The Audacity of Hope – Then, and Now

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Los Angeles-based street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey created the now-iconic stenciled portrait of then-Presidential Candidate Barack Obama that helped inspire hope in many Americans. This month, the Jefferson Educational Society is bringing Barack Obama to Erie for the inaugural event of their 2025 Global Summit.

When looking to the past, there is a temptation to give into a spiraling mind-wander of "remember whens." Perhaps it's because looking back on good memories gives us hope in the present that the future, too, will be good to us. Maybe it's because revisiting the trials we endured then gives us hope and strength to face the challenges in front of us now. Or, it could be because storytelling is something that makes us human, as we hope to make sense of what's come before, how it's gotten us here, and where we might be headed.

Whatever the case, in 2008, for me, personally, I remember when I was in the middle of working on a graduate degree. I was studying, teaching, and working while wondering what might come next. Much of the wondering came from earlier events setting the course of motion.

In 2007, the Great Recession began. Before that, it was the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which I remember watching as a high school junior, that led first, to a patriotic unifying of the United States of America as we rallied around our fallen brethren with the attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and then into two prolonged, divisive wars in the Middle East that were still raging on. And, of course, with much happening in between.

Amid unsettling uncertainty hanging heavily in 2008 – ranging from the personal, what I might be able to do with myself upon graduating; to the profound, where is the world headed – I remember that I had hope. And that was in large part thanks to "The Hope Guy."

In 2008, following the presidential campaign launched by a junior Democratic senator from Illinois, Los Angeles-based street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey created a stenciled portrait of then-Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. Colored in blues and reds and whites, with the word "hope" in all capital letters below Obama's upward, outward-looking gaze. The image also featured the campaign logo – an 'O' with a river of red and white sweeping right to left, topped with a blue arc closing the circle – designed by Sol Sender. Based on the photography by Mannie Garcia for the Associated Press, Fairey's "Barack Obama 'Hope' Poster" was his second iteration. The first read: Progress.

The "Hope" poster, at first, was just that – a street-art-styled poster. But it would soon begin spreading far and wide from the street-level. The campaign sold some-50,000 posters, a San Francisco-based streetwear company began producing T-shirts, stickers were stuck on everything from utility poles to reusable mugs, and a free downloadable version of the image led to myriad more usages. Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for the New Yorker, called it "the most efficacious American political illustration since Uncle Sam Wants You," which might've sounded hyperbolic at the time but did capture the pervasive, infectious nature of hope in the spirit of a grassroots campaign gaining momentum.

That momentum helped deliver a victory for then-Senator Barack Obama on the night of Nov. 4, 2008. The Obama campaign won both the popular vote – securing a then-record popular voter turnout – as well as 365 Electoral College votes, defeating Sen. John McCain atop the GOP ticket.

As McCain said in his concession speech that night in Arizona, the state he'd go on to continue serving in the Senate, making history more than a few more times, "the American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly." As the crowd began to react, offering some light boos, he raised his right hand to hush the crowd. When McCain told those gathered before him that he'd called Obama to congratulate him, the boos grew louder. McCain raised both arms, saying, "please," to which the crowd quieted, as he continued, "to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love. In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance, but that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who'd once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for."

McCain went on to acknowledge this historic moment in time in a nation that once enslaved people of color and denied them the rights afforded only to select individuals. Referencing "the outrage" President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation to Booker T. Washington to join him at the White House received just a hundred years earlier, he said, "America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time, and there is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States." That statement was met with whistles, applause, and cheers from the crowd.

McCain continued his speech, pledging his support and urging all his backers to do the same. To call the character revealed in that speech "decent" – which ran consistent with the late-Senator's earlier actions of defending Obama on the campaign trail, to his 2017 vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act – falls short of what it deserves. But that sense of decency – that one may not only accept defeat but meet it in the moment with resolve to rallying supporters not in opposition but to continue to work toward a shared greater good made more common to more people – had given, at the time, even more hope in collective progress.

What followed – from the largest crowd at a presidential inauguration in D.C., to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to appointing the first Hispanic American to the Supreme Court, to bringing the war in Iraq to an end and Operation Neptune Spear that led to the killing of the man responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, to winning a second consecutive four-year term as U.S. president, becoming the first U.S. president to publicly support same-sex marriage, to efforts to reduce U.S. military presence in the Middle East and normalizing relations with Cuba, to… all the rest. Which, as they say, is history.

So, what of hope today? Does "The Hope Guy" still have it?

In Erie on Tuesday, Sept. 16, nearly 8,000 people in attendance, and more streaming online, will have the opportunity to hear from the 44th President of the United States of America themselves. The Jefferson Educational Society will host "A Conversation with President Barack Obama" at the Erie Insurance Arena to kick off its 2025 Global Summit speaker series.

In the spirit of full transparency, in my role at the JES, a nonpartisan think tank headquartered in Erie promoting civic engagement and education, I am part of the small team – members of which I owe countless thanks for their efforts – that has been working over the past few months to make this possibility a reality. And, in reality, invitations and work like this are often years in the making.

In 2021, I was part of the JES team that welcomed the 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush to Erie, which, too, was years in the making (as one might imagine: even in post-office years, U.S. presidents' schedules aren't exactly wide open). Proving you can host a president once doesn't hurt in suggesting – and inspiring – that you can do it again, of course.

