I don’t remember President Eisenhower, although he was President for the first five years of my life, but oh how I remember My President. I remember vividly. My family didn’t like the Kennedys and even bought The First Family album to make fun of him. I played that album over and over, laughing and tumbling all over the place because I loved him so much. Even though I had one, although not a live-in one, I thought President Kennedy was my father. When he died, well . . . as I remember, the innocent days of Camelot were gone.
What President Kennedy taught me was the purity of being a young democrat before I knew what it meant. I was surrounded by the opposite. My great uncle sat on his porch with his shotgun ready to shoot blacks, and even though she was Irish, my mother told me that President Kennedy was a philanderer, but I just thought he hung out with a guy named Phil and liked deer ears. There was nothing to be done with me, so they all just let me be. I was the odd one in the community who ran through fields collecting bugs, hugging trees and hanging out with kids who didn't look like me.
Things got worse, as we well know. More assassinations, Nixon, and after the war protests, silence. Then came Reagan, the Bushes and 911. I long ago gave up on hope. I was quietly resigned to a life of less.
And then it happened. He came out of nowhere. I wasn’t even paying attention. But it happened and we were so joyful, hopeful and proud. But he wasn’t exactly who we thought he was, right? So we fought him, the right fought him and everyone in between fought him.
Except for one group of people: the young children, perhaps growing up in poverty, laughing at jokes they don’t understand, proudly thinking he is their father figure, knowing him purely, in a way adults can’t comprehend.
He’s far from perfect, but I love my President through the purity of a child’s heart because 50 years ago another democratic President taught me how. And he's just who I want for the sake of the children.