President Barack Obama succeeded in improving race relations in the United States, the Rev. Jesse Jackson says.
"I believe history will judge Barack Obama to be a very good president who, in the long run, did improve race relations," Jackson writes in an opinion piece published Monday in Tuesday's Guardian newspaper.
The civil-rights leader says that "just having a scandal-free African American family in the White House, who conducted themselves and fulfilled their responsibilities with competence, dignity and grace, shouldn't be underestimated.
"The clouds of racial limits were permanently removed from the minds of black people, especially the young, and expanded white minds as well."
Likewise, Jackson says, Obama believed politics could be conducted on "a high moral plane, with dignity, rational discourse on ideological differences, and bipartisanship."
That bubble was soon burst, Jackson added.
"He soon learned that 15 Republican leaders had conspired in a Washington DC restaurant on his inaugural night to undermine his administration by opposing everything he supported — even Republican ideas."
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