And, as might be suspected, because I help organize a lot of the JES's programming – not just the Global Summit but the some-120-plus year-round events – I get a lot of suggestions for speakers to bring in. At the top of the list: Obama.

So, when we learned our invitation yielded a "yes," as might be suspected, I had a bit of a "2010 then-Vice President Joe Biden on a hot mic upon the news of the signing of the Affordable Care Act" reaction in thinking our news was a BFD.

Part of that thinking it's a big deal is a pride for our JES team. I write these words in advance of the event, knowing that much is yet to be done in the lead-up, but knowing that we've been trusted with the honor and privilege to host a president means more than words can really relay – especially given that these kinds of things don't happen often. I know I'm doubly fortunate, because I had that same reaction and feeling in 2020 when President Bush said yes.

Another part of that thinking is that this is a big deal for Erie. A "bellwether county in a swing state," Erie receives the majority of its national political attention in the lead-up to and during presidential election years. "So goes Erie, so goes the nation" so goes the saying, which has held true in the modern presidential era.

But rather than a rally in which a candidate is asking for your vote, or a surrogate is asking you to support someone they're backing, during which national reporters parachute in to record the speeches, talk with those in the crowd, and maybe even visit a dinor or two to get the "Real Americans' take" on issues ranging from the seemingly simple (what do you like about Candidate X?) to the profoundly complex (what's your take on international diplomacy and trade?) that result in shrunken soundbites making the nightly news and fit to print the following day – Sept. 16 offers something else.

It provides a chance to hear from someone who's sat in the most powerful position in the world, now years removed from it. It offers the opportunity to hear from someone with a seemingly improbable path to the Oval Office – the son of a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, born in Hawaii and raised with the help of Midwest grandparents.

Someone who worked his way through college on scholarships and student loans, who, when given the time and chance, turned toward community service. A person who, after becoming the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, returned to Chicago to teach constitutional law. Who then began a career in public service, first winning a seat in the Illinois State Senate and then the U.S. Senate. And then, the rest, as said before, is history, but someone today who's still inspiring, encouraging, and empowering changemakers with the Obama Foundation and his post-presidential work.

It provides a chance not to stand cheering and booing in reaction to what we already think and believe. It offers the opportunity to sit shoulder to shoulder and gather screen to screen to listen and learn, to hear and reflect upon the insights and experiences of a man who once led the nation and the world from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Just as I receive both solicited and unsolicited input on who the JES should invite to Erie, recently, I've been getting asked often, "So what's he going to talk about?"

One look around today's media landscape proves there's no shortage of topics. What I have recommended to those asking that question is to check out the IMO podcast with First Lady Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson. There's a lot to be gleaned from their conversation, which focuses on "What's Right About Young Men," and includes the far-less serious debate on ketchup's age-appropriate restriction as a condiment – a topic of discussion, among many others, between Obama and the late Anthony Bourdain had in 2016 while dining in Hanoi, Vietnam, for Bourdain's Parts Unknown television series, at a restaurant that has since encased their table and chairs to commemorate the visit.

Another is a recent conversation at the Connecticut Forum with historian, bestselling author, and author of the Letters from an American Substack Heather Cox Richardson, who the JES hosted in conversation at last year's Global Summit with The Atlantic's Tom Nichols. In it, Obama and Richardson cover a lot of the ground, from the past and present in the hour-long exchange. They explore his initial desire to be a basketball player or an architect, his work in community service and what led him to it, his campaign's humble beginnings and how trusting young people played a crucial role, and his favorite of speeches he's delivered.

The latter, it turns out is the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, in which he reflects on a young John Lewis standing shoulder to shoulder with those seeking to narrow the margins of those included in America's story pitted against those on horseback, wielding clubs and other weapons seeking to keep, if not make, it narrower. That location and day and their place in the nation's history, Obama relayed, belong alongside those like Concord, Lexington, and Appomattox. A common thread of all locations: the competing sides of the American story – one in which we agree upon our founding principles that have expanded to include more over time, and the other, which seeks to exclude and reduce being American to include a selected few.

What stood out to me was that – and a note about the future.

"I'm optimistic," Obama told Richardson in response to her asking what advice he'd share with the audience that he gives to young folks he and Michelle work with through their foundation. "I'm still the Hope Guy – I am," he continued to a round of audience applause.

Talking about the various initiatives of the foundation, Obama told Richardson, "You watch these young people, and it will make you optimistic. Because the thing I've seen is that the better story of America is alive and well, and it's in the hearts and minds of people everywhere… if we're willing to attach ourselves to that better story… then I think the good will win out. "

As it turns out, the guy on the Hope poster is still the Hope Guy, and he has hope in the idea of America, which is, after all, what makes us American whether we believe in conservative or liberal principles.

I, too, have hope in that idea, and I hope to see you on Sept. 16 in Erie or on screens to hear and learn from the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.

Tuesday, Sept. 16 // 6:30 p.m. // Erie Insurance Arena, 809 French St. // For info or virtual tickets, visit: jeserie.org

You can follow Ben Speggen, vice president of the JES, and a contributing editor at the Erie Reader, on Threads @BenSpeggen, and connect with him on LinkedIn.