Mondays with Mike: He’s back

Hi all, apologies for radio silence—and thanks to those who’ve asked Beth about my well being because they weren’t getting posts. That’s very kind and appreciated.

I’m fine but I’ve been short on anything worth saying. I’ve also been extremely busy at work and just plain bushed sometimes. Speaking of work, my job at Phius brought me to A’22 last week at Chicago’s McCormick Place. It was this year’s American Institute of Architects meeting/conference/expo. Phius had a booth there and I was one of the staff.

If you’ve been to such events you know the drill: Some schmoozing, some actual learning and relationship building. This event is huge! Phius’ own annual conference draws several hundred, this thing drew thousands and thousands and the exhibit hall was enormous.

And, you know, AIA is big enough that they can get some heavy hitters as speakers. As in, President Barack Obama was the closing keynote.

In real time, I wasn’t the biggest fan of President Obama. Today, of course, he looks like an amalgamation of FDR, Winston Churchill, JFK, Mother Teresa…. He sat down with the current president of the AIA, Daniel Hart, in a relaxed, often funny, and sometimes deadly serious conversation.

And boy, it’s been six years since Obama left office and it felt like a hundred. Back in the days of relative order. He was asked the usual questions people like him get: What was the high point, and what was the low point?

“When I passed the Affordable Care Act,” he answered quickly about the top event. He recalled the Herculean effort it took to get it through, acknowledging it’s limitations, but clearly glowingly proud about the tens of millions of Americans it added to the insurance rolls.

Then he got quiet. He paused, and physically gathered himself. When a bunch of 6-year-olds were murdered at Sandy Hook. “That was a low point in waves. There was the shock of what had happened. There was me traveling to try to comfort parents to whom this had just happened,” he said. “It was the only time I saw Secret Service members cry on the job.”

And he recalled that it was the first of many such visits he made. And that Congress’ failure to act brought him close to cynicism, for the first time in his career.

He fought that off—and said “No Cynicism” was apparently a mantra in the White House with stickers to that effect on file folders, desks, etc.

He talked a great deal about the development of the Obama Center, and gotta couple laughs when he said he had to sit on the architects to keep them on budget.

Friday was a tough day for a great majority of Americans in light of the SCOTUS news. Obama  took pains to remind the audience that on that day, the Senate had also made a step, a small one and hopefully just the first, toward sane gun safety.

Apparently, never cynical. I’m trying.