In a recent interview with CBS, President Obama said:
I’m the President of the United States and when people aren’t happy with what’s happening in Washington…I’m gonna be impacted just like Congress is. And you know I completely understand that, we expected that.
But when you look at how people feel about my approach to deficit reduction or when you look at how people feel about my belief that we’ve gotta continue to invest in education or medical research or making sure that we’re rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our seaports and our airports, when you look at how people feel about the agenda to rebuild America so that it’s competitive in the 21st century that I’ve been promoting over the last couple of years, it turns out that people are supportive of that.
What they’re frustrated right now is they want me to be able to wrangle Congress and get them moving. And you know, we’ve got this thing, separation of powers, and we don’t have a parliamentary system. And it means that there are times where Congress is gonna do things despite what I saw as opposed to because I think this is the right direction for the country.
But when you look at how people feel about my approach to deficit reduction or when you look at how people feel about my belief that we’ve gotta continue to invest in education or medical research or making sure that we’re rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our seaports and our airports, when you look at how people feel about the agenda to rebuild America so that it’s competitive in the 21st century that I’ve been promoting over the last couple of years, it turns out that people are supportive of that.
What they’re frustrated right now is they want me to be able to wrangle Congress and get them moving. And you know, we’ve got this thing, separation of powers, and we don’t have a parliamentary system. And it means that there are times where Congress is gonna do things despite what I saw as opposed to because I think this is the right direction for the country.
This is a theme that the president has been pushing since his 2004 convention speech. We’ve heard it time and again: There are forces out there (usually unnamed) who seek to divide us for their narrow agendas, but Barack Obama himself is the one man who rises above all this, who understands the true public interest and works tirelessly to realize it.
Recommended Stories
Print subscriber? Click here to login/register your account
Digital subscriber? Click here to login/register your account.