In 1987, Pres. Ronald Reagan urged the United States Congress to raise the debt ceiling, to put aside partisan politics in the interests of the nation and the world. Here’s an excerpt of his address:

Congress consistently brings the Government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility—two things that set us apart from much of the world.

There is much controversy over attempts to defend Henry Kissinger in the wake of revelations that he said the use of gas chambers to exterminate Jews was not “an American concern”. He was not just making a statement about past atrocities, and the ethical underpinnings of what should motivate diplomatic or military action; he was in fact suggesting to Pres. Nixon that if the Soviet Union, from which Jews were emigrating in large numbers, were to commence a new genocide, it would be of no concern to the US.

Specifically, Kissinger said “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” adding, incredibly: “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” The ideas behind this sentiment are so outrageous, on so many levels, I think it’s worth exploring why no one, anywhere, should just write them off as some kind of poor choice of words.

Henry Kissinger was advising the president of the United States at the time on matters of national security and crucial Cold War diplomacy. The very first suggestion that emerges from his remark is that it would literally be of no interest to the United States whether its arch rival were to carry out a mass killing of an ethnic group the United States had fought a very long and destructive war to save from such extermination, with that arch rival as its ally.

This is an outrageous oversimplification, of the kind that only bigots and executioners are capable, and a wholesale dismissal of the most basic moral values of any democratic society. One wonders what, if anything, Kissinger might think would be of significant enough outrage to concern the American security establishment. Is the distinction between “American” and “humanitarian” some kind of suggestion that the United States does not support humanitarian interests? It might be, given the record of one Henry Kissinger.

Christopher Hitchens has taken on Kissinger’s record at Slate.com, stating the problem as follows:

So our culture has once again suffered a degradation by the need to explain away the career of this disgusting individual. And what if we did, indeed, accept the invitation to “remember the context of his entire life”? Here’s what we would find: the secret and illegal bombing of Indochina, explicitly timed and prolonged to suit the career prospects of Nixon and Kissinger. The pair’s open support for the Pakistani army’s 1971 genocide in Bangladesh, of the architect of which, Gen. Yahya Khan, Kissinger was able to say: “Yahya hasn’t had so much fun since the last Hindu massacre.”

Once again, the inflammatory and ridiculous defense of such remarks tends to be that these were guys talking the way guys talk, with a dark humor about dark things and that their intense disapproval of those dark things doesn’t come through, because the audience is not nuanced enough to understand that these were great humanitarians. But… Secretary Kissinger distinguishes between “American concern” (his job) and “humanitarian concern” (apparently, the job of his critics).

Are we to believe that any sane person would want the American people to view the thought processes of such a disastrously misspoken individual as some sort of behind-the-scenes comedy routine necessary to framing an eloquent defense of the values of American democracy? Are we to believe that Kissinger is uniquely allowed to make jokes about genocide, because in 1938 the Kissinger family fled Nazi persecution to come to the United States?

These are open questions, and anyone serious about honoring the tragedy that occurred under the Nazis, or the grave humanitarian disasters of other genocides, in Bangladesh, in East Timor, in Bosnia, or Rwanda or the DR Congo, has to honestly treat them as such. It is baffling and disturbing that someone like Henry Kissinger would adopt a posture so flip and so callous toward the most evil of all possible crimes, and it cannot be of little psychological significance.

Hitchens goes on to detail Kissinger’s sordid past:

Kissinger’s long and warm personal relationship with the managers of other human abattoirs in Chile and Argentina, as well as his role in bringing them to power by the covert use of violence. The support and permission for the mass murder in East Timor, again personally guaranteed by Kissinger to his Indonesian clients. His public endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party’s sanguinary decision to clear Tiananmen Square in 1989. His advice to President Gerald Ford to refuse Alexander Solzhenitsyn an invitation to the White House (another favor, as with spitting on Soviet Jewry, to his friend Leonid Brezhnev). His decision to allow Saddam Hussein to slaughter the Kurds after promising them American support. His backing for a fascist coup in Cyprus in 1974 and then his defense of the brutal Turkish invasion of the island. His advice to the Israelis, at the beginning of the first intifada, to throw the press out of the West Bank and go for all-out repression. His view that ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia was something about which nothing could be done. Forget the criminal aspect here (or forget it if you can). All those policies were also political and diplomatic disasters.

In fact, for a diplomat, the number of very bloody atrocities for which he has expressed something like approval or indifference is shocking. He is not, we might remember, a diplomat brokering deals between medieval warlords; he is a diplomat working in the UN age, with the specific purpose of preventing atrocity and war. He is a diplomat who is supposed to have, as part of his pedigree of Holocaust escapee and American statesman, a profound interest in “humanitarian concern”, but who seems, consistently, to have none.

To offer a little context, for the sake of fairness: Henry Kissinger was doing very difficult work at one of the thorniest times in world history, when a wrong move could have, in theory, led to worldwide nuclear war. Some would say that any of the political leaders and diplomats who served at this time, on either side, served admirably, if only because that war never happened. But we know from incidents like the Cuban missile crisis that sometimes the only reason conflict is averted is because one or two top decision-makers steadfastly refuse to start a war.

Was the often brutal “realpolitik” of Henry Kissinger the only possible way to achieve détente with the Soviet Union? Maybe. Certainly, Kissinger and his defenders will always make this claim. Was the tacit approval of or even support for atrocities the only way light could prevail over total darkness in the conflict between liberty and totalitarianism? Again, Kissinger and his defenders will say yes, of course; that’s what he meant all along.

The truth is: there is no way for any serious diplomat or political leader, with an ounce of basic human decency, to approve of genocide, to turn a blind eye to cruel atrocities, or to support fascist paramilitaries and the slaughter of dissenters. Henry Kissinger has, at least by his words, done all of these things. Again, if we turn to Hitchens, the pull-no-punches analyst points out, “We possess a remarkably complete record of all this, in and out of office, most of it based solidly on U.S. government documents.”

Hitchens really is as unforgiving as he can be, probably because he feels there is a moral imperative to be this way with someone with Kissinger’s record, observing “how often the cables and minutes show him displaying a definite relish for the business of murder and dictatorship”. Is Henry Kissinger guilty of all these crimes, both of conscience and of actual participation? It seems history will eventually let slip the truth, in one or another cable or recording to emerge from the Classified: Top Secret vault of Cold War dealings, but for now, it remains a matter of conscience. How far can one man go and still hold a dignified place in public life?

It is instructive to note, as one often does with young children whose sense of moral convention is not yet fully formed, how Kissinger has said his feelings are hurt by the way his remarks are received, and not by the fact that he actually made these appalling statements. As if to say, I’m sorry you are distressed by my argument that the mass slaughter of innocents is not against our nation’s values, and that I said this in your name, he seems to argue that because he hit on the perfect excuse —”realpolitik”—, he had carte blanche to make that argument and that it amounts to honorable service.

I do not accept this. And I don’t think that anyone who cares about preventing genocide, rolling back the historical influence of prejudice and hatred, or reducing the power of fascists and hate-mongers, could accept it either. Where realpolitik serves to justify atrocities, it is not politics at all, but a way of giving cover to evil. Consider that whether Kissinger were a genius or not, the premise that adopting a posture of realpolitik allows him some sort of privileged view of world affairs already smacks of flippancy and moral bankruptcy: realism operates on the assumption that one can know all facts without error and accurately predict future outcomes.

Henry Kissinger is just as guilty as any other self-appointed “realist” of refusing to confess to his own intellectual limitations and boldly and unjustifiably making claims on future knowledge he cannot in fact have. This is the fallacy of realism, and the sinister deviation that underlies the kind of dismissal of genocide we have heard from Mr. Kissinger. The false pretense commonly referred to as realism allows people with sinister views to cloak those views in a veil of clarity.

But the truth is no less clouded for that charade. I propose we ask ourselves, seriously, and with the proper amount of human empathy: is Henry Kissinger’s problem a pathological absence of empathy of any kind, perhaps so extreme that he could fail to see how remarks such as these defame and threaten even his own relatives, his parents who rescued him from evil, and his own Earthly self? It must be within the realm of possibility, because so many far more absurd defenses have been put forward as to why we should accept his disgusting suggestion that genocide be of no concern to the United States.

There are a lot of things Henry Kissinger needs to apologize to the American people for, but for now, those of us who care what values our nation was built on, and what it is our loved ones fight for and defend, must tolerate a media climate where Henry Kissinger’s embrace of mass atrocity is written off as just a footnote to a crazy time. One wonders: will this man ever have the fortitude to stand in front of the American people, and the world, and apologize for the many ways in which he has defamed and degraded our “humanitarian concern” or condoned or supported acts of atrocity, in service to his pretense to “realism”?

The American right has been relentless in its assault on the character, talents and leadership qualities of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter since the Republican campaign against him in the 1980 presidential election cycle. Their attacks have rested on the assertion that his altruistic politics, his emphasis on responsible governance, and his wariness of handing public services to private profit-makers, were a general failure of leadership. In fact, their attacks on Carter are rooted in a rhetorical sympathy for the fundamentalist clerics who took power in Iran.

During the years 1978 and 1979, Iran —one of the world’s major oil producers— was convulsed by a political crisis of surprising speed and mind-bending complexity. A decades-long dictatorship, considered benevolent by western powers largely because of the dynamics of Cold War politics, had persecuted ordinary Iranians and sown anger and unrest that bubbled up in a popular revolution. But not unlike the Russian revolution of 1917 or the French Revolution of 1789, totalitarian elements soon took control of the popular movement.

The Grand Ayatollah Syed Ruhollah Moosavi Khomeini marshaled the popular sentiment against the dictatorship of the Shah to win support for an Islamic Republic, which —though its constitution provides for democratic protections including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the right to protest and to govern the government by popular elections— he molded into a theocratic state with power so centralized it amounted to a dictatorship by clerics.

The result was what is widely known as the “Second Oil Shock” of the 1970s, which pushed oil and transport costs far higher and hampered economic growth in oil-intensive industrialized nations, like the United States. Pres. Carter had no control over this, and could not rely on the cooperation of oil giants to lessen the political blow Khomeini’s revolution caused to western powers. It was not a failure of leadership by Carter but a failure of collaborative entrepreneurship (responsible “corporate citizenship” would be another way to say it) that led to the United States’ economic woes of those years.

As if to cover up the fact that the economic fallout was a direct result of decades’ worth of anti-democracy, pro-oil policy, nakedly promoted by Republican presidents (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford) and aided along by Democratic presidents (Kennedy, Johnson), the Republican campaign for Ronald Reagan’s election focused on Carter as the sole pivot on which the nation’s economic fates would turn. It was a lie, and economists and politicians knew it was, but Carter was forced to respond to the campaign tactic with more campaign tactics, and the media validated the fallacy by trying to assess his likelihood of success.

Carter failed to overcome the rhetorical machinery of the Republican campaign against him, but many independent analysts believe he would have been likely to win in 1980 had not Ted Kennedy’s primary campaign so undermined his status as Democratic party leader. Whatever the political consequences of the campaign, an honest look at the 1978-1980 period has to consider that the campaign against Carter was Machiavellian and in many ways anti-American.

It allowed people who called themselves “conservatives” to attack the president of the United States as if he were a sworn enemy of democracy in the midst of a global Cold War against ideological Communist totalitarianism. Not only did Carter’s opponents on the Republican side not support the commander-in-chief, they sought to bury the true record of economic data linking the nation’s crisis to oil-trade fallout from Khomeini’s revolution and so sought to exonerate Khomeini and the oil industry while blaming the leader of the free world for their bad-faith actions.

Can we assume the neo-conservative ascendancy was rooted in some sort of inborn respect for popular and faith-based movements like Khomeini’s? Obviously not. We must, then, consider that the shrewd political bargain, which was also a karmic bargain, made by the Republicans, the neo-conservatives and the Christian right, as they aligned in a coordinated effort to assassinate the character of the sitting president had to include a willingness to elevate or insulate Khomeini against western detractors and allegations of creeping totalitarianism.

Conspiracy theorists will immediately take such analysis to mean there was a deliberate attempt to use the situation to sidle up to Khomeini in hopes of winning favor for the oil giants, or at the very least to allow for this in hopes the new theocratic state might somehow turn out to be another “benevolent dictatorship” happy to do business with the oil giants and help secure western power.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Khomeini benefited both domestically and internationally by the Republican attack on Carter; it legitimized his seizure of power, both by way of allowing him to disassociate himself from Iran’s oil interest and align himself with the need to combat a brutal police state notorious for midnight disappearances, torture and persecution of even moderate critics.

There was a fundamentally dishonest debate taking place in American political circles, as the Republican party sought to legitimate the “voodoo economics” —as George H.W. Bush called it— of candidate Ronald Reagan by slandering the economic policies of the sitting president. That fundamentally dishonest debate, the flawed premise and the obscuring of key economic truths, helped distort the international political debate, giving rhetorical cover to Khomeini’s radical co-opting of the pro-democracy Iranian people’s movement.

Now, thirty years on, the legacy of that period continues to be obscured by nakedly false rhetoric from politicians who still seek to legitimate the fictional universe of Reaganomics, which though it caused three recessions in 9 years they persist in claiming is an ingenious strategy for economic growth.

The rhetorical logic of raw deception and extremist fear-mongering is so mutually useful to the anti-Carter voodoo economists and the clerical regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, that it is ultimately undeniable that there was a mutually beneficial spiral of attack and elevation, by which the two fundamentalist forces built their own power-base while unfairly defaming opponents within their own domestic political system.

As the dawn of the 21st century turns to morning, and the “war on terror” has become a global quest for security of established political systems against destabilization, the safety of citizens and the sanctity of democracy depend equally on our having a public sphere that is capable of telling the truth. Politicians who argue that the truth cannot be told because there will be consequences are moral cowards who are openly willing to violate their oath to serve the Constitution and the people of the United States.

Pres. Obama has been brutally slandered for trying to be forthright about the crises the nation is facing, and Republican candidates like Pat Toomey —widely seen as a fundamentalist of the pseudo-Christian voodoo economist band— are making the absurd allegation that he laid plans for economic hardship and that other Democrats “voted for all of it”, as if to wipe away the revolting legacy of the Bush years. Astonishingly, from the moment of Obama’s inauguration, the Republican party openly declared its intention to lie, cheat and steal its way to victory in the 2010 elections.

The rule would be: whatever Obama favors, we must oppose, not just as bad policy but as a fundamental betrayal of all that is American. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have devoted their political legacies to this cause, openly embracing extremist rhetoric and talking about the enemy here at home, stoking inter-ethnic paranoia and working to cast the most popular elected official in US history (Obama received nearly 70 million votes, far more than any candidate for any office in US history) as a crouching tiger waiting to devour anything Americans hold dear.

