The quiet dignity of Barack Obama

NEW YORK, USA – It was as simple as it was poignant.

Five minutes before noon on a mild, sunny winter day, President Barack Obama recited his oath of office to start his second term as President of the United States.

The three ladies of his life stood nearby. Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t flub the oath this time as he did in 2009. It was done in less than a minute.

I watched the ceremony on television while our handyman from the Balkans helped put our dresser together. He had voted for Mitt Romney out of frustration, mainly because his lawyer-wife had been out of work for over four years.

The hairs on Obama’s temple were a lot grayer than they were 4 years ago. The job has a way of making you old very quick, very fast. One historian quipped that the job is a man killer.

I admire Obama – what he stands for, what he believes in.

There is an abiding decency about what he is about. In many ways, Americans voted him back because they trusted him more than Romney.

The Blue room is one of the three state parlors in the White House. It is decorated in the French Empire style and normally used for receptions and receiving lines.

My top of the charts wish list for the second term would be immigration reform. I have relatives and friends who are still looking over their shoulders wondering if they are just a police stop away from being deported.

I’d want to see them get a shot at a normal life, even if they have to go to the back of the line before winning citizenship.

In better hands

In a way, President Obama looks a lot freer than he did in the first term.

He does not have to play the game of reelection any more since he is done running for office and seems eager to put out there what he is really all about.

I feel the country is in better hands because he is there. He represents the better angels of America, the one that is kind and respectful of other peoples and not the race-baiting Neanderthals on the American right.

The pomp and ceremonies will be held on Monday, which by a happy coincidence is the holiday to honor civil rights martyr Martin Luther King Jr.

Without King there is no Obama and there is a certain fitness in things that the ceremonies to start the second presidential term of the first African-American head of state will take place on King’s holiday.

If there is a ceremony though which captures the essence of Barack Obama, it is that almost subdued ceremony in the Blue Room of the White House.

It was intimate and dignified. Like the man himself. – Rappler.com