HE WAS INTELLIGENT, CLEVER AND
TOTALLY COMPOSED. I KNOW I’M ONLY 22,
BUT I STILL REMEMBER WELL WHEN OUR
PRESIDENT WASN’T ANY OF THOSE THINGS.
my support, you ought to do it
by appealing to my sentiments
on issues that I care about,”
he says. “I think he’ll be hard
pressed to win the state.”
Yet when Obama came to
Chapel Hill in late April, joining the comedian and television
host Jimmy Fallon for a taping of
his show, Terrell went for a look.
There was the president, comfortably hanging out as Fallon
displayed a picture of him when
he was a student at Occidental
College. They joked about his
Afro and a jacket Obama said he
bought at the Goodwill. Fallon
noted the couch covered with a
sheet, and the dying spider plant
in the corner. Obama talked
about the milk crates that must
have been there.
Then Obama shifted into serious mode, discussing the need
to make college more affordable,
while working his own family
into the conversation — some-
— Joseph Terrell
thing every politician tries to
do, but rarely as naturally.
“We didn’t finish paying off
all our student loans until about
eight years ago,” Obama said,
drawing a gasp from Fallon. He
noted his fight with Congress
over the looming increase of interest rates on student loans.
None of this changed Terrell’s intellectual assessment of
Obama. But it tapped into something visceral — the thing that
Obama is going to need a lot of.
“He was intelligent, clever
and totally composed,” Terrell
says. “I know I’m only 22, but
I still remember well when our
president wasn’t any of those
things. I left thinking, ‘Man, it’s
just so cool that this guy’s the
president.’ He’s all the things
I would want in a president.
He hasn’t done all the things I
would like him to do, but he still
is that person.”