Barack Obama: America's First Black President

I don't think that who a person's ancestors are has much to do with how well they can do a job.

With a few exceptions. I think it might have been a mistake, for example, to cast James Earl Jones as Leif Erickson, or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Oda Nobunaga. On the other hand, Jones and Schwarzenegger did quite well in their Conan the Barbarian roles.

When it comes to being President of the United States, though, I don't see a connection between which part of the world a candidate's family came from, and how good a president the candidate would be.

But, America does like to note "firsts," and we now have our first black president: Barack Obama.

I think this is the biggest ethnic breakthrough since America got its first Irish president, almost fifty years ago. JFK did pretty well. There's even a major street in Istanbul named after him: the Kennedy Caddesi.


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What's going to be really interesting is to see how President Obama does in the next four years. He's getting his shot at the Oval Office during a rather exciting period of American history.