth, causing immense damage, including to the east coast of the United States. The star of the movie was actually Bruce Willis, as an astronaut who was sent into space to minimize the comet’s impact on the earth.

The comet did hit the earth, and a few days later, after the waters started to recede and survivors started the big job of surveying the damage, Morgan Freeman (President Beck) stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and calmed the nation with an assuring speech about how America would survive and rebuild like America has always survived and rebuilt.

I thought of that movie after Barack Obama became the President-elect last Tuesday. When the movie was released, my mother joked that “finally a Black man is President of the United States and the world blows up”! I thought that America is engulfed in more than one crisis at this time; two wars and the worst financial crisis since the Depression, as well as a divided and polarized population–and NOW we have a Black President as head of the Federal Government! Maybe we should call him “Barack the Re-Builder”!

But I also remembered how calming and classy Morgan Freeman was in his Presidential characterization, and that is exactly how President Obama will be. Barack Obama seems quiet and soft-spoken, but he is obviously a take-charge kinda guy, and I, for one of 65 million or so, feel very safe and secure with him at the helm.

President-elect Obama knows the seriousness and depth of the tasks ahead of him, and has shown that starting with his speech Tuesday night. Since then he has had national intelligence briefings, and has become privy to many other items of knowledge that only the President knows.

I wonder if he sometimes feels: The Audacity of Oh, No! But if so, those feelings are fleeting. He is strong, stable, secure in himself, and confident in his abilities.  That gives me hope for the future. I feel kind of audacious myself.

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