This kind of rhetoric is the same sort that elevated Khomeini, so he and his revolution could be seen as a credible alternative to competing ideologies of the Cold War superpowers. Fundamentalist Islam became a global alternative and spread to nations with no sound reason to embrace extremism. Khomeini was made wealthy by the oil-centric economics of the voodoo gang, and his platform for propagandizing whole populations that might otherwise have favored American democratic aims was vastly expanded.

Words have consequences, and politicians have to be responsible for the words they choose. But media also have to consider more intelligently the weight of the words chosen by politicians. Bill Clinton’s “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” ultimately carries far less historical weight than his “building a bridge to the 21st century”, and Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” was ultimately more significant than anyone imagined because the guru himself fell prey to that temptation of financial ideologues, when he supported radical measures that would gut the regulatory infrastructure of American finance and enable predatory lending to spin out of control.

Politicians given to extremism are not serious about leadership; they are serious about propaganda, and their closest allies in the political realm are their fellow extremists: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney needed Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and so they systematically elevated them, granting them powers they could never have by virtue of their insane bloodlust. The Reagan team and its vilification of Jimmy Carter, for having the weakness of character to actually attempt the right course of action, did the same with Khomeini, Qadhafi and even Saddam Hussein.

The emotional insecurity of this tendency is a whole other can of worms that would be worth exploring at length elsewhere, but deserves at least brief mention here: for self-defined “strongmen” of international political rhetoric, especially those given to the blind-faith needed for avid support of the voodoo economist mindset, the depth of emotional insecurity required to so relentlessly elevate radical dictators and plutocrats is harrowing to contemplate. There is at once a total faith in the right and the inevitability of American power and a total terror at the notion that any opposing forces might exist on the margins of international politics.

Those diplomats and intelligence officers who understood that marginalizing and containing works better than direct confrontation, fear-mongering and the elevation of the critic, worked diligently during the last several decades to prevent the voodoo mindset from infesting American politics from top to bottom, but the struggle continues. There are saboteurs who wish to turn the adversarial democracy of the American Constitution into a bloodsport where anyone’s opponent becomes an enemy of the state: that kind of extremism portends the dissolution of real democracy in America, and every red-blooded conservative should join with every blue-ocean progressive in marginalizing those elements in our political sphere.

• With some editorial collaboration from J.E. Robertson

The women’s suffrage movement finally achieved the goal of full citizenship for women, by way of equal voting rights, 90 years ago today. The victory was hard-one and long in coming. Lydia Chapin Taft, a colonial resident of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, was allowed to vote in three town meetings, beginning in 1756, and the state of New Jersey became the first state to allow women the right to vote, provided they met property requirements, from 1790 until 1807. But in no other state were women provided full voting rights until 18 August 1920.

Abigail Adams famously urged her husband to persuade the revolutionary leaders to grant women full suffrage in the Constitution, and while there were sympathies, the idea was rebuffed as too radical. In 1807, the state of New Jersey stripped women of the right to vote, and women’s suffrage would be marginalized in American politics for much of the next century. It was revived and began to build toward national prominence when:

In June 1848, Gerrit Smith made woman suffrage a plank in the Liberty Party platform. In July, at the Seneca Falls Convention in Upstate New York, activists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott began a seventy-year struggle by women to secure the right to vote. In 1850, Lucy Stone organized a larger assembly with a wider focus, the National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. Susan B. Anthony, a native of Rochester, New York, joined the cause in 1852 after reading Stone’s 1850 speech. Women’s suffrage activists pointed out that blacks had been granted the franchise and had not been included in the language of the United States Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments (which gave people equal protection under the law and the right to vote regardless of their race, respectively). This, they contended, had been unjust.

It was not immediately clear to the courts or to the legislature that granting “equal protection of the laws“, under the Fourteenth Amendment, should mean women could not justly be denied the right to vote. From a 21st-century vantage-point it seems a severe logical incoherence that all persons should be entitled “equal protection of the laws”, yet enjoy fundamentally different status in terms of citizenship, but the lawmakers and the judiciary were grudging in the degree to which they would allow equality to emerge from equal protection, and imaginative in how they parsed words to make the difference clear.

A decades’ long struggle would be required to make clear that there was no fair or intellectually coherent way to continue to deny women the right to vote. Ultimately, a Constitutional amendment would be required to right this historic injustice. And women would be on the front lines of a civil rights struggle that saw them jailed and tortured for having done little more than protest and raise the moral indignation of society against the inaction of elected officials.

Early victories were won in the territories of Wyoming (1869)^[27] and Utah (1870), although Utah women were disenfranchised by provisions of the federal Edmunds–Tucker Act enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1887. The push to grant Utah women’s suffrage was at least partially fueled by the belief that, given the right to vote, Utah women would dispose of polygamy. It was only after Utah women exercised their suffrage rights in favor of polygamy that the U.S. Congress disenfranchised Utah women.^[28] By the end of the nineteenth century, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming had enfranchised women after effort by the suffrage associations at the state level.

The struggle for women’s suffrage would come to a head, and ultimately to its watershed moment, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who had been laboring to get the nation involved in the defense of European allies in the cataclysmic Great War against Germany and its allies. Wilson had been moderate on the issue, even favoring women’s suffrage in theory, but became its greatest opponent when he apparently began to fear that women’s suffrage would end US involvement in the war.

Nevertheless, as 1918 dawned, and the war was winding down, Wilson announced support for the proposed Nineteenth Amendment, which would give women the right to vote by requiring that no person should be denied the right to vote due to sex. As Wikipedia keeps the history:

On January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment the next day, but the Senate refused to debate it until October. Because of this, the National Woman’s Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage Senators up for reelection in the 1918 midterm elections. Following those elections, most members of Congress were pro-suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89 and the Senate followed suit on June 4, by a vote of 56 to 25.^[1]

On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee General Assembly, by a one-vote margin, became the thirty-sixth state legislature to ratify the proposed amendment, making it the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment’s adoption.

The timing of the Amendment was interesting. It was wedged between the brutally divisive years of the First World War and the boom time of the Roaring Twenties. Women came into the national electorate without fundamentally altering the power structure of the political sphere, and movements that emerged from the organization and the underlying logic of the women’s suffrage movement would take time to emerge.

Civil rights and human rights would be brought to prominence when Eleanor Roosevelt, both a staunch proponent of women’s suffrage and women’s rights in general and First Lady of the United States from 1933 through 1945, translated the moral imperative of equality to a more global vision for what democracy can achieve.

The following states did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until after it had officially become the Supreme Law of the Land—Constitutional language for ratified amendments and treaties that are officially part of the Constitutional body of law:

1. Connecticut (September 14, 1920, reaffirmed on September 21, 1920)
2. Vermont (February 8, 1921)
3. Delaware (March 6, 1923, after being rejected on June 2, 1920)
4. Maryland (March 29, 1941 after being rejected on February 24, 1920; not certified until February 25, 1958)
5. Virginia (February 21, 1952, after being rejected on February 12, 1920)
6. Alabama (September 8, 1953, after being rejected on September 22, 1919)
7. Florida (May 13, 1969)^[4]
8. South Carolina (July 1, 1969, after being rejected on January 28, 1920; not certified until August 22, 1973)
9. Georgia (February 20, 1970, after being rejected on July 24, 1919)
10. Louisiana (June 11, 1970, after being rejected on July 1, 1920)
11. North Carolina (May 6, 1971)
12. Mississippi (March 22, 1984, after being rejected on March 29, 1920)

Mississippi was the 48th of 48 states to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, but the law would be challenged in 1922, in Leser v. Garnett. The plaintiffs argued that the Amendment had not been properly ratified and that it violated the Constitution by going beyond the powers enumerated in Article V, which they said did not grant the federal government the right to change the Constitution in such a way as to alter the electorate of any of the states.

The Court ruled against all of the arguments put forth to challenge the Nineteenth Amendment and upheld women’s suffrage as a Constitutional right. The case would become very much the opposite of what the plaintiffs had sought: instead of striking down the Nineteenth Amendment, it would become a precedent that strengthened the Court’s ability to interpret federal laws promoting equality as Constitutionally inviolable, and so capable of overruling conflicting state laws.

Mr. President

To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association assurances of my high respect & esteem.

(signed) Thomas Jefferson
January 1, 1802.

Transcript of question-and-answer between President Barack Obama and the Republican House Issues Conference, as delivered at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday, 29 January 2010…

12:10 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please, everybody be seated. Thank you. Thank you, John, for the gracious introduction. To Mike and Eric, thank you for hosting me. Thank you to all of you for receiving me. It is wonderful to be here. I want to also acknowledge Mark Strand, president of the Congressional Institute. To all the family members who are here and who have to put up with us for an elective office each and every day, thank you, because I know that’s tough. (Applause.)

I very much am appreciative of not only the tone of your introduction, John, but also the invitation that you extended to me. You know what they say, “Keep your friends close, but visit the Republican Caucus every few months.” (Laughter.)

Part of the reason I accepted your invitation to come here was because I wanted to speak with all of you, and not just to all of you. So I’m looking forward to taking your questions and having a real conversation in a few moments. And I hope that the conversation we begin here doesn’t end here; that we can continue our dialogue in the days ahead. It’s important to me that we do so. It’s important to you, I think, that we do so. But most importantly, it’s important to the American people that we do so.

I’ve said this before, but I’m a big believer not just in the value of a loyal opposition, but in its necessity. Having differences of opinion, having a real debate about matters of domestic policy and national security — and that’s not something that’s only good for our country, it’s absolutely essential. It’s only through the process of disagreement and debate that bad ideas get tossed out and good ideas get refined and made better. And that kind of vigorous back and forth — that imperfect but well-founded process, messy as it often is — is at the heart of our democracy. That’s what makes us the greatest nation in the world.

So, yes, I want you to challenge my ideas, and I guarantee you that after reading this I may challenge a few of yours. (Laughter.) I want you to stand up for your beliefs, and knowing this caucus, I have no doubt that you will. I want us to have a constructive debate. The only thing I don’t want — and here I am listening to the American people, and I think they don’t want either — is for Washington to continue being so Washington-like. I know folks, when we’re in town there, spend a lot of time reading the polls and looking at focus groups and interpreting which party has the upper hand in November and in 2012 and so on and so on and so on. That’s their obsession.

And I’m not a pundit. I’m just a President, so take it for what it’s worth. But I don’t believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. (Applause.) I don’t think they want more gridlock. I don’t think they want more partisanship. I don’t think they want more obstruction. They didn’t send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That’s not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they’re grappling with every single day.

And I think your constituents would want to know that despite the fact it doesn’t get a lot of attention, you and I have actually worked together on a number of occasions. There have been times where we’ve acted in a bipartisan fashion. And I want to thank you and your Democratic colleagues for reaching across the aisle. There has been, for example, broad support for putting in the troops necessary in Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda safe haven, to break the Taliban’s momentum, and to train Afghan security forces. There’s been broad support for disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda. And I know that we’re all united in our admiration of our troops. (Applause.)

So it may be useful for the international audience right now to understand — and certainly for our enemies to have no doubt — whatever divisions and differences may exist in Washington, the United States of America stands as one to defend our country. (Applause.)

It’s that same spirit of bipartisanship that made it possible for me to sign a defense contracting reform bill that was cosponsored by Senator McCain and members of Congress here today. We’ve stood together on behalf of our nation’s veterans. Together we passed the largest increase in the VA’s budget in more than 30 years and supported essential veterans’ health care reforms to provide better access and medical care for those who serve in uniform.

Some of you also joined Democrats in supporting a Credit Card Bill of Rights and in extending unemployment compensation to Americans who are out of work. Some of you joined us in stopping tobacco companies from targeting kids, expanding opportunities for young people to serve our country, and helping responsible homeowners stay in their homes.

So we have a track record of working together. It is possible. But, as John, you mentioned, on some very big things, we’ve seen party-line votes that, I’m just going to be honest, were disappointing. Let’s start with our efforts to jumpstart the economy last winter, when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Our financial system teetered on the brink of collapse and the threat of a second Great Depression loomed large. I didn’t understand then, and I still don’t understand, why we got opposition in this caucus for almost $300 billion in badly needed tax cuts for the American people, or COBRA coverage to help Americans who’ve lost jobs in this recession to keep the health insurance that they desperately needed, or opposition to putting Americans to work laying broadband and rebuilding roads and bridges and breaking ground on new construction projects.

There was an interesting headline in CNN today: “Americans disapprove of stimulus, but like every policy in it.” And there was a poll that showed that if you broke it down into its component parts, 80 percent approved of the tax cuts, 80 percent approved of the infrastructure, 80 percent approved of the assistance to the unemployed.

Well, that’s what the Recovery Act was. And let’s face it, some of you have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities. Now, I understand some of you had some philosophical differences perhaps on the just the concept of government spending, but, as I recall, opposition was declared before we had a chance to actually meet and exchange ideas. And I saw that as a missed opportunity.

Now, I am happy to report this morning that we saw another sign that our economy is moving in the right direction. The latest GDP numbers show that our economy is growing by almost 6 percent — that’s the most since 2003. To put that in perspective, this time last year, we weren’t seeing positive job growth; we were seeing the economy shrink by about 6 percent.

So you’ve seen a 12 percent reversal during the course of this year. This turnaround is the biggest in nearly three decades — and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened — as economists, conservative and liberal, will attest — because of some of the steps that we took.

And by the way, you mentioned a Web site out here, John — if you want to look at what’s going on, on the Recovery Act, you can look on recovery.gov — a Web site, by the way, that was Eric Cantor’s idea.

Now, here’s the point. These are serious times, and what’s required by all of us — Democrats and Republicans — is to do what’s right for our country, even if it’s not always what’s best for our politics. I know it may be heresy to say this, but there are things more important than good poll numbers. And on this no one can accuse me of not living by my principles. (Laughter.) A middle class that’s back on its feet, an economy that lifts everybody up, an America that’s ascendant in the world — that’s more important than winning an election. Our future shouldn’t be shaped by what’s best for our politics; our politics should be shaped by what’s best for our future.

But no matter what’s happened in the past, the important thing for all of us is to move forward together. We have some issues right in front of us on which I believe we should agree, because as successful as we’ve been in spurring new economic growth, everybody understands that job growth has been lagging. Some of that’s predictable. Every economist will say jobs are a lagging indicator, but that’s no consolation for the folks who are out there suffering right now. And since 7 million Americans have lost their jobs in this recession, we’ve got to do everything we can to accelerate it.

So, today, in line with what I stated at the State of the Union, I’ve proposed a new jobs tax credit for small business. And here’s how it would work. Employers would get a tax credit of up to $5,000 for every employee they add in 2010. They’d get a tax break for increases in wages, as well. So, if you raise wages for employees making under $100,000, we’d refund part of your payroll tax for every dollar you increase those wages faster than inflation. It’s a simple concept. It’s easy to understand. It would cut taxes for more than 1 million small businesses.

