Yes We Can and Yes We Did

“Yes we can,” he said one last time. “Yes we did.” And the crowd roared.

Barack Obama – the son of a Kenyan goat herder and self-described “skinny kid with a funny name” who grew up to become America’s first black president – had come to say goodbye.

But while for most of the past eight years it had seemed this night would be one of joy and nostalgia, now it came with a sober note, laden with omens and warnings about a democracy under siege.

Obama had hoped to be talking about passing on the baton to fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton. Instead Donald Trump’s stunning victory implied an existential threat and called for him to paint on a bigger canvas. In a “state of our democracy” speech he deftly concentrated his fire not on the president-elect but on the malaise that produce him. In 4,300 words he only mentioned Trump by name once – but delivered much by way of repudiation.

Obama dismissed talk of post-racial America, in vogue after his own ascent in 2008, as unrealistic. He defended the rights of immigrants and Muslim Americans. He lambasted those who refuse to accept the science of climate change. He warned of the threat posed by “the rise of naked partisanship”, with people retreating into their own self-confirming bubbles.

There was not, perhaps, the piercing emotion of Obama’s greatest speeches. But when he came to thank his wife, Michelle, for standing by him through it all, an elegy that prompted one of the biggest cheers of the night, he wept.

One and Only Obama gives his final speech as President

“I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change – but in yours,” he says.

I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written:

Yes We Can

Yes We Did

Yes We Can.

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The Obama Speeches N+1