Source: Guardian.co.uk
Barack Obama’s presidency, three years on – is it time to give up hope?
Barack Obama with his wife, Michelle, at the White House in December 2011. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Three years ago to the day, Barack Hussein Obama stood before a crowd shivering in the frigid January air and took the oath of office that made him the 44th president of the United States. By some estimates, there were two million people thronging the National Mall in Washington that day, a human carpet stretching to the steps of the Capitol, to witness a moment many – perhaps most – never believed they would see: the inauguration of America’s first black president. When Aretha Franklin, in a splendid hat, sang My Country, ’tis of Thee, the air filled with hope that this would be a moment of healing – of the immediate, bruising past of the Bush years, but also of the long history of racial division in America. Hopes, in other words, that were almost impossibly high.
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