Eight years ago I watched Barack Obama take the Oath of Office.
(He actually messed it up and had to re-do it later.)

I thought it was a shaky start to a person who would have, more than any President before, his every action watched and scrutinised because, he was the first black President in American history.

It is very hard to properly convey how important that phrase is but I’ll try.

When I was a kid, I was a fan of James Bond movies. Think about it. Who wouldn’t want to be an international man of mystery defeating evil around the world? When I played outside I would always pretend to be Bond. When I let my imagination fly it was always to the places that he went but, when Halloween came around, I would never dress up as James Bond.

James Bond was, and remains portrayed by a white actor.

I knew that I could never be James Bond. I knew that, no matter what, I could never even pretend to be James Bond. I knew that there was a barrier that I could never overcome because I could not change the color of my skin.(I didn't want to change my color anyway.)

James Bond was not the only figure that I wanted to be like. Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Captains Kirk and Picard were all characters that I loved as a kid but I also knew that I could never be them.

Looking at the color spectrum of the Presidents of the United States of America you can see where I’m going. While I knew that I could one day run for President and maybe even become President, until 2008 I had never seen a President that was the same color as I am therefore, a part of me thought I could never be. Seeing someone who is the same as you in a powerful position is an immutable image.

As a black child my options for living role models were limited. We did not have Neil degrasse Tyson yet and our choices were either
Michael Jordan or Will Smith with Alfonso Ribeiro representing the kind of black guy that, "you didn’t want to be." He was an intellectual person who spoke clearly and did not play sports, kind of a geeky and, most importantly, was not black enough.

My options were tragically few.

I remember the day that Obama gave his pivotal speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I remember thinking that this person is inspirational and has gone through the same things that I have. I remember thinking that he could lead the country one day.

In 2008, for the first time, the color palette of the US Presidency changed and for just eight years out of 238 the President of the United States was not white. For eight out of 238 years white Americans woke up in the morning and saw someone who did not look like them. Only twice in 238 years I saw a President who looked like me take the oath of office (he even got it right the second time.)

He was not a perfect President. No one ever is but the world economy still hums along. America is still the most powerful nation on Earth. Osama bin Laden is dead and there was progress made on progressive issues such as climate change and equal marriage.

So as President Barack Hussein Obama passes the baton to a new President. I would like to celebrate his style both political and personal. I would like to celebrate how he handled himself. I would like to celebrate how he elevated the office and the country's standing around the world.

His legacy will be debated for years but, given the quality of his successor, I think his style of politics will not be seen again for a long time.

Finally, in this age of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook it is easy to see celebrities in the wild. That being said, I've only taken out my camera and craned for a picture a few times. This was one of them. This was the closet that I'll ever get President Obama. He didn't know that I was there but, I still felt compelled to take some pictures. I felt that I needed to have some record of the time that the first, African-American President came to London....and I was there.

Thanks Obama.