I’ve never taken much stock in a person’s profession defining them. So it’s hard for me to pick a type of person I want to interview; what people do has never directly correlated into who they are for me. Or at least, not the most interesting bits of who they are. If I had the opportunity to talk to one person and try to pick apart their brain I’d speak with Barack Obama. Not because I want to be a groupie to his rock-star image, but because I want to see if there’s anything behind his act.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that all public figures have a persona that they present in order to popularize themselves. But Obama’s is so overpoweringly popular that I’d like to dig deeper and see if there are parts of him that aren’t so poised. As a wildly intelligent fellow, I’m sure that he has formidable defences to people prodding his inner workings. What must it feel like to have the expectations of millions of people riding on him? Or does he even feel it, really… is it too overwhelming a circumstance to endure that he must generalize and diffuse it into intellectualization? I feel like I would be sick to my stomach if I were in his position, with people alternatively falling all over me and reviling my very existence. Underneath his polished exterior there is a heart that beats and other things, not dissimilar to my own. It’s cheesy. I’d still like to see if there really is anything else there besides the eternally proper, collected, and revered exterior.