So I hope you join me. Let’s get this done. I want to eliminate the capital gains tax for small business investment, and take some of the bailout money the Wall Street banks have returned and use it to help community banks start lending to small businesses again. So join me. I am confident that we can do this together for the American people. And there’s nothing in that proposal that runs contrary to the ideological predispositions of this caucus. The question is: What’s going to keep us from getting this done?

I’ve proposed a modest fee on the nation’s largest banks and financial institutions to fully recover for taxpayers’ money that they provided to the financial sector when it was teetering on the brink of collapse. And it’s designed to discourage them from taking reckless risks in the future. If you listen to the American people, John, they’ll tell you they want their money back. Let’s do this together, Republicans and Democrats.

I propose that we close tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping American jobs overseas, and instead give companies greater incentive to create jobs right here at home — right here at home. Surely, that’s something that we can do together, Republicans and Democrats.

We know that we’ve got a major fiscal challenge in reining in deficits that have been growing for a decade, and threaten our future. That’s why I’ve proposed a three-year freeze in discretionary spending other than what we need for national security. That’s something we should do together that’s consistent with a lot of the talk both in Democratic caucuses and Republican caucuses. We can’t blink when it’s time to actually do the job.

At this point, we know that the budget surpluses of the ’90s occurred in part because of the pay-as-you-go law, which said that, well, you should pay as you go and live within our means, just like families do every day. Twenty-four of you voted for that, and I appreciate it. And we were able to pass it in the Senate yesterday.

But the idea of a bipartisan fiscal commission to confront the deficits in the long term died in the Senate the other day. So I’m going to establish such a commission by executive order and I hope that you participate, fully and genuinely, in that effort, because if we’re going to actually deal with our deficit and debt, everybody here knows that we’re going to have to do it together, Republican and Democrat. No single party is going to make the tough choices involved on its own. It’s going to require all of us doing what’s right for the American people.

And as I said in the State of the Union speech, there’s not just a deficit of dollars in Washington, there is a deficit of trust. So I hope you’ll support my proposal to make all congressional earmarks public before they come to a vote. And let’s require lobbyists who exercise such influence to publicly disclose all their contacts on behalf of their clients, whether they are contacts with my administration or contacts with Congress. Let’s do the people’s business in the bright light of day, together, Republicans and Democrats.

I know how bitter and contentious the issue of health insurance reform has become. And I will eagerly look at the ideas and better solutions on the health care front. If anyone here truly believes our health insurance system is working well for people, I respect your right to say so, but I just don’t agree. And neither would millions of Americans with preexisting conditions who can’t get coverage today or find out that they lose their insurance just as they’re getting seriously ill. That’s exactly when you need insurance. And for too many people, they’re not getting it. I don’t think a system is working when small businesses are gouged and 15,000 Americans are losing coverage every single day; when premiums have doubled and out-of-pocket costs have exploded and they’re poised to do so again.

I mean, to be fair, the status quo is working for the insurance industry, but it’s not working for the American people. It’s not working for our federal budget. It needs to change.

This is a big problem, and all of us are called on to solve it. And that’s why, from the start, I sought out and supported ideas from Republicans. I even talked about an issue that has been a holy grail for a lot of you, which was tort reform, and said that I’d be willing to work together as part of a comprehensive package to deal with it. I just didn’t get a lot of nibbles.

Creating a high-risk pool for uninsured folks with preexisting conditions, that wasn’t my idea, it was Senator McCain’s. And I supported it, and it got incorporated into our approach. Allowing insurance companies to sell coverage across state lines to add choice and competition and bring down costs for businesses and consumers — that’s an idea that some of you I suspect included in this better solutions; that’s an idea that was incorporated into our package. And I support it, provided that we do it hand in hand with broader reforms that protect benefits and protect patients and protect the American people.

A number of you have suggested creating pools where self-employed and small businesses could buy insurance. That was a good idea. I embraced it. Some of you supported efforts to provide insurance to children and let kids remain covered on their parents’ insurance until they’re 25 or 26. I supported that. That’s part of our package. I supported a number of other ideas, from incentivizing wellness to creating an affordable catastrophic insurance option for young people that came from Republicans like Mike Enzi and Olympia Snowe in the Senate, and I’m sure from some of you as well. So when you say I ought to be willing to accept Republican ideas on health care, let’s be clear: I have.

Bipartisanship — not for its own sake but to solve problems — that’s what our constituents, the American people, need from us right now. All of us then have a choice to make. We have to choose whether we’re going to be politicians first or partners for progress; whether we’re going to put success at the polls ahead of the lasting success we can achieve together for America. Just think about it for a while. We don’t have to put it up for a vote today.

Let me close by saying this. I was not elected by Democrats or Republicans, but by the American people. That’s especially true because the fastest growing group of Americans are independents. That should tell us both something. I’m ready and eager to work with anyone who is willing to proceed in a spirit of goodwill. But understand, if we can’t break free from partisan gridlock, if we can’t move past a politics of “no,” if resistance supplants constructive debate, I still have to meet my responsibilities as President. I’ve got to act for the greater good –- because that, too, is a commitment that I have made. And that’s — that, too, is what the American people sent me to Washington to do.

So I am optimistic. I know many of you individually. And the irony, I think, of our political climate right now is that, compared to other countries, the differences between the two major parties on most issues is not as big as it’s represented. But we’ve gotten caught up in the political game in a way that’s just not healthy. It’s dividing our country in ways that are preventing us from meeting the challenges of the 21st century. I’m hopeful that the conversation we have today can help reverse that.

So thank you very much. Thank you, John. (Applause.) Now I’d like to open it up for questions.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: The President has agreed to take questions and members would be encouraged to raise your hand while you remain in your seat. (Laughter.) The chair will take the prerogative to make the first remarks.

Mr. President, welcome back to the House Republican Conference.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: [Off microphone.] We are pleased to have you return. (Inaudible) a year ago — House Republicans said then we would make you two promises. Number one, that most of the people in this room and their families would pray for you and your beautiful family just about every day for the next four years. And I want to assure you we’re keeping that promise.

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: [off microphone] Number two, our pledge to you, Mr. President, was that door is always open. And we hope the (inaudible) of our invitation that we (inaudible).

Mr. President, several of us in this conference yesterday on the way into Baltimore stopped by the Salvation Army homeless facility here in Baltimore. I met a little boy, an African American boy, in the 8th grade, named David Carter, Jr. When he heard that I would be seeing you today his eyes lit up like I had never seen. And I told him that if he wrote you a letter I’d give it to you, and I have.

But I had a conversation with little David, Jr. and David, Sr. His family has been struggling with the economy.

[On microphone.] His dad said words to me, Mr. President, that I’ll never forget. About my age and he said — he said, Congressman, it’s not like it was when we were coming up. He said, there’s just no jobs.

Now, last year about the time you met with us, unemployment was 7.5 percent in this country. Your administration, and your party in Congress, told us that we’d have to borrow more than $700 billion to pay for a so-called stimulus bill. It was a piecemeal list of projects and boutique tax cuts, all of which was — we were told — had to be passed or unemployment would go to 8 percent, as your administration said. Well, unemployment is 10 percent now, as you well know, Mr. President; here in Baltimore it’s considerably higher.

Now, Republicans offered a stimulus bill at the same time. It cost half as much as the Democratic proposal in Congress, and using your economic analyst models, it would have created twice the jobs at half the cost. It essentially was across-the-board tax relief, Mr. President.

Now we know you’ve come to Baltimore today and you’ve raised this tax credit, which was last promoted by President Jimmy Carter. But the first question I would pose to you, very respectfully, Mr. President, is would you be willing to consider embracing — in the name of little David Carter, Jr. and his dad, in the name of every struggling family in this country — the kind of across-the-board tax relief that Republicans have advocated, that President Kennedy advocated, that President Reagan advocated and that has always been the means of stimulating broad-based economic growth?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, there was a lot packed into that question. (Laughter.) First of all, let me say I already promised that I’ll be writing back to that young man and his family, and I appreciate you passing on the letter.

Q Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: But let’s talk about just the jobs environment generally. You’re absolutely right that when I was sworn in the hope was that unemployment would remain around 8 [percent], or in the 8 percent range. That was just based on the estimates made by both conservative and liberal economists, because at that point not all the data had trickled in.

We had lost 650,000 jobs in December. I’m assuming you’re not faulting my policies for that. We had lost, it turns out, 700,000 jobs in January, the month I was sworn in. I’m assuming it wasn’t my administration’s policies that accounted for that. We lost another 650,000 jobs the subsequent month, before any of my policies had gone into effect. So I’m assuming that wasn’t as a consequence of our policies; that doesn’t reflect the failure of the Recovery Act. The point being that what ended up happening was that the job losses from this recession proved to be much more severe — in the first quarter of last year going into the second quarter of last year — than anybody anticipated.

So I mean, I think we can score political points on the basis of the fact that we underestimated how severe the job losses were going to be. But those job losses took place before any stimulus, whether it was the ones that you guys have proposed or the ones that we proposed, could have ever taken into effect. Now, that’s just the fact, Mike, and I don’t think anybody would dispute that. You could not find an economist who would dispute that.

Now, at the same time, as I mentioned, most economists — Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative — would say that had it not been for the stimulus package that we passed, things would be much worse. Now, they didn’t fill a 7 million hole in the number of people who were unemployed. They probably account for about 2 million, which means we still have 5 million folks in there that we’ve still got to deal with. That’s a lot of people.

The package that we put together at the beginning of the year, the truth is, should have reflected — and I believe reflected what most of you would say are common sense things. This notion that this was a radical package is just not true. A third of them were tax cuts, and they weren’t — when you say they were “boutique” tax cuts, Mike, 95 percent of working Americans got tax cuts, small businesses got tax cuts, large businesses got help in terms of their depreciation schedules. I mean, it was a pretty conventional list of tax cuts. A third of it was stabilizing state budgets.

There is not a single person in here who, had it not been for what was in the stimulus package, wouldn’t be going home to more teachers laid off, more firefighters laid off, more cops laid off. A big chunk of it was unemployment insurance and COBRA, just making sure that people had some floor beneath them, and, by the way, making sure that there was enough money in their pockets that businesses had some customers.

You take those two things out, that accounts for the majority of the stimulus package. Are there people in this room who think that was a bad idea? A portion of it was dealing with the AMT, the alternative minimum tax — not a proposal of mine; that’s not a consequence of my policies that we have a tax system where we keep on putting off a potential tax hike that is embedded in the budget that we have to fix each year. That cost about $70 billion.

And then the last portion of it was infrastructure which, as I said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon-cuttings for the same projects that you voted against.

Now, I say all this not to re-litigate the past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the Recovery Act are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do — rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in.

And the notion that I would somehow resist doing something that cost half as much but would produce twice as many jobs — why would I resist that? I wouldn’t. I mean, that’s my point, is that — I am not an ideologue. I’m not. It doesn’t make sense if somebody could tell me you could do this cheaper and get increased results that I wouldn’t say, great. The problem is, I couldn’t find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made.

Now, we can — here’s what I know going forward, though. I mean, we’re talking — we were talking about the past. We can talk about this going forward. I have looked at every idea out there in terms of accelerating job growth to match the economic growth that’s already taken place. The jobs credit that I’m discussing right now is one that a lot of people think would be the most cost-effective way for encouraging people to pick up their hiring.

There may be other ideas that you guys have; I am happy to look at them and I’m happy to embrace them. I suspect I will embrace some of them. Some of them I’ve already embraced.

But the question I think we’re going to have to ask ourselves is, as we move forward, are we going to be examining each of these issues based on what’s good for the country, what the evidence tells us, or are we going to be trying to position ourselves so that come November we’re able to say, “The other party, it’s their fault.” If we take the latter approach then we’re probably not going to get much agreement. If we take the former, I suspect there’s going to be a lot of overlap. All right?

Q Mr. President, will you consider supporting across-the-board tax relief, as President Kennedy did?

THE PRESIDENT: Here’s what I’m going to do, Mike. What I’m going to do is I’m going to take a look at what you guys are proposing. And the reason I say this, before you say, “Okay,” I think is important to know — what you may consider across-the-board tax cuts could be, for example, greater tax cuts for people who are making a billion dollars. I may not agree to a tax cut for Warren Buffet. You may be calling for an across-the-board tax cut for the banking industry right now. I may not agree to that.

So I think that we’ve got to look at what specific proposals you’re putting forward, and — this is the last point I’ll make — if you’re calling for just across-the-board tax cuts, and then on the other hand saying that we’re somehow going to balance our budget, I’m going to want to take a look at your math and see how that works, because the issue of deficit and debt is another area where there has been a tendency for some inconsistent statements. How’s that? All right?

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: Thank you. Mr. President, first off, thanks for agreeing to accept our invitation here. It is a real pleasure and honor to have you with us here today.

THE PRESIDENT: Good to see you. Is this your crew right here, by the way?

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: It is. This is my daughter Liza, my son Charlie and Sam, and this is my wife Janna.

THE PRESIDENT: Hey, guys.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: Say hi, everybody. (Laughter.) I serve as a ranking member of the budget committee, so I’m going to talk a little budget if you don’t mind. The spending bills that you’ve signed into law, the domestic discretionary spending has been increased by 84 percent. You now want to freeze spending at this elevated beginning next year. This means that total spending in your budget would grow at 3/100ths of 1 percent less than otherwise. I would simply submit that we could do more and start now.

You’ve also said that you want to take a scalpel to the budget and go through it line by line. We want to give you that scalpel. I have a proposal with my home state senator, Russ Feingold, bipartisan proposal, to create a constitutional version of the line-item veto. (Applause.) Problem is, we can’t even get a vote on the proposal.

So my question is, why not start freezing spending now, and would you support a line-item veto in helping us get a vote on it in the House?

THE PRESIDENT: Let me respond to the two specific questions, but I want to just push back a little bit on the underlying premise about us increasing spending by 84 percent.

Now, look, I talked to Peter Orszag right before I came here, because I suspected I’d be hearing this — I’d be hearing this argument. The fact of the matter is, is that most of the increases in this year’s budget, this past year’s budget, were not as a consequence of policies that we initiated but instead were built in as a consequence of the automatic stabilizers that kick in because of this enormous recession.

So the increase in the budget for this past year was actually predicted before I was even sworn into office and had initiated any policies. Whoever was in there, Paul — and I don’t think you’ll dispute that — whoever was in there would have seen those same increases because of, on the one hand, huge drops in revenue, but at the same time people were hurting and needed help. And a lot of these things happened automatically.

Now, the reason that I’m not proposing the discretionary freeze take into effect this year — we prepared a budget for 2010, it’s now going forward — is, again, I am just listening to the consensus among people who know the economy best. And what they will say is that if you either increase taxes or significantly lowered spending when the economy remains somewhat fragile, that that would have a destimulative effect and potentially you’d see a lot of folks losing business, more folks potentially losing jobs. That would be a mistake when the economy has not fully taken off. That’s why I’ve proposed to do it for the next fiscal year. So that’s point number two.

