It was one of the lasting images from Nov. 4, 2008. As thousands of people in Chicago’s Grant Park stood in anticipation of seeing America’s first African American president, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. looked on as tears streamed down his face.
Months before, Rev. Jackson had seemed to fall out of grace with Obama supporters, the black community and even his own family when stated that, “See, Barack’s been, ah, talking down to black people … I want to cut his nuts off,” during a break in taping for an interview with Fox News.
Now, the Obama administration is in full swing and Rev. Jackson couldn’t be happier.
“The best thing to happen to America in the last century has been President Barack Obama,” Rev. Jackson said during a recent interview with rolling out at the Rainbow PUSH headquarters in Chicago.
In comparing the eight years of the Bush administration to the first 150-plus days of the Obama era, Rev. Jackson says the biggest difference has been the issue of trust.
“He set a climate that’s wholesome and exciting,” he said. “Because of that and his ability, he has a trust surplus. Bush had a trust-deficit disorder — nobody trusted him.”
Rev. Jackson says what has impressed him about President Obama the most, has been his approach to foreign policy. Rev. Jackson calls Obama’s June 4 address in Cairo, Egypt, on religious relationships, “one of the most profound foreign policy addresses ever given by anybody, anytime, anywhere,” he said.
Even with the current political protests in Iran, Obama has played his cards perfectly, according to Rev. Jackson.
“I think as a president, Barack Obama has been very smart and very measured in indentifying with these protests for democracy, and yet not align[ing] himself with it because in his position he must ultimately deal with whoever wins,” he said.
But Rev. Jackson says there is more work to be done. “We’re still losing 600,000 jobs a month [and] 4.4 million [homes have been lost] to foreclosure … so we must keep fighting to get the resources down to the people where the people are suffering,” he said. “The leaves have been bailed out, but the roots are still dry.”
–gavin philip godfrey
