So, yesterday President Obama came to visit my workplace. I totally missed him. The closest I got was waiting a few minutes longer at the gate in the morning, and standing out in the parking lot with the guys from the building next store looking in the general direction of the helipad as Marine One was coming in, though all we saw was the State Police helicopter clearing the airspace, and I passed by a couple of Prince George County open carry good-ole boys standing a ways outside the gate kinda looking like they were protesting, but maybe were just hanging around near their trucks not unlike like the weekend morning WaWa militia near my house…hard to tell.

Oh well. He wasn’t here for me anyway. I’ve seen the guy up close-ish before (back when he was Senator Obama stumping for Senator Kaine in Richmond), and he’s done a few events near me over the years where I’ve gotten passed by the motorcades or campaign buses.

He was here doing an end-of-term thank you visit to military folks and to tape a town hall forum with CNN that got broadcast last night. I didn’t watch it (I don’t have cable); while that was going on, I was chilling on the couch watching Archer and getting over this cold/flu/plague of mucus I’ve been dealing with.

I did, however, read the above-linked Richmond Times-Dispatch summary of the visit, and got the gist of some of the questions he was asked during the town hall and his responses. I thought they were pretty good; the guy can still turn a phrase. To wit, here’s the bow he put on his response to a question about the recent “take a knee” protests from athletes about the preponderance of police shootings, calling for empathy (which is something we’re sadly lacking in this country these days):

the only way we make it work is to see each other, listen to each other, and try to be respectful of each other…not just going into separate corners.

Pretty simple, but yeah, that’s pretty much it. Would be nice if the commentariat on the web version of the RTD article would have listened.