Barack Obama will be the last significant U.S. President. After him, the office will become entertainment and ritual, like English monarchy. Assuming there's no authoritarian backlash, his successor in death or defeat must be a greater embodiment of the American Underdog myth... and godlike when it comes to planetary oversight. Bring on the first vegan half-Mexican born-again openly gay single parent Republican divorc�e with a doctorate in future studies!

Anything less will be a bore.

President Obama represents the best of what the United States imagines itself to be. Whoever "gots next" won't matter to a Black population to whom a cultural debt has finally been paid. And though his election has kicked up some racist rhetoric, those voices have been restricted to intensely partisan media outlets.

Then there's the matter of terrorism, integrated markets, and climate change. With the state of the world finally overwhelming the power of any U.S. President, only career politicians will continue to confuse being a target with being an axis. Other stuff Obama has little control of: corporations buying the democratic processes, peak oil, China, Israel, Iran, and the happiness of U.S. Blacks. Business as usual for a white president, but a Brother changes the game, right?

Don't be stupid. Presidential contenders win by making promises, camouflaging com-promising relationships, and replacing reality ("I'm unemployed..." "I'm gay with no rights..." "I'm homeless..." "I resent Mexicans...") with ideology: pure mental fiction designed to make you ignore the distance between your desires and your material conditions.

Black ideology has been blown away by global capitalism's hurricane. Everyone, U.S. Blacks included, is connected and competing in terms of cold economics, and the President is not the center of this network. He's the gifted narrator for the country's final transition into post-industrialism... like Allstate Insurance's Dennis Haysbert, who makes the horror of daily car accidents bearable.

Listen as Obama freestyles through Haiti's reconstruction as a 21st century plantation, a permanent 10% unemployment rate (inevitably higher for Black men, duh), two wars ongoing, and the substitution of democracy with social networking. No single elected leader can (or should) manage or define peoples' experience of such a reality. That's the media's job.

But we thought Barack Obama was going to be some kind of "people's champion," the presidential equivalent of Muhammad Ali. After all, he talked sweet rhetorical smack, KO'd McCain, and was (twice!) constitutionally declared champion of the world... he's got a Nobel Prize to prove it!

Operating at that level, Obama has no exclusive messages for or obligations to Black people. Fist-bumps and free-throws were cool during the campaign, but Obama trying to "be down" just earns him beer summits and the ire of Jesse Jackson. On the real, he's already addressed Black needs by becoming the Black president with the Black nuclear family; and that's as real as it's going to get for you.

Make the best of it, because what comes next won't be worth your time.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator David A.M. Goldberg is a teacher in Hawaii.  He is an educator, writer, artist, and father. Click here to contact Mr. Goldberg.