The White Boys Club Flunked the Obama Administration

Our first black president towered over the white men who tried to deny him victories.

The question is not whether Barack Obama's tenure was perfect, but at least one answer is how amazing it's been given the white boys club that hounded and insulted him at every turn. What has shaped his tenure was how he managed to do as well as he did and how he managed to do it with the dogged determination and grace he's demonstrated while under fire. For indeed he was under fire from the start, under fire from a group of people motivated not by love of country but by hatred for a black man who got over on them.

I wonder if Barack ever had that Branch Rickey moment with, say, Michelle, or one of his closest advisers, you know, the one where they said, "Barack, they're going to treat you like shit, and you're going to have to take it, just like Jackie Robinson had to take it, and never lose your temper, lose your cool. Because if you do, you'll set back the cause of African-Americans for a generation." I can imagine Barack breaking into a grin and responding, "I suppose I could do that."

In fact, he could do that, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Unfortunately for the nation, we had to live through that history. I for one will forever be embarrassed, for my (white) race, for my country. How much better we might have been if the vicious racism had been set aside, how much better for our country if Barack had been allowed to prove he was right about the color of the country being neither red nor blue. Unfortunately it was not to be. We became red and white, black and blue.

The white boys club (along with its token white women) flunked the Obama administration and will long be remembered for the disgrace they put on display before the world. How terrible, how god-awful, how deeply pathetic.