Do we really want “four more years” of the Big ‘O’ at the White House?

I have a youthful cousin whom you’d think would be busy with all the activities she has been engaging in while spending time in Israel to think much about politics.

OBAMA: Four more years?

Yet my cousin Michelle, who likes to pontificate on Facebook about whatever captures her fancy, has lately been sending out verbal missives indicating she wants more of the Barack Obama presidency.

BE DAMNED WITH those constitutional provisions that limit any one individual to two full terms in office (and part of a third term if they happen to be in a position to finish off a previous officeholder’s term). She wants more of Barry O, and even “Big Daddy” Joe Biden as V-P!

Now normally, I’d dismiss such thought due to her age. She’s only 25. Which means Obama is literally the only person she’s ever been able to vote for to be the U.S. president. The Bush years were before her time.

The Reagan Years that captured the fancy of many of my peers (and thoroughly repulsed me back then) must seem like ancient history to her.

But it makes me wonder just how much are people going to wind up missing the Obama administration – those eight years when partisan politics reached a peak with some good ol’ fashioned racism thrown into the mix. Not even a "President Hillary Clinton" would receive quite the same opposition.

BECAUSE LET’S BE honest. Much of the hostility that some people feel toward Obama and his presidency comes from the fact that some people had their share of racial hang-ups back in 2008 – and they still can’t believe a majority of the country didn’t share this attitude with them.

I wonder if many of the people who are most eager to see Donald Trump and his trash-talk campaign rhetoric prevail in the November general election this year want to view such a victory as a repudiation of the world view that ever permitted Obama to win?

Yet I also wonder if there are people who view the contemptible level of mediocrity we faced in this year’s primary election cycle that allowed such people as Trump and Hillary Clinton to prevail up to this point.

I really do believe this is an election cycle where nobody really much likes the people who are on the ballot. They wish we could somehow have a do-over and dump both of these would-be major party presidential dreamers.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if there are some people who would just as soon keep Obama in office, if it were at all possible?

Now I realize there are a sizable number of people in this country who never wanted Obama in the first place. I still remember the intensity level of the displeasure expressed back in November 2008 at the thought that John McCain didn’t prevent the nation from entering the Obama Age. They're already gearing up the e-mail missives to tell me how incredibly full of caca I am!

For them, I’m sure the end of Obama’s term in January won’t come soon enough – yes, I’ve seen the websites that have running countdowns toward that moment, with disclosures about how the end could come sooner if the president is caught doing something illegal.

Not that he’s actually doing anything illegal. But it is their dream that something will be uncovered that will justify a Soviet era-like action of erasing Obama from the history books. He never really happened!

JUST LIKE THEY talk about undoing the Affordable Care Act, attempts at imposing little bits of immigration policy reform and anything else Obama accomplished.

All of which are actions meant to take us as a nation and a society back to a place that never would have given an Obama presidential candidacy any credibility. Although I really believe the true majority of our society has moved beyond such hang-ups. Which is why I wonder if some people wouldn’t mind having “four more years’ of Barry H. in office.

Personally, I’m going to remember the Obama years as one in which political partisanship reached an embarrassingly-high peak; and that in some ways (particularly on immigration reform) Obama wasn’t strong enough in fighting back against ideologue critics. Many of these Republican officials who have been active in trying to undermine Barack are going to have to backtrack their rhetoric significantly in the future – or else find their own legacies seriously tarnished.

While they also gnash their teeth in anger about the fact that future people will wonder how they ever could have been so foolish to not appreciate the Barry O years that some people will think ended far too soon to fulfill the public’s desire.

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