I met Barack Obama in September of 2007. Before I go any further, I need to qualify that I wasn’t granted much more than a handshake. Still, at the time I remember being quite excited at the prospect. The venue was the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta and as one of several volunteers I was assigned specifically to crowd control. A large gathering of people being correctly corralled and directed into the room where the event would be held, I settled in like everyone else to enjoy the presentation. After a lengthy number of speakers that came before Obama, most notably the R&B singer Usher, the candidate himself finally appeared. Unsurprisingly, he was as good as advertised and I found myself nodding along with every point he made. Oprah had but recently endorsed him, though he was still very much in a distant second place to Hillary Clinton.
