Even though the 2016 presidential race is in its nascent stage and President Obama has almost 20 months left in his second term, he’s already sounding nostalgic about his tenure.
“But ultimately, an eight-year span in the life of a country is pretty short,” he told about 60 of Florida’s biggest contributors Wednesday night at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Miami. “We can get a lot done, but part of what we’re also doing is laying the foundation so that we then pass that baton to the next administration and we institutionalize some of the progress that we’ve been making,” he said, according to a transcript provided by the White House.
Obama didn’t say who he wants to receive the baton he’s about to pass. But coincidentally, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Florida raising money for her presidential bid Thursday and Friday.
Obama joked that first lady Michelle Obama is happy that he can’t run for a third term.
“Michelle is very pleased that I cannot run,” he said at the home of real estate developer Stephen Bittel in Miami’s wealthy Coconut Grove neighborhood. “And it is a liberating feeling in the sense that the amount of time I have left it concentrates the mind. And I think a lot of folks have been surprised at the degree to which we are moving and pushing and trying whatever we can to advance the goals of making sure that every American in this country and every child in this country, if they’re willing to work hard, can get ahead, and that opportunity and prosperity is broad-based.”
“[I]t’s going to be just the blink of an eye before I am, like you, a citizen, who has returned from office but still occupies the most important position in a democracy,” Obama said in closing his remarks. “And together I want us to make sure that we are doing everything we can to pass on the kind of America that gave us such incredible opportunity and allowed us to be here today.”
Obama said America is “significantly better off” now compared to when he took office in 2009, and cited the record-high stock market, rising corporate profits, and an unemployment rate that has been cut almost in half, from 10 percent to 5.4 percent.
But he said more needs to be done, and blamed Congress for stopping him from doing more.
“We have so much more that we could be doing,” he said. “And the reason it’s not getting done is not because we don’t know what to do; it’s because we’re stuck in Congress on so many of these issues.”
