President: Now Available in Black It's a happy day for me. Less so for my right-leaning wife and step son. This is something I've been waiting for since I was a kid: when a black man really could be elected president. To be sure, it took a perfect storm of circumstances. The Republican party needed to discredit itself with the public, and the candidate had to be somebody extraordinary. But that perfect storm happened, and on January 20th, 2009 we will swear in our first black president.