With respect to the line-item veto, I actually — I think there’s not a President out there that wouldn’t love to have it. And I think that this is an area where we can have a serious conversation. I know it is a bipartisan proposal by you and Russ Feingold. I don’t like being held up with big bills that have stuff in them that are wasteful but I’ve got to sign because it’s a defense authorization bill and I’ve got to make sure that our troops are getting the funding that they need.

I will tell you, I would love for Congress itself to show discipline on both sides of the aisle. I think one thing that you have to acknowledge, Paul, because you study this stuff and take it pretty seriously, that the earmarks problem is not unique to one party and you end up getting a lot of pushback when you start going after specific projects of any one of you in your districts, because wasteful spending is usually spent somehow outside of your district. Have you noticed that? The spending in your district tends to seem pretty sensible.

So I would love to see more restraint within Congress. I’d like to work on the earmarks reforms that I mentioned in terms of putting earmarks online, because I think sunshine is the best disinfectant. But I am willing to have a serious conversation on the line-item veto issue.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: I’d like to walk you through that, because we have a version we think is constitutional.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me take a look at it.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: I would simply say that automatic stabilizer spending is mandatory spending. The discretionary spending, the bills that Congress signs that you sign into law, that has increased 84 percent.

THE PRESIDENT: We’ll have a longer debate on the budget numbers, all right?

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia.

CONGRESSWOMAN CAPITO: Thank you, Mr. President, for joining us here today. As you said in the State of the Union address on Wednesday, jobs and the economy are number one. And I think everyone in this room, certainly I, agree with you on that.

I represent the state of West Virginia. We’re resource-rich. We have a lot of coal and a lot of natural gas. But our — my miners and the folks who are working and those who are unemployed are very concerned about some of your policies in these areas: cap and trade, an aggressive EPA, and the looming prospect of higher taxes. In our minds, these are job-killing policies. So I’m asking you if you would be willing to re-look at some of these policies, with a high unemployment and the unsure economy that we have now, to assure West Virginians that you’re listening.

THE PRESIDENT: Look, I listen all the time, including to your governor, who’s somebody who I enjoyed working with a lot before the campaign and now that I’m President. And I know that West Virginia struggles with unemployment, and I know how important coal is to West Virginia and a lot of the natural resources there. That’s part of the reason why I’ve said that we need a comprehensive energy policy that sets us up for a long-term future.

For example, nobody has been a bigger promoter of clean coal technology than I am. Testament to that, I ended up being in a whole bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly.

I’ve said that I’m a promoter of nuclear energy, something that I think over the last three decades has been subject to a lot of partisan wrangling and ideological wrangling. I don’t think it makes sense. I think that that has to be part of our energy mix. I’ve said that I am supportive — and I said this two nights ago at the State of the Union — that I am in favor of increased production.

So if you look at the ideas that this caucus has, again with respect to energy, I’m for a lot of what you said you are for.

The one thing that I’ve also said, though, and here we have a serious disagreement and my hope is we can work through these disagreements — there’s going to be an effort on the Senate side to do so on a bipartisan basis — is that we have to plan for the future.

And the future is that clean energy — cleaner forms of energy are going to be increasingly important, because even if folks are still skeptical in some cases about climate change in our politics and in Congress, the world is not skeptical about it. If we’re going to be after some of these big markets, they’re going to be looking to see, is the United States the one that’s developing clean coal technology? Is the United States developing our natural gas resources in the most effective way? Is the United States the one that is going to lead in electric cars? Because if we’re not leading, those other countries are going to be leading.

So what I want to do is work with West Virginia to figure out how we can seize that future. But to do that, that means there’s going to have to be some transition. We can’t operate the coal industry in the United States as if we’re still in the 1920s or the 1930s or the 1950s. We’ve got to be thinking what does that industry look like in the next hundred years. And it’s going to be different. And that means there’s going to be some transition. And that’s where I think a well-thought-through policy of incentivizing the new while recognizing that there’s going to be a transition process — and we’re not just suddenly putting the old out of business right away — that has to be something that both Republicans and Democrats should be able to embrace.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Jason Chaffetz, Utah.

CONGRESSMAN CHAFFETZ: Thank you, Mr. President. It’s truly an honor.

THE PRESIDENT: Great to be here.

CONGRESSMAN CHAFFETZ: And I appreciate you being here.

I’m one of 22 House freshmen. We didn’t create this mess, but we are here to help clean it up. You talked a lot about this deficit of trust. There’s some things that have happened that I would appreciate your perspective on, because I can look you in the eye and tell you we have not been obstructionists. Democrats have the House and Senate and the presidency. And when you stood up before the American people multiple times and said you would broadcast the health care debates on C-SPAN, you didn’t. And I was disappointed, and I think a lot of Americans were disappointed.

You said you weren’t going to allow lobbyists in the senior-most positions within your administration, and yet you did. I applauded you when you said it — and disappointed when you didn’t.

You said you’d go line by line through the health care debate — or through the health care bill. And there were six of us, including Dr. Phil Roe, who sent you a letter and said, “We would like to take you up on the offer; we’d like to come.” We never heard a letter, we never got a call. We were never involved in any of those discussions.

And when you said in the House of Representatives that you were going to tackle earmarks — in fact, you didn’t want to have any earmarks in any of your bills — I jumped up out of my seat and applauded you. But it didn’t happen.

More importantly, I want to talk about moving forward, but if we could address –

THE PRESIDENT: Well, how about –

CONGRESSMAN CHAFFETZ: — I would certainly appreciate it.

THE PRESIDENT: That was a long list, so — (laughter) — let me respond.

Look, the truth of the matter is that if you look at the health care process — just over the course of the year — overwhelmingly the majority of it actually was on C-SPAN, because it was taking place in congressional hearings in which you guys were participating. I mean, how many committees were there that helped to shape this bill? Countless hearings took place.

Now, I kicked it off, by the way, with a meeting with many of you, including your key leadership. What is true, there’s no doubt about it, is that once it got through the committee process and there were now a series of meetings taking place all over the Capitol trying to figure out how to get the thing together — that was a messy process. And I take responsibility for not having structured it in a way where it was all taking place in one place that could be filmed. How to do that logistically would not have been as easy as it sounds, because you’re shuttling back and forth between the House, the Senate, different offices, et cetera, different legislators. But I think it’s a legitimate criticism. So on that one, I take responsibility.

With respect to earmarks, we didn’t have earmarks in the Recovery Act. We didn’t get a lot of credit for it, but there were no earmarks in that. I was confronted at the beginning of my term with an omnibus package that did have a lot of earmarks from Republicans and Democrats, and a lot of people in this chamber. And the question was whether I was going to have a big budget fight, at a time when I was still trying to figure out whether or not the financial system was melting down and we had to make a whole bunch of emergency decisions about the economy. So what I said was let’s keep them to a minimum, but I couldn’t excise them all.

Now, the challenge I guess I would have for you as a freshman, is what are you doing inside your caucus to make sure that I’m not the only guy who is responsible for this stuff, so that we’re working together, because this is going to be a process?

When we talk about earmarks, I think all of us are willing to acknowledge that some of them are perfectly defensible, good projects; it’s just they haven’t gone through the regular appropriations process in the full light of day. So one place to start is to make sure that they are at least transparent, that everybody knows what’s there before we move forward.

In terms of lobbyists, I can stand here unequivocally and say that there has not been an administration who was tougher on making sure that lobbyists weren’t participating in the administration than any administration that’s come before us.

Now, what we did was, if there were lobbyists who were on boards and commissions that were carryovers and their term hadn’t been completed, we didn’t kick them off. We simply said that moving forward any time a new slot opens, they’re being replaced.

So we’ve actually been very consistent in making sure that we are eliminating the impact of lobbyists, day in, day out, on how this administration operates. There have been a handful of waivers where somebody is highly skilled — for example, a doctor who ran Tobacco-Free Kids technically is a registered lobbyist; on the other end, has more experience than anybody in figuring out how kids don’t get hooked on cigarettes.

So there have been a couple of instances like that, but generally we’ve been very consistent on that front.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee.

CONGRESSMAN BLACKBURN: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for acknowledging that we have ideas on health care because, indeed, we do have ideas, we have plans, we have over 50 bills, we have lots of amendments that would bring health care ideas to the forefront. We would — we’ve got plans to lower cost, to change purchasing models, address medical liability, insurance accountability, chronic and preexisting conditions, and access to affordable care for those with those conditions, insurance portability, expanded access — but not doing it with creating more government, more bureaucracy, and more cost for the American taxpayer.

And we look forward to sharing those ideas with you. We want to work with you on health reform and making certain that we do it in an affordable, cost-effective way that is going to reduce bureaucracy, reduce government interference, and reduce costs to individuals and to taxpayers. And if those good ideas aren’t making it to you, maybe it’s the House Democrat leadership that is an impediment instead of a conduit.

But we’re concerned also that there are some lessons learned from public option health care plans that maybe are not being heeded. And certainly in my state of Tennessee, we were the test case for public option health care in 1994, and our Democrat government has even cautioned that maybe our experiences there would provide some lessons learned that should be heeded, and would provide guidance for us to go forward. And as you said, what we should be doing is tossing old ideas out, bad ideas out, and moving forward in refining good ideas. And certainly we would welcome that opportunity.

So my question to you is, when will we look forward to starting anew and sitting down with you to put all of these ideas on the table, to look at these lessons learned, to benefit from that experience, and to produce a product that is going to reduce government interference, reduce cost, and be fair to the American taxpayer? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I’ve gotten many of your ideas. I’ve taken a look at them, even before I was handed this. Some of the ideas we have embraced in our package. Some of them are embraced with caveats. So let me give you an example.

I think one of the proposals that has been focused on by the Republicans as a way to reduce costs is allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. We actually include that as part of our approach. But the caveat is, we’ve got to do so with some minimum standards, because otherwise what happens is that you could have insurance companies circumvent a whole bunch of state regulations about basic benefits or what have you, making sure that a woman is able to get mammograms as part of preventive care, for example. Part of what could happen is insurance companies could go into states and cherry-pick and just get those who are healthiest and leave behind those who are least healthy, which would raise everybody’s premiums who weren’t healthy, right?

So it’s not that many of these ideas aren’t workable, but we have to refine them to make sure that they don’t just end up worsening the situation for folks rather than making it better.

Now, what I said at the State of the Union is what I still believe: If you can show me — and if I get confirmation from health care experts, people who know the system and how it works, including doctors and nurses — ways of reducing people’s premiums; covering those who do not have insurance; making it more affordable for small businesses; having insurance reforms that ensure people have insurance even when they’ve got preexisting conditions, that their coverage is not dropped just because they’re sick, that young people right out of college or as they’re entering in the workforce can still get health insurance — if those component parts are things that you care about and want to do, I’m game. And I’ve got — and I’ve got a lot of these ideas.

The last thing I will say, though — let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

And so we were in the process of scrubbing this and making sure that it’s tight. But at its core, if you look at the basic proposal that we’ve put forward: it has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool and can get bargaining power the same way big companies do; the insurance reforms that I’ve already discussed, making sure that there’s choice and competition for those who don’t have health insurance. The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and, certainly you don’t agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that’s not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that’s how you guys — (applause) — that’s how you guys presented it.

And so I’m thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist — no, look, I mean, I’m just saying, I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans — is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.

So all I’m saying is, we’ve got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.

And I would just say that we have to think about tone. It’s not just on your side, by the way — it’s on our side, as well. This is part of what’s happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do.

Mike.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Dr. Tom Price from Georgia, and then we’ll have one more after that if your time permits, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I’m having fun. (Laughter.)

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Okay.

THE PRESIDENT: This is great. (Applause.)

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: So are we.

CONGRESSMAN PRICE: Mr. President, thank you. I want to stick on the general topic of health care, but ask a very specific question. You have repeatedly said, most recently at the State of the Union, that Republicans have offered no ideas and no solutions. In spite of the fact –

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think I said that. What I said was, within the context of health care — I remember that speech pretty well, it was only two days ago — (laughter) — I said I welcome ideas that you might provide. I didn’t say that you haven’t provided ideas. I said I welcome those ideas that you’ll provide.

CONGRESSMAN PRICE: Mr. President, multiple times, from your administration, there have come statements that Republicans have no ideas and no solutions. In spite of the fact that we’ve offered, as demonstrated today, positive solutions to all of the challenges we face, including energy and the economy and health care, specifically in the area of health care — this bill, H.R.3400, that has more co-sponsors than any health care bill in the House, is a bill that would provide health coverage for all Americans; would correct the significant insurance challenges of affordability and preexisting; would solve the lawsuit abuse issue, which isn’t addressed significantly in the other proposals that went through the House and the Senate; would write into law that medical decisions are made between patients and families and doctors; and does all of that without raising taxes by a penny.

But my specific question is, what should we tell our constituents who know that Republicans have offered positive solutions to the challenges that Americans face and yet continue to hear out of the administration that we’ve offered nothing?

THE PRESIDENT: Tom, look, I have to say that on the — let’s just take the health care debate. And it’s probably not constructive for us to try to debate a particular bill — this isn’t the venue to do it. But if you say, “We can offer coverage for all Americans, and it won’t cost a penny,” that’s just not true. You can’t structure a bill where suddenly 30 million people have coverage, and it costs nothing. If –

CONGRESSMAN PRICE: Mr. President, can I — and I understand that we’re not interested in debating this bill, but what should we tell our constituents who know that we’ve offered these solutions and yet hear from the administration that we have offered nothing.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me — I’m using this as a specific example, so let me answer your question. You asked a question; I want to answer it.

It’s not enough if you say, for example, that we’ve offered a health care plan and I look up — this is just under the section that you’ve just provided me, or the book that you just provided me — summary of GOP health care reform bill: The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing America’s number-one priority for health reform. I mean, that’s an idea that we all embrace. But specifically it’s got to work. I mean, there’s got to be a mechanism in these plans that I can go to an independent health care expert and say, is this something that will actually work, or is it boilerplate?

If I’m told, for example, that the solution to dealing with health care costs is tort reform, something that I’ve said I am willing to work with you on, but the CBO or other experts say to me, at best, this could reduce health care costs relative to where they’re growing by a couple of percentage points, or save $5 billion a year, that’s what we can score it at, and it will not bend the cost curve long term or reduce premiums significantly — then you can’t make the claim that that’s the only thing that we have to do. If we’re going to do multi-state insurance so that people can go across state lines, I’ve got to be able to go to an independent health care expert, Republican or Democrat, who can tell me that this won’t result in cherry-picking of the healthiest going to some and the least healthy being worse off.

So I am absolutely committed to working with you on these issues, but it can’t just be political assertions that aren’t substantiated when it comes to the actual details of policy. Because otherwise, we’re going to be selling the American people a bill of goods. I mean, the easiest thing for me to do on the health care debate would have been to tell people that what you’re going to get is guaranteed health insurance, lower your costs, all the insurance reforms; we’re going to lower the costs of Medicare and Medicaid and it won’t cost anybody anything. That’s great politics, it’s just not true.

So there’s got to be some test of realism in any of these proposals, mine included. I’ve got to hold myself accountable, and guaranteed the American people will hold themselves — will hold me accountable if what I’m selling doesn’t actually deliver.

CONGRESSMAN PRICE: Mr. President, a point of clarification, what’s in the Better Solutions book are all the legislative proposals that were offered –

THE PRESIDENT: I understand that. I’ve actually read your bills.

CONGRESSMAN PRICE: — throughout 2009.

THE PRESIDENT: I understand.

CONGRESSMAN PRICE: And so, rest assured the summary document you received is backed up by precisely the kind of detailed legislation that Speaker Pelosi and your administration have been busy ignoring for 12 months.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mike — well, hold on, hold on a second. No, no, no, no. Hold on a second, guys. (Applause.)

You know, Mike, I’ve read your legislation. I mean, I take a look at this stuff — and the good ideas we take. But here’s — here’s the thing — here’s the thing that I guess all of us have to be mindful of, it can’t be all or nothing, one way or the other. And what I mean by that is this: If we put together a stimulus package in which a third of it are tax cuts that normally you guys would support, and support for states and the unemployed, and helping people stay on COBRA that your governors certainly would support — Democrat or a Republican; and then you’ve got some infrastructure, and maybe there’s some things in there that you don’t like in terms of infrastructure, or you think the bill should have been $500 billion instead of $700 billion or there’s this provision or that provision that you don’t like. If there’s uniform opposition because the Republican caucus doesn’t get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you want, then it’s going to be hard to get a deal done. That’s because that’s not how democracy works.

So my hope would be that we can look at some of these component parts of what we’re doing and maybe we break some of them up on different policy issues. So if the good congressman from Utah has a particular issue on lobbying reform that he wants to work with us on, we may not able to agree on a comprehensive package on everything but there may be some component parts that we can work on.

You may not support our overall jobs package, but if you look at the tax credit that we’re proposing for small businesses right now, it is consistent with a lot of what you guys have said in the past. And just the fact that it’s my administration that’s proposing it shouldn’t prevent you from supporting it. That’s my point.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Thank you, Mr. President. Peter Roskam from the great state of Illinois.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, Peter is an old friend of mine.

CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM: Hey, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Peter and I have had many debates.

CONGRESMAN ROSKAM: Well, this won’t be one. Mr. President, I heard echoes today of the state senator that I served with in Springfield and there was an attribute and a characteristic that you had that I think served you well there. You took on some very controversial subjects — death penalty reform — you and I –

THE PRESIDENT: Sure. We worked on it together.

CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM: — negotiated on. You took on ethics reform. You took on some big things. One of the keys was you rolled your sleeves up, you worked with the other party, and ultimately you were able to make the deal. Now, here’s an observation.

Over the past year, in my view, that attribute hasn’t been in full bloom. And by that I mean, you’ve gotten this subtext of House Republicans that sincerely want to come and be a part of this national conversation toward solutions, but they’ve really been stiff-armed by Speaker Pelosi. Now, I know you’re not in charge of that chamber, but there really is this dynamic of, frankly, being shut out. When John Boehner and Eric Cantor presented last February to you some substantive job creation, our stimulus alternative, the attack machine began to marginalize Eric — and we can all look at the articles — as “Mr. No,” and there was this pretty dark story, ultimately, that wasn’t productive and wasn’t within this sort of framework that you’re articulating today.

So here’s the question. Moving forward, I think all of us want to hit the reset button on 2009. How do we move forward? And on the job creation piece in particular, you mentioned Colombia, you mentioned Panama, you mentioned South Korea. Are you willing to work with us, for example, to make sure those FTAs get called, that’s no-cost job creation? And ultimately, as you’re interacting with world leaders, that’s got to put more arrows in your quiver, and that’s a very, very powerful tool for us. But the obstacle is, frankly, the politics within the Democratic caucus?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, Peter and I did work together effectively on a whole host of issues. One of our former colleagues is right now running for governor, on the Republican side, in Illinois. In the Republican primary, of course, they’re running ads of him saying nice things about me. Poor guy. (Laughter.)

Although that’s one of the points that I made earlier. I mean, we’ve got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us. They don’t know sometimes this is just politics what you guys — or folks on my side do sometimes.

So just a tone of civility instead of slash and burn would be helpful. The problem we have sometimes is a media that responds only to slash-and-burn-style politics. You don’t get a lot of credit if I say, “You know, I think Paul Ryan is a pretty sincere guy and has a beautiful family.” Nobody is going to run that in the newspapers.

Q (Inaudible.) (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: And by the way, in case he’s going to get a Republican challenge, I didn’t mean it. (Laughter.) Don’t want to hurt you, man. (Laughter.)

But on the specifics, I think both sides can take some blame for a sour climate on Capitol Hill. What I can do maybe to help is to try to bring Republican and Democratic leadership together on a more regular basis with me. That’s, I think, a failure on my part, is to try to foster better communications even if there’s disagreement. And I will try to see if we can do more of that this year. That’s on the sort of the general issue.

On the specific issue of trade, you’re right, there are conflicts within and fissures within the Democratic Party. I suspect there are probably going to be some fissures within the Republican Party, as well. I mean, you know, if you went to some of your constituencies, they’d be pretty suspicious about it, new trade agreements, because the suspicion is somehow they’re all one way.

So part of what we’ve been trying to do is to make sure that we’re getting the enforcement side of this tight, make sure that if we’ve got a trade agreement with China or other countries, that they are abiding with it — they’re not stealing our intellectual property or making sure that their non-tariff barriers are lowered even as ours are opened up. And my hope is, is that we can move forward with some of these trade agreements having built some confidence — not just among particular constituency groups, but among the American people — that trade is going to be reciprocal; that it’s not just going to be a one-way street.

You are absolutely right though, Peter, when you say, for example, South Korea is a great ally of ours. I mean, when I visited there, there is no country that is more committed to friendship on a whole range of fronts than South Korea. What is also true is that the European Union is about to sign a trade agreement with South Korea, which means right at the moment when they start opening up their markets, the Europeans might get in there before we do.

So we’ve got to make sure that we seize these opportunities. I will be talking more about trade this year. It’s going to have to be trade that combines opening their markets with an enforcement mechanism, as well as just opening up our markets. I think that’s something that all of us would agree on. Let’s see if we can execute it over the next several years. All right, is that it?

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Jeb Hensarling, Texas. And that will be it, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Jim [sic] is going to wrap things up?

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: All right.

CONGRESSMAN HENSARLING: Jeb, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: How are you?

CONGRESSMAN HENSARLING: I’m doing well. Mr. President, a year ago I had an opportunity to speak to you about the national debt. And something that you and I have in common is we both have small children.

THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely.

CONGRESSMAN HENSARLING: And I left that conversation really feeling your sincere commitment to ensuring that our children, our nation’s children, do not inherit an unconscionable debt. We know that under current law, that government — the cost of government is due to grow from 20 percent of our economy to 40 percent of our economy, right about the time our children are leaving college and getting that first job.

Mr. President, shortly after that conversation a year ago, the Republicans proposed a budget that ensured that government did not grow beyond the historical standard of 20 percent of GDP. It was a budget that actually froze immediately non-defense discretionary spending. It spent $5 trillion less than ultimately what was enacted into law, and unfortunately, I believe that budget was ignored. And since that budget was ignored, what were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats. The national debt has increased 30 percent.

Now, Mr. President, I know you believe — and I understand the argument, and I respect the view that the spending is necessary due to the recession; many of us believe, frankly, it’s part of the problem, not part of the solution. But I understand and I respect your view. But this is what I don’t understand, Mr. President. After that discussion, your administration proposed a budget that would triple the national debt over the next 10 years — surely you don’t believe 10 years from now we will still be mired in this recession — and propose new entitlement spending and move the cost of government to almost 24.5 percent of the economy.

Now, very soon, Mr. President, you’re due to submit a new budget. And my question is –

THE PRESIDENT: Jeb, I know there’s a question in there somewhere, because you’re making a whole bunch of assertions, half of which I disagree with, and I’m having to sit here listening to them. At some point I know you’re going to let me answer. All right.

CONGRESSMAN HENSARLING: That’s the question. You are soon to submit a new budget, Mr. President. Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy? That’s the question, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Jeb, with all due respect, I’ve just got to take this last question as an example of how it’s very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we’re going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign.

Now, look, let’s talk about the budget once again, because I’ll go through it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. — $1.3 [trillion.] So when you say that suddenly I’ve got a monthly budget that is higher than the — a monthly deficit that’s higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true.

And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade — had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000 when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for.

You had a prescription drug plan — the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades — that was passed without it being paid for. You had two wars that were done through supplementals. And then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession. That’s $8 trillion.

Now, we increased it by a trillion dollars because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus. I am happy to have any independent fact-checker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said.

Now, going forward, here’s the deal. I think, Paul, for example, head of the budget committee, has looked at the budget and has made a serious proposal. I’ve read it. I can tell you what’s in it. And there are some ideas in there that I would agree with, but there are some ideas that we should have a healthy debate about because I don’t agree with them.

The major driver of our long-term liabilities, everybody here knows, is Medicare and Medicaid and our health care spending. Nothing comes close. Social Security we could probably fix the same way Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan sat down together and they could figure something out. That is manageable. Medicare and Medicaid — massive problem down the road. That’s where — that’s going to be what our children have to worry about.

Now, Paul’s approach — and I want to be careful not simplifying this, because I know you’ve got a lot of detail in your plan — but if I understand it correctly, would say we’re going to provide vouchers of some sort for current Medicare recipients at the current level –

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: No.

THE PRESIDENT: No?

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: People 55 and above –

THE PRESIDENT: Fifty-five and — well, no, I understand. I mean, there’s a grandfathering in, but just for future beneficiaries, right? That’s why I said I didn’t want to — I want to make sure that I’m not being unfair to your proposal, but I just want to point out that I’ve read it. And the basic idea would be that at some point we hold Medicare cost per recipient constant as a way of making sure that that doesn’t go way out of whack, and I’m sure there are some details that –

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: We drew it as a blend of inflation and health inflation, the point of our plan is — because Medicare, as you know, is a $38 trillion unfunded liability — it has to be reform for younger generations because it won’t exist because it’s going bankrupt. And the premise of our idea is, look, why not give people the same kind of health care plan we here have in Congress? That’s the kind of reform we’re proposing for Medicare. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: No, I understand. Right, right. Well, look, as I said before, this is an entirely legitimate proposal. The problem is twofold: One is that depending on how it’s structured, if recipients are suddenly getting a plan that has their reimbursement rates going like this, but health care costs are still going up like that, then over time the way we’re saving money is essentially by capping what they’re getting relative to their costs.

Now, I just want to point out — and this brings me to the second problem — when we made a very modest proposal as part of our package, our health care reform package, to eliminate the subsidies going to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage, we were attacked across the board, by many on your aisle, for slashing Medicare. You remember? We’re going to start cutting benefits for seniors. That was the story that was perpetrated out there — scared the dickens out of a lot of seniors.

No, no, but here’s my point. If the main question is going to be what do we do about Medicare costs, any proposal that Paul makes will be painted, factually, from the perspective of those who disagree with it, as cutting benefits over the long term. Paul, I don’t think you disagree with that, that there is a political vulnerability to doing anything that tinkers with Medicare. And that’s probably the biggest savings that are obtained through Paul’s plan.

And I raise that not because we shouldn’t have a series discussion about it. I raise that because we’re not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterized, whatever proposals are put out there, as, well, you know, that’s — the other party is being irresponsible; the other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens; that the other party is doing X, Y, Z.

That’s why I say if we’re going to frame these debates in ways that allow us to solve them, then we can’t start off by figuring out, A, who’s to blame; B, how can we make the American people afraid of the other side. And unfortunately, that’s how our politics works right now. And that’s how a lot of our discussion works. That’s how we start off — every time somebody speaks in Congress, the first thing they do, they stand up and all the talking points — I see Frank Luntz up here sitting in the front. He’s already polled it, and he said, you know, the way you’re really going to — I’ve done a focus group and the way we’re going to really box in Obama on this one or make Pelosi look bad on that one — I know, I like Frank, we’ve had conversations between Frank and I. But that’s how we operate. It’s all tactics, and it’s not solving problems.

And so the question is, at what point can we have a serious conversation about Medicare and its long-term liability, or a serious question about — a serious conversation about Social Security, or a serious conversation about budget and debt in which we’re not simply trying to position ourselves politically. That’s what I’m committed to doing. We won’t agree all the time in getting it done, but I’m committed to doing it.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Take one more?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I’ve already gone over time. But I’ll be happy to take your question, Congressman, offline. You can give me a call. All right, thank you, everybody. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. Thank you, everybody. (Applause.)

END — 1:32 P.M. EST

Howard Zinn, author of the monumental work, A People’s History of the United States, revolutionized the field of historical research the world over, establishing the principle that true historical narrative must include a genuine reporting of indigenous experience and a more multifaceted factual accounting of events, including the impact of efforts to establish a new civilization on traditional cultures. Zinn died last week of heart failure, aged 87.

Zinn’s contribution to critical analysis and historical research is incalculable, but also fit well with the rising mood of a period in which advanced post-colonial theory spread the demand for an honest accounting of history, including all points of view. Zinn directly challenged the view that all historical “victories” were just and reminded readers that there are facts that complicate all histories, even if the fashion in telling them tends to be to gloss over nuance.

Many have argued that Howard Zinn’s contribution to the culture of the American republic has been to remind us, or perhaps to introduce for the first time the idea —with historical evidence on his side—, that American history is a history of action supported by popular action from the ground up. Zinn saw too much of history obscured by the narrative of powerful men dictating policy and identity, a picture at odds with the true lived history of the nation.

A piece in The Progressive magazine, from July 2009, helps to illustrate Zinn’s daring approach to telling the truth of the historical circumstances that mark the moments we cherish as signs of heroism and inherently virtuous or enlightened collective action. He reminds readers that the American Revolution was not really a war of a united, oppressed people against a cruel tyrant, but rather a chaotic cajoling of popular sentiment to inspire revolt.

The historical circumstances were imposing real injustice on people from various social strata, but not all of those people shared the same interest in going to war to right the injustice. Zinn writes:

In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.

Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing we’re not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.

The argument is not necessarily to say that the war was exclusively the result of monied interests wanting war, but rather that the interests of the popular revolution could have been achieved by other means, and in other places were, that the war could have been delayed, or made unnecessary, while the ends achieved. For Zinn, the manner in which the language and machinery of war were precipitated is relevant to understanding what happened, and why, and what the long-term effects of that legacy might have been.

He also explains that native Americans were very negatively impacted by the revolution’s vacating the Proclamation of 1763, which barred any settlements west of an agreed-upon colonial border. African-American slaves were not helped by the revolution, because “Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution.” That unjustifiable aberration was “legitimized” by the same document that gave birth to our democracy.

Ultimately, Zinn’s message in this historical unpacking of the mythology of the revolution, like the message of his illustrious career as a leading historian, amounts to the closing line of that article: “We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.” Zinn knew, because he served as a bombardier in World War II, and was fundamentally changed by what he experienced.

Zinn’s most resonant contribution to world historical narrative and study is his monumental A People’s History of the United States, a book that reframed what history as a discipline was called to do, and led by example. As Dave Zirin wrote in The Nation, in honor of Zinn:

In Howard’s book, the central actors were the runaway slaves, the labor radicals, the masses and the misfits. It was history writ by Robin Hood, speaking to a desire so many share: to actually make history instead of being history’s victim. His book came alive in December with the debut of The People Speak on the History Channel as actors, musicians, and poets, brought Zinn’s book to life.

Howard was asked once whether his praise of dissent and protest was divisive. He answered beautifully: “Yes, dissent and protest are divisive, but in a good way, because they represent accurately the real divisions in society. Those divisions exist – the rich, the poor – whether there is dissent or not, but when there is no dissent, there is no change. The dissent has the possibility not of ending the division in society, but of changing the reality of the division. Changing the balance of power on behalf of the poor and the oppressed.”

For Zinn, it was a natural truth that power does not trickle down, but rather is determined and directed by the movement of popular will. For that reason, his interest was in fostering a greater individual awareness of the history of real people, as they experienced the great trends and moments of celebrated historical narratives. His true mission, as an historian, might be described as keeping alive the demand that a nation founded on democratic ideals live up to the virtues inherent in those ideals.

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in 1762, in The Social Contract, “It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimise an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would no longer be arbitrary.” He might balk at the definition of democracy emerging from an Enlightenment figure like Rousseau, but Zinn himself sought to ensure that an alert citizenry could render obsolete the very idea of arbitrary government and choose for themselves.

This video is a talk given by Dr. Eugene McCarraher, at Villanova University, on the subject of corporate personhood. He explores the many problems related to the development of the legal principle that corporations can be granted the actual rights that law assigns only to persons. He reveals the stunning historical roots of corporate personhood in the “legal fiction” of the “metaphysical body” of medieval kings. By way of introduction, Dr. McCarraher explains:

To its admirers … the business corporation mobilizes all the technological and scientific and organizational prowess that provides us with our food, clothing, our shelter and what seems to be the apparently inexhaustible supply of commodities that we have. In this view, the corporation simply, humbly serves the sovereign consumer in the unregulated market. And so, the corporation represents the triumph not simply of capitalism, but also of democracy.

Now, to its detractors, the business corporation is this huge and unacknowledged tyranny. It’s a Gargantua that wastes and despoils the planet’s ecology. It’s a globe-encircling syndicate of avarice and exploitation. Well, I just want to say that corporations are people too. Quite literally. That’s not a smirking irony on a bumper sticker; it is legal reality. Or, more precisely, it’s a legal fiction, whose enactment has all sorts of material and cultural and political implications.

Dr. McCarraher tells “a brief history of the legal fiction of corporate personhood” and speaks of “some of the real weirdness, let alone injustice, that stems from this, and suggest some alternatives to the current legal and political structure of corporate governance”. Ultimately, he believes “the achievement of social justice in this case requires that we limit rights, that we curtail rights, even take them away, from certain entities”, the important part of this being that those entities are not persons, not citizens, not protected explicitly by the Constitution.

Among the most revealing details of this lecture, we find that historically, the corporation was created by state legislatures. In the early nineteenth century, “corporations were clearly understood to be public institutions. The state legislative charters that created them “specified their objectives and their dates of termination. When you created a corporation in, say, 1834, you specified the date on which it was created and the date on which it would end.”

In 1834, the Pennsylvania state legislature resolved that a corporation was created specifically to serve some public good, and was therefore “the creature of the law and may be molded to any shape or for any purpose the legislature may deem most conducive to the common good”. This legal philosophy undermines the argument that corporations are “persons”, as the foundations of American law hold that people are “created” before the law and have rights the government cannot remove or determine. The corporation was very specifically designed to be something other than a legal person.

The following is a transcript of the “Drum Major Instinct” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 February 1968 — for part 2 of the video, click here

This morning I would like to use as a subject from which to preach: “The Drum Major Instinct.” “The Drum Major Instinct.” And our text for the morning is taken from a very familiar passage in the tenth chapter as recorded by Saint Mark. Beginning with the thirty-fifth verse of that chapter, we read these words: “And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came unto him saying, ‘Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire.’ And he said unto them, ‘What would ye that I should do for you?’ And they said unto him, ‘Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.’ But Jesus said unto them, ‘Ye know not what ye ask: Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ And they said unto him, ‘We can.’ And Jesus said unto them, ‘Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.’” And then Jesus goes on toward the end of that passage to say, “But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.”

The setting is clear. James and John are making a specific request of the master. They had dreamed, as most of the Hebrews dreamed, of a coming king of Israel who would set Jerusalem free and establish his kingdom on Mount Zion, and in righteousness rule the world. And they thought of Jesus as this kind of king. And they were thinking of that day when Jesus would reign supreme as this new king of Israel. And they were saying, “Now when you establish your kingdom, let one of us sit on the right hand and the other on the left hand of your throne.”

Now very quickly, we would automatically condemn James and John, and we would say they were selfish. Why would they make such a selfish request? But before we condemn them too quickly, let us look calmly and honestly at ourselves, and we will discover that we too have those same basic desires for recognition, for importance. That same desire for attention, that same desire to be first. Of course, the other disciples got mad with James and John, and you could understand why, but we must understand that we have some of the same James and John qualities. And there is deep down within all of us an instinct. It’s a kind of drum major instinct—a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first. And it is something that runs the whole gamut of life.

And so before we condemn them, let us see that we all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. Alfred Adler, the great psychoanalyst, contends that this is the dominant impulse. Sigmund Freud used to contend that sex was the dominant impulse, and Adler came with a new argument saying that this quest for recognition, this desire for attention, this desire for distinction is the basic impulse, the basic drive of human life, this drum major instinct.

And you know, we begin early to ask life to put us first. Our first cry as a baby was a bid for attention. And all through childhood the drum major impulse or instinct is a major obsession. Children ask life to grant them first place. They are a little bundle of ego. And they have innately the drum major impulse or the drum major instinct.

Now in adult life, we still have it, and we really never get by it. We like to do something good. And you know, we like to be praised for it. Now if you don’t believe that, you just go on living life, and you will discover very soon that you like to be praised. Everybody likes it, as a matter of fact. And somehow this warm glow we feel when we are praised or when our name is in print is something of the vitamin A to our ego. Nobody is unhappy when they are praised, even if they know they don’t deserve it and even if they don’t believe it. The only unhappy people about praise is when that praise is going too much toward somebody else. (That’s right) But everybody likes to be praised because of this real drum major instinct.

Now the presence of the drum major instinct is why so many people are “joiners.” You know, there are some people who just join everything. And it’s really a quest for attention and recognition and importance. And they get names that give them that impression. So you get your groups, and they become the “Grand Patron,” and the little fellow who is henpecked at home needs a chance to be the “Most Worthy of the Most Worthy” of something. It is the drum major impulse and longing that runs the gamut of human life. And so we see it everywhere, this quest for recognition. And we join things, overjoin really, that we think that we will find that recognition in.

Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. (Make it plain) In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff. (Yes) That’s the way the advertisers do it.

I got a letter the other day, and it was a new magazine coming out. And it opened up, “Dear Dr. King: As you know, you are on many mailing lists. And you are categorized as highly intelligent, progressive, a lover of the arts and the sciences, and I know you will want to read what I have to say.” Of course I did. After you said all of that and explained me so exactly, of course I wanted to read it. [laughter]

But very seriously, it goes through life; the drum major instinct is real. (Yes) And you know what else it causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means. (Make it plain) It’s nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? (Amen) [laughter] You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. (Make it plain) But it feeds a repressed ego.

You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn’t cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That’s just good economics. And if it’s a family of two, and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it’s often inconvenient. But so often, haven’t you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. [laughter] That’s a fact.

Now the economists also say that your house shouldn’t cost—if you’re buying a house, it shouldn’t cost more than twice your income. That’s based on the economy and how you would make ends meet. So, if you have an income of five thousand dollars, it’s kind of difficult in this society. But say it’s a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house shouldn’t cost much more than twenty thousand. Well, I’ve seen folk making ten thousand dollars, living in a forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar house. And you know they just barely make it. They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in. Never have anything to put away for rainy days.

But now the problem is, it is the drum major instinct. And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses. (Amen) They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better-looking than Mary’s coat. And I got to drive this car because it’s something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor’s car. (Amen) I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don’t know where he’s going to end up if he’s going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.

There comes a time that the drum major instinct can become destructive. (Make it plain) And that’s where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct. For instance, if it isn’t harnessed, it causes one’s personality to become distorted. I guess that’s the most damaging aspect of it: what it does to the personality. If it isn’t harnessed, you will end up day in and day out trying to deal with your ego problem by boasting. Have you ever heard people that—you know, and I’m sure you’ve met them—that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves. (Amen) And they just boast and boast and boast, and that’s the person who has not harnessed the drum major instinct.

And then it does other things to the personality. It causes you to lie about who you know sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) There are some people who are influence peddlers. And in their attempt to deal with the drum major instinct, they have to try to identify with the so-called big-name people. (Yeah, Make it plain) And if you’re not careful, they will make you think they know somebody that they don’t really know. (Amen) They know them well, they sip tea with them, and they this-and-that. That happens to people.

And the other thing is that it causes one to engage ultimately in activities that are merely used to get attention. Criminologists tell us that some people are driven to crime because of this drum major instinct. They don’t feel that they are getting enough attention through the normal channels of social behavior, and so they turn to anti-social behavior in order to get attention, in order to feel important. (Yeah) And so they get that gun, and before they know it they robbed a bank in a quest for recognition, in a quest for importance.

And then the final great tragedy of the distorted personality is the fact that when one fails to harness this instinct, (Glory to God) he ends up trying to push others down in order to push himself up. (Amen) And whenever you do that, you engage in some of the most vicious activities. You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people, because you are trying to pull them down in order to push yourself up. (Make it plain) And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.

Now the other problem is, when you don’t harness the drum major instinct—this uncontrolled aspect of it—is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism. It leads to snobbish exclusivism. (Make it plain) And you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities—I’m in a fraternity; I’m in two or three—for sororities and all of these, I’m not talking against them. I’m saying it’s the danger. The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism where somehow you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive. And that’s fulfilling something, you know—that I’m in this fraternity, and it’s the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can’t get in this fraternity. So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing.

And you know, that can happen with the church; I know churches get in that bind sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) I’ve been to churches, you know, and they say, “We have so many doctors, and so many school teachers, and so many lawyers, and so many businessmen in our church.” And that’s fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers, and businessmen, teachers—they ought to be in church. But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don’t count. (Amen)

And the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he’s a doctor. The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he’s a Ph.D. (Yes) The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he’s a lawyer. And any church that violates the “whosoever will, let him come” doctrine is a dead, cold church, (Yes) and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

When the church is true to its nature, (Whoo) it says, “Whosoever will, let him come.” (Yes) And it does not supposed to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct. It’s the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master and savior. (Yes, sir) And a recognition grows out of this—that all men are brothers because they are children (Yes) of a common father.

The drum major instinct can lead to exclusivism in one’s thinking and can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he’s a little better than that person who doesn’t have it. Or because he has some economic security, that he’s a little better than that person who doesn’t have it. And that’s the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct.

Now the other thing is, that it leads to tragic—and we’ve seen it happen so often—tragic race prejudice. Many who have written about this problem—Lillian Smith used to say it beautifully in some of her books. And she would say it to the point of getting men and women to see the source of the problem. Do you know that a lot of the race problem grows out of the drum major instinct? A need that some people have to feel superior. A need that some people have to feel that they are first, and to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first. (Make it plain, today, ‘cause I’m against it, so help me God) And they have said over and over again in ways that we see with our own eyes. In fact, not too long ago, a man down in Mississippi said that God was a charter member of the White Citizens Council. And so God being the charter member means that everybody who’s in that has a kind of divinity, a kind of superiority. And think of what has happened in history as a result of this perverted use of the drum major instinct. It has led to the most tragic prejudice, the most tragic expressions of man’s inhumanity to man.

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I’m in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You’re just as poor as Negroes.” And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

Now that’s a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can’t hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out. (Amen)

And not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes into the struggle between nations. And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn’t happen to stop this trend, I’m sorely afraid that we won’t be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. (Yeah) If somebody doesn’t bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody’s going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don’t let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. (Amen) They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.

But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. “I must be first.” “I must be supreme.” “Our nation must rule the world.” (Preach it) And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. (Amen) The God that I worship has a way of saying, “Don’t play with me.” (Yes) He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, “Don’t play with me, Israel. Don’t play with me, Babylon. (Yes) Be still and know that I’m God. And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.” (Yes) And that can happen to America. (Yes) Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.

But let me rush on to my conclusion, because I want you to see what Jesus was really saying. What was the answer that Jesus gave these men? It’s very interesting. One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, “You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?”

But that isn’t what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, “Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you’re going to be my disciple, you must be.” But he reordered priorities. And he said, “Yes, don’t give up this instinct. It’s a good instinct if you use it right. (Yes) It’s a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.”

And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, “Now brethren, I can’t give you greatness. And really, I can’t make you first.” This is what Jesus said to James and John. “You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared.” (Amen)

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That’s a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.[*]

I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I’m talking about as I go down the way (Yeah) because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, (Yes, sir) the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. (Amen) Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn’t have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. (Yes) He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. (Glory to God) He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. (Amen) One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. (Lord help him) When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together (Yes) have not affected the life of man on this earth (Amen) as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. (Jesus) But today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, “He’s King of Kings.” (Yes) And again I can hear somebody saying, “He’s Lord of Lords.” Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, “In Christ there is no East nor West.” (Yes) And then they go on and talk about, “In Him there’s no North and South, but one great Fellowship of Love throughout the whole wide world.” He didn’t have anything. (Amen) He just went around serving and doing good.

This morning, you can be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. (Amen) It’s the only way in.

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?” And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)

I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that’s all I want to say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.

If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

[* Emphasis added.]

At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What’s more, the steady decline in Obama’s approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.

Pres. Obama was accused early-on of making an unprecedented list of promises, and even by the time of his inauguration, there was speculation about a gap in election-year perceptions and aspirations and the realities of governing. It became popular in the mainstream media to propagate this “controversy”, asserting that Obama was “too idealistic” or even “naïve” and that somehow the “hard realities” of governing would, in time, make his Republican opponents’ case for them. 2009 has largely been a year in which media reporting has moved in the direction of promoting false controversies and enforcing self-fulfilling prophecies for their value as marketing tools.

Many of his detractors, and even some of his wavering supporters, will be surprised to learn that in his first year, Barack Obama has already fulfilled at least 79 campaign promises. This is one of the most accomplished records of any first year in office, and it has come with considerable difficulty in working with and around a Congress fraught with obstructionism and distracted by its own mythology regarding specific points of policy, and in the face of the most uniform and inflexible opposition any president in recent decades has faced.

The 79 promises kept, as fact-checked and reported by PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the St. Petersburg Times, are as follows:

• No. 6: Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes
• No. 15: Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
• No. 16: Increase minority access to capital
• No. 33: Establish a credit card bill of rights
• No. 36: Expand loan programs for small businesses
• No. 40: Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch
• No. 50: Expand the Senior Corps volunteer program
• No. 58: Expand eligibility for State Children’s Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
• No. 76: Expand funding to train primary care providers and public health practitioners
• No. 77: Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs
• No. 88: Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• No. 110: Assure that the Veterans Administration budget is prepared as ‘must-pass’ legislation
• No. 119: Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women
• No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq
• No. 132: No permanent bases in Iraq
• No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
• No. 154: Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
• No. 167: Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
• No. 174: Give a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration
• No. 182: Allocate Homeland Security funding according to risk
• No. 184: Create a real National Infrastructure Protection Plan
• No. 200: Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
• No. 208: Improve relations with Turkey, and its relations with Iraqi Kurds
• No. 212: Launch an international Add Value to Agriculture Initiative (AVTA)
• No. 215: Create a rapid response fund for emerging democracies
• No. 222: Grant Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba
• No. 224: Restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne/JAG) program
• No. 225: Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas
• No. 239: Release presidential records
• No. 241: Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions.
• No. 247: Recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession
• No. 266: Encourage water-conservation efforts in the West
• No. 269: Increase funding for national parks and forests
• No. 270: Increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund
• No. 272: Encourage farmers to use more renewable energy and be more energy efficient
• No. 277: Pursue a wildfire prevention and management plan
• No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
• No. 284: Expand access to places to hunt and fish
• No. 290: Push for enactment of Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors
• No. 300: Reform mandatory minimum sentences
• No. 307: Create a White House Office on Urban Policy
• No. 325: Create an artist corps for schools
• No. 326: Champion the importance of arts education
• No. 327: Support increased funding for the NEA
• No. 332: Add another Space Shuttle flight
• No. 334: Use the private sector to improve spaceflight
• No. 336: Partner to enhance the potential of the International Space Station
• No. 337: Use the International Space Station for fundamental biological and physical research
• No. 338: Explore whether International Space Station can operate after 2016
• No. 342: Work toward deploying a global climate change research and monitoring system
• No. 345: Enhance earth mapping
• No. 346: Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy
• No. 356: Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area
• No. 359: Rebuild schools in New Orleans
• No. 371: Fund a major expansion of AmeriCorps
• No. 380: Bolster the military’s ability to speak different languages
• No. 391: Appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer
• No. 394: Provide grants to early-career researchers
• No. 411: Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear
• No. 420: Create a national declassification center
• No. 421: Appoint an American Indian policy adviser
• No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
• No. 435: Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud
• No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year
• No. 458: Invest in all types of alternative energy
• No. 459: Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars
• No. 460: Ask people and businesses to conserve electricity
• No. 475: Require states to provide incentives for utilities to reduce energy consumption
• No. 480: Unprecedented expansion of funding for regional high-speed rail
• No. 483: Invest in public transportation
• No. 484: Equalize tax breaks for driving and public transit
• No. 494: Share enviromental technology with other countries
• No. 498: Provide grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes
• No. 500: Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency
• No. 502: Get his daughters a puppy
• No. 503: Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet
• No. 506: Raise the small business investment expensing limit to $250,000 through the end of 2009
• No. 507: Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits
• No. 513: Reverse restrictions on stem cell research

Most of these items are complex campaign pledges that Pres. Obama has been able to follow through on. Some just show he’s a man who follows through on his word, something the media should take more note of. But PolitiFact’s research shows a long list of serious political accomplishments, many of historic import, yet the mainstream media continues to report on the delays seen in enacting the most complex and comprehensive reforms undertaken in a generation, many of which —like healthcare reform, energy policy reform, terror prosecutions and financial regulatory reform— are actually moving forward at a historically meaningful pace, and will likely be achieved in the first half of 2010.

There are a further 226 campaign promises officially listed, after extensive fact-checking, as “in the works”, as of this morning. Many of these will be accomplished in 2010, giving Pres. Obama the most extensive record of success in fulfilling specific campaign promises in US history. We can expect this fact will not be widely reported, as the mainstream news media appear determined to posture “objectivity” by refusing to report successes Obama’s opponents refuse to acknowledge.

The perception that Pres. Obama has failed to aggressively pursue the progressive agenda he ran on is owing largely to the fact that his legislative and governing style is rooted in principled coalition-building. As both state senator in Illinois and as US senator from Illinois, Obama had important legislative successes that required building consensus across the aisle, with often ideologically-opposed allies on specific issues, like predatory lending and ethics reform.

It is likely the legislative schedule of 2010 will demonstrate that no president in recent history has had so many major legislative achievements, and that will be due to Obama’s insisting that principled policy-making move forward, even where compromises need to be made with ideological opponents, all in the interests of progress. Perhaps no president since John F. Kennedy so deliberately sought to move a progressive legislative agenda forward, and Obama is already being compared to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson in terms of the scope and historic import of his legislative agenda.

A piece in the New York Times magazine, for Sunday, 3 January 2010, explains Obama’s deliberative coalition-building and willingness to compromise is what makes him a principled progressive, able to see past the temptations of populist rhetoric:

Obama’s relentless pursuit of health care reform, even at the expense of provisions that liberals held sacred, may well place him alongside F.D.R. and Lyndon Johnson in the pantheon of progressive presidents who were able to substantially amend the nation’s social contract.

This unique talent for governing from the center —which requires the spending of political capital and necessarily calls forth protest from both the liberal and conservative wings of the political spectrum— is actually a meaningful change in the political dynamics of American government, and does in fact bring with it the significant promise voters demanded from the president they chose in 2008. It is this style of negotiation and coalition building that has allowed Pres. Obama to change the course of international negotiations and restore the United States to its leadership role abroad.

In the early days of his administration, he made clear his focus on bold, sustained diplomatic efforts would be a departure from the politics of command and control of the last two presidential terms. As this publication reported on 21 January 2009:

On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He also issued a strict executive order on ethics, barring anyone who had worked as a lobbyist who joins the administration from having any direct authority over or official contact with entities they had represented. That order marked a major turning point in the direction of the modern presidency, which had come to be dominated by the “revolving door” between government and lobbying, with many key officials in the last administration holding positions of direct influence over former clients.

On his second full day in office, Obama signed four historic executive orders, overturning controversial and/or unconstitutional policies from the previous administration:

He signed one order to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp by 22 January 2010, another to close CIA “black site” prisons across the globe, another would establish a special task force in collaboration with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to determine detention policy going forward, and the fourth would require all US personnel to adhere at all times to the rules for treatment of prisoners as laid out in the Army Field Manual.

The restructuring of US military detention policy was a major first step to restoring the image of the US around the world, once more taking a leadership role on human rights, and building the political capital necessary for orchestrating international consensus on major global issues. By the spring, the international climate had changed substantially, and there were concrete efforts being made to craft global agreement on key issues like nuclear arms reduction and elimination and greenhouse gas emissions policy.

In his landmark Prague speech, looking forward to “a world without nuclear weapons”, Obama explained “the trajectory we need to be on”:

First, the United States will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons. To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same. Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies –- including the Czech Republic. But we will begin the work of reducing our arsenal.

To reduce our warheads and stockpiles, we will negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians this year. (Applause.) President Medvedev and I began this process in London, and will seek a new agreement by the end of this year that is legally binding and sufficiently bold. And this will set the stage for further cuts, and we will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.

Indeed, the latter half of 2009 has seen the US and Russia negotiating intensely in Geneva to reach that agreement. Both Pres. Obama and Pres. Medvedev say the deal is near, though Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has no legal role in the negotiations or the formulation of a treaty, says US plans for a sea-based missile shield could be problematic for Russia’s security, going forward. The treaty would halve the nuclear arsenals of the two most prolific nuclear-armed powers.

Establishing a global nuclear test ban treaty and moving toward a global strategic arms reduction treaty, which would provide the framework for total denuclearization, some time in the future, once strict verification regimes are in place. Incremental denuclearization is, ultimately, a necessity, as evidenced by emerging conflicts within and near nuclear-armed states in the Middle East and Asia. As we reported in late April:

What we are seeing now in Pakistan is a good example: there is no guarantee that selective non-proliferation will not lead to cooperative black-market mechanisms that facilitate the spread of nuclear-weapons technology. Pakistan acquired the technology this way, and some of its black-marketeers may have further spread the technology they purchased. Pakistan is now experiencing severe political destabilization and the Taliban has taken over areas just 100 km from the capital.

Pres. Obama’a security policy, with regard to Pakistan, has done more to focus on safeguarding Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal against Taliban takeover or infiltration than any previous president. And we are now seeing a close integration of nuclear-weapons containment diplomacy with counter-terrorism efforts and pro-democracy development. This is the smartest way forward and a fulfillment of Pres. Obama’s promise of a more collaborative, hands-on foreign policy.

Key among the reform process initiated in Pres. Obama’s first months in office was the process of examining, overhauling and preserving major elements of the banking sector. This was uncomfortable for many in the financial industry, but as promised, Obama got involved, did not nationalize the banks, used government leverage to “stress test” the banks’ books and to implement reforms aimed at preventing their collapse. On 29 April, we reported:

Obama has challenged the entire banking system to reform in the interests of survival, not only aiming to prevent major bank failures and individual home foreclosures, but pressuring banks to lend again, and to cease accounting practices that lead to over-leveraging and phony claims about capital in reserve. With banks reeling from incomprehensible losses, and a credit freeze gripping the nation’s consumer markets, Obama did not relent in applying financial-analysis “stress tests” to banks’ books, to see what they could withstand and what real fiscal stability or resilience they had.

The New Republic is now calling those stress tests the “most underrated move of the year”. The magazine says the stress tests were “Obama’s best economic policy of 2009″ and notes that they “cost us … exactly nothing”. The stress tests allowed the government to understand the true scope of the financial crisis, steer the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) toward viable long-term thinking, and re-orient the markets to understand the nature of the banks’ capital shortfalls and adapt.

The New Republic praises the Obama administration for expanding transparency through the stress-testing process, helping to demonstrate that big banks could not simply bury their problems in dizzying mash-ups of manipulative accounting methods and that transparency itself actually has a market value, a positive influence on public confidence and willingness to invest. All of this was just a beginning, but the major news was: not one single major bank, no matter how troubled, collapsed during 2009, and the majority of projected bank failures were averted, despite over 100 smaller institutions taken over by the FDIC.

A similarly collaborative, pragmatist approach has won Obama favor for concrete, albeit sometimes hard to define, steps toward peacemaking around the world. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley has classed Obama as the United States’ “first global president”. Considering the rapid overhaul of the United States’ security and detention policies, to bring them in line with both domestic and international law, his aggressive outreach to leaders in the Middle East and across Asia, and his determined stance on nuclear disarmament, Pres. Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, much to the chagrin of his critics, who wish to paint him as an idealist who has “done nothing” while governing.

The award was controversial, because many believe his presidency is too near the beginning to speak of contributions to global peace and stability, but the award is often given to political figures whose goals are not yet achieved, some of whom have unsavory pasts, to say the least, and whose actions on the global stage have been less globally influential than Obama’s. His efforts throughout 2009 to establish an international climate of cooperation and dialogue have been vital to creating new opportunities for peace, and the Nobel Committee recognized this as the most important achievement of its kind for 2009.

The false controversy over whether Pres. Obama “deserved” the award obscured very substantial diplomatic achievements, some of which have already been named. On the occasion of the award, we noted:

UN SC Res. 1887 is one of the most important documents ever produced by the UN system, in that it lays the groundwork for a world free of nuclear weapons, however long it may take to achieve that goal. In the entire history of the nuclear arms race, no one has achieved that level of consensus on disarmament. This was done by aggressive, forthright and successful diplomacy, in the span of just 8 months’ worth of work. That is a major accomplishment.

On the question of peace and diplomacy, Barack Obama managed to deal with two “hostage” situations, with enemy “rogue states”, Roxana Saberi in Iran and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea, without escalating tensions in either region, without making threats or being weak; in each case, the art of diplomacy was practiced in such a way that it would lead to both success and non-escalation.

On Iran, the nuclear program is worrying, but for the first time in 30 years, the US has actually met with Iranian diplomats to discuss these issues directly, and the result is that Iran is in theory, agreeing to allow inspectors in, and even to ship uranium out of the country for processing. If this happens, the bomb will not be obtained by Iran.

Again: ambitious, successful nuclear diplomacy, enhanced credibility, peace before war, multilateralism, and just 8 months in office. I think the prize is not premature, because there are in fact real effects to all of this. There is a new climate favoring international cooperation to reduce or eliminate the world’s worst weapons, to raise awareness about and fight against brutalization and repression of women, and to achieve consensus on the most favorable ways to deal with climate-destabilizing emissions.

Pres. Obama’s pragmatic reform politics has revolutionized the way the United States deals with international crises and its prospects for winning support for major diplomatic endeavors, even among onetime rivals. And, in collaboration with Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, part of Obama’s own “team of rivals”, both domestic and international social policy has been shifted toward a broader focus on the status of women and girls.

Pres. Obama established, by executive order, the White House Council on Women and Girls, comprised of the heads of every Cabinet-level agency and led by his close aide Valerie Jarrett. The promotion of women’s rights and standing in society is not merely an issue of civil rights and equal pay in advanced democracies, but can be the single most important vehicle for building peace and prosperity in war-torn, impoverished and failing states.

As we reported on 2 January 2010:

The US Department of Defense has taken direct interest in the status of women’s rights around the world, especially in conflict zones, and is collaborating with the Obama administration’s initiative to promote the rights of women and girls. Pres. Obama has established a panel on which every Cabinet-level department head must report on the status of women and girls as relating to their purview. And women’s rights in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other key nations, is now a focus of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertive “3D diplomacy”: diplomacy, development, defense.

Promoting the rights and the needs of women and girls will help to create a more educated, more civil and cooperative population, and should help to speed development to remote areas where improvements to basic infrastructure and economic cohesion cannot take root without active, sustained participation, and even leadership, on the part of women. More secure family environments and more advanced educational resources should also mean a reduced risk of armed conflict, factionalism and the collapse of basic services. The rights of women and girls are linked to all efforts to prevent or to combat the proliferation of failed states.

Pres. Bill Clinton used to talk about “building a bridge to the 21st century”, and as we sit back and survey the wide array of accomplishments of Pres. Obama’s first year in office, alongside the withering criticism and the many frustrations, it’s worth noting that one of the key features of this first year has been a refocusing of national resources, political and material, toward building a better future, both domestically and abroad. Many of the initiatives we have cited will be integral to shaping positive outcomes in facing the major challenges of this decade.

Millions of people disagree with Pres. Obama, either for ideological or partisan reasons, or because something about his unique cultural heritage is unsettling to their tastes, or biases. But his leadership has been principled and consistent, he has been true to his word, following through on hundreds of promises, and his has already been, after just 11 months, the most engaged and open presidency in modern times. His Open Government Initiative will take this process further in 2010 and in years to come, giving citizens a voice and creating an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability in American government.

As far as his signature initiatives go: both houses of Congress passed comprehensive healthcare reform legislation for the first time since Medicare, and he will likely sign a bill into law in January. The new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia is said to be nearing agreement. And a solution for how to close down the extra-judicial detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is within reach, with a new prison being established in Illinois and federal criminal trials ready to begin.

Obama has also made important strides toward one of the most daunting challenges of the 21st century: responsible stewardship of the world’s oceans. He is praised by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for “a remarkable number of actions to address a wide variety of environmental challenges” [PDF], including two key moves to restore and sustain the global ocean system. The oceans are under threat from rising mercury levels, rampant infestation from non-biodegradable plastics and numerous toxic pollutants, not to mention increased sea traffic and military exercises.

The scope of the oceanic degradation is only now beginning to be understood, and environmentalists argue it may well be the most complex of all environmental challenges going forward. Greenhouse gases, for instance, can be phased out, but all chemical residues of all kinds eventually wind up in the ocean, threatening marine life, habitat, water quality, human health and climate stability. Obama is praised for naming world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and for beginning the process of crafting a national ocean policy.

The NRDC evaluation also specifically praises Pres. Obama’s efforts to help move the US toward a clean energy economy, citing concrete advances in each of the following:

• Boosting Investment in Clean Energy Jobs
• Upgrading Efficiency Standards
• Prioritizing Sustainability
• Confirming the Threat of Global Warming Pollution
• Adopting Stringent National Vehicle Standards for Carbon Pollution and Fuel Economy
• Curbing Carbon Pollution
• Accelerating Development of High-Speed Intercity Rail
• Improving the Livability of Communities
• Scientifically Assessing Role of Biofuels

While critics on the right and the left claim the Obama presidency has been marked by compromise and a strict partisan divide in the Congress, it has been remarkably productive so far. In an atmosphere of crisis and deep public malaise, with hostile opposition to any substantive innovations in policy or principled, compromise, Pres. Obama has found a way to achieve real breakthroughs that will benefit the nation over the long-term, consistently taking a pragmatic approach to solving intensely complex problems.

Pres. Obama has had the privilege, or perhaps the burden, of being the most inspiring political figure in recent memory in US politics, yet he is also the most frequently threatened. The number of alleged plots to assassinate him has been truly worrying, and some of his adversaries have been willing to speak of armed rebellion in the national media. But that vitriol and hatred should not be allowed to detract from what has been an historic and accomplished first year in office, showing real progress on issues of vital long-term relevance to the well-being of the American people.

The following is a transcript of Pres. Obama’s remarks to the delegates and world leaders gathered in Copenhagen, as delivered on 18 December 2009

Good morning. It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you —like me— were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know.

So the question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge; the question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, our ability to take collective action hangs in the balance.

I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat. And that is why I have come here today.

As the world’s largest economy and the world’s second largest emitter, America bears our share of responsibility in addressing climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility. That is why we have renewed our leadership within international climate negotiations, and worked with other nations to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. And that is why we have taken bold action at home — by making historic investments in renewable energy; by putting our people to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings; and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.

These actions are ambitious, and we are taking them not simply to meet our global responsibilities. We are convinced that changing the way that we produce and use energy is essential to America’s economic future — that it will create millions of new jobs, power new industry, keep us competitive, and spark new innovation. And we are convinced that changing the way we use energy is essential to America’s national security, because it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and help us deal with some of the dangers posed by climate change.

So America is going to continue on this course of action no matter what happens in Copenhagen. But we will all be stronger and safer and more secure if we act together. That is why it is in our mutual interest to achieve a global accord in which we agree to take certain steps, and to hold each other accountable for our commitments.

After months of talk, and two weeks of negotiations, I believe that the pieces of that accord are now clear.

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change. I’m pleased that many of us have already done so, and I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

Second, we must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and to exchange this information in a transparent manner. These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty. They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we are living up to our obligations. For without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.

Third, we must have financing that helps developing countries adapt, particularly the least-developed and most vulnerable to climate change. America will be a part of fast-start funding that will ramp up to $10 billion in 2012. And, yesterday, Secretary Clinton made it clear that we will engage in a global effort to mobilize $100 billion in financing by 2020, if – and only if – it is part of the broader accord that I have just described.

Mitigation. Transparency. And financing. It is a clear formula, one that embraces the principle of common but differentiated responses and respective capabilities. And it adds up to a significant accord, one that takes us farther than we have ever gone before as an international community.

The question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. This is not a perfect agreement, and no country would get everything that it wants. There are those developing countries that want aid with no strings attached, and who think that the most advanced nations should pay a higher price. And there are those advanced nations who think that developing countries cannot absorb this assistance, or that the world’s fastest-growing emitters should bear a greater share of the burden.

We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years. But here is the bottom line: we can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation. We can do that, and everyone who is in this room will be a part of an historic endeavor — one that makes life better for our children and grandchildren.

Or we can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years. And we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year, all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.

There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say. Now, I believe that it’s time for the nations and people of the world to come together behind a common purpose.

We must choose action over inaction, the future over the past, with courage and faith, let us meet our responsibility to our people, and to the future of our planet. Thank you.

The following is an official White House transcript of Pres. Obama’s address, upon acceptance of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, as delivered on 10 December 2009, at Oslo City Hall, Oslo, Norway

1:44 P.M. CET

THE PRESIDENT: Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations — that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

Now these questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease — the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

And over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers and clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a “just war” emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

Of course, we know that for most of history, this concept of “just war” was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations — total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred. In the span of 30 years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it’s hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.

In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another world war. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations — an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this prize — America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons.

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty and self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.

And yet, a decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.

Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts; the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies, and failed states — all these things have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In today’s wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.

I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions — not just treaties and declarations — that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest — because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly inreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. “Let us focus,” he said, “on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.” A gradual evolution of human institutions.

What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be?

To begin with, I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t.

The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Furthermore, America — in fact, no nation — can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified.

And this becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That’s why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.

America’s commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.

The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries, and other friends and allies, demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they’ve shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular, but I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That’s why NATO continues to be indispensable. That’s why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That’s why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali — we honor them not as makers of war, but of wagers — but as wagers of peace.

Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant — the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.

Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. (Applause.) And we honor — we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.

I have spoken at some length to the question that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me now turn to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.

First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior — for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure — and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work towards disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I’m working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia’s nuclear stockpiles.

But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.

The same principle applies to those who violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma — there must be consequences. Yes, there will be engagement; yes, there will be diplomacy — but there must be consequences when those things fail. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.

This brings me to a second point — the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.

It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.

And yet too often, these words are ignored. For some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation’s development. And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists — a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values around the world.

I reject these choices. I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent-up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true. Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America’s interests — nor the world’s — are served by the denial of human aspirations.

So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear that these movements — these movements of hope and history — they have us on their side.

Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — condemnation without discussion — can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.

In light of the Cultural Revolution’s horrors, Nixon’s meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable — and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul’s engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan’s efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There’s no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.

Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can’t aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

And that’s why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It’s also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement — all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action — it’s military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.

Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more — and that’s the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there’s something irreducible that we all share.

As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are; to understand that we’re all basically seeking the same things; that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.

And yet somehow, given the dizzying pace of globalization, the cultural leveling of modernity, it perhaps comes as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities — their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we’re moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.

And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint — no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one’s own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it’s incompatible with the very purpose of faith — for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their fundamental faith in human progress — that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith — if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace — then we lose what’s best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.”

Let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. (Applause.)

Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees he’s outgunned, but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what few coins she has to send that child to school — because she believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child’s dreams.

Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that’s the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END
2:20 P.M. CET

Pres. Barack Obama, in office just under 9 months, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award announcement has sent a ripple through world opinion, as critics and supporters clash over whether the award is premature, or whether Obama’s collaborative diplomatic method has achieved important gains for world peace. The prize could signal an endorsement of Obama’s work on comprehensive nuclear disarmament or on achieving climate consensus this fall, which is not only a correction of American intransigence on carbon limits, but also instrumental to preventing mass migration and resource wars.

The award also affirms the gains made in international cooperation, the key element of consideration for the prize. Nobel’s own criteria for the Peace prize state that it should go to the individual who has done the most to promote “fraternity among nations”. Woodrow Wilson was the last sitting US president to win the prize.

The Nobel committee cited Pres. Obama’s efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and achieve the complex cooperation needed to formulate a global response to climate destabilization, adding that “now is the time for all of us to take responsibility for global solutions to global problems”. The point is not minor: the international system must consistently balance the principle of sovereignty with issues of human rights and sustainable cooperation.

Yet there remains a general tendency to view all international politics through a cynical lens of unsalvable difference and definitive atomization. Predictably, there has been a stolid and unthinking response from pundits of all stripes. The toxic reasoning that says you must be mired in conflict for years, partly responsible for thousands of deaths, and then blessed with an opportunity for specific peace before you can be eligible for recognition as having promoted fraternity among nations, has even affected the judgement of such talented reporters as Nicholas Kristof, at the New York Times.

I deeply respect Mr. Kristof’s long experience and consistently excellent reporting, but he’s wrong about Obama’s achievements in fostering a new climate in international relations. His opinion piece responding to the Nobel award is a very facile analysis and smacks of the critic who’s trying to be hard on the star of the moment in order not to be taken as less of a worthy critic. Here’s why: There’s a dangerous and irresponsible rumor that’s emerging, spread very deliberately by Republican leadership, that in fact “Obama hasn’t done anything”, despite his being one of the busiest presidencies to date, full of hard work, bold initiatives and major achievements.

Do we forget his first days in office? He had to overturn one after another radically dangerous Bush-era policy. For instance:

On his second day in office, he banned torture and called for a review of all cases of terror suspects, to craft the proper means of bringing them to justice within the Constitutional system of government that by law the United States adheres to. He ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, where prisoners were held without legal counsel, without the hearing of evidence and without charge, indefinitely, and the closing of CIA ‘black site’ prisons around the world.

On his fifth day in office Obama held a major energy innovation and fuel efficiency meeting, at which he pledged to raise the CAFE standards for fuel efficiency and devote record amounts of federal funding to the development of renewable energy sources. He warned that America’s devotion to huge spending on oil “bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides in our struggle against terrorism”. He ordered a review of the EPA’s role in regulating carbon emissions, a move that would eventually lead to the EPA officially adopting the policy ordered by a court ruling, that it had authority to cap carbon emissions.

We also noted that:

Perhaps most important, Obama moved by executive order, during his first days in office, to limit presidential powers by requiring that all high-level classification of documents involving presidential decisions be reviewed by a panel of legal experts, in order to prevent his own administration or future administrations from using the classification system to cover up potential wrongdoing.

But he didn’t wait to make it known that his intention was to create a multilateral framework for peace, wherever it might be useful. For instance:

On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

His work on nuclear disarmament is “important” not because it’s about non-proliferation, but because it’s about disarmament. Total, 100%, global nuclear disarmament. And he now has the unanimous support of the world’s major nuclear powers, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, to move toward that goal.

UN SC Res. 1887 is one of the most important documents ever produced by the UN system, in that it lays the groundwork for a world free of nuclear weapons, however long it may take to achieve that goal. In the entire history of the nuclear arms race, no one has achieved that level of consensus on disarmament. This was done by aggressive, forthright and successful diplomacy, in the span of just 8 months’ worth of work. That is a major accomplishment.

On the question of peace and diplomacy, Barack Obama managed to deal with two “hostage” situations, with enemy “rogue states”, Roxana Saberi in Iran and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea, without escalating tensions in either region, without making threats or being weak; in each case, the art of diplomacy was practiced in such a way that it would lead to both success and non-escalation.

On Iran, the nuclear program is worrying, but for the first time in 30 years, the US has actually met with Iranian diplomats to discuss these issues directly, and the result is that Iran is in theory, agreeing to allow inspectors in, and even to ship uranium out of the country for processing. If this happens, the bomb will not be obtained by Iran.

Again: ambitious, successful nuclear diplomacy, enhanced credibility, peace before war, multilateralism, and just 8 months in office. I think the prize is not premature, because there are in fact real effects to all of this. There is a new climate favoring international cooperation to reduce or eliminate the world’s worst weapons, to raise awareness about and fight against brutalization and repression of women, and to achieve consensus on the most favorable ways to deal with climate-destabilizing emissions.

In the face of such progress, the complaints of critics who say Obama has not yet solved major problems dim. The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to leaders from the Middle East, but there has never really been peace. Was that premature, or was the award given to laud the actions and the methods of the laureates when they turned their attentions toward promoting peace?

There was praise from both Israeli and Palestinian leaders today, suggesting both sides want to have the president’s ear as plans to restart peace negotiations move forward and perhaps signaling one of the key reasons for giving the prize in the first place. The Nobel committee clearly wants Pres. Obama’s “new era of engagement” to gain momentum and to achieve the ideals so many champions of peace have sought for so long.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Obama and congratulated him on the award, writing in an open letter to the US president: “You have given inspiration to people all over the world”, adding that the Nobel award was “an expression of the hope that your presidency will promote a new era of peace”.

Netanyahu also looked ahead “to working closely with you in the years ahead to advance peace and to give hope to the peoples of our region who deserve to live in peace, security and dignity”. Israel’s president Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize himself, congratulated Obama with praise still more lavish than Netanyahu’s, writing:

Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth…

Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.

Pres. Obama himself he has not yet earned the Nobel Peace Prize, that the award is humbling and took him by surprise. He said he would accept the prize as a “call to action”, and that he understood the responsibility implied by such praise for his vision of a “world without nuclear weapons”, one of the key components of his foreign policy that moved the Nobel committee to a unanimous vote that he should be the award’s recipient for 2009.

A number of Republican politicians were openly disparaging, expressing views similar to those of Iranian leaders, the Taliban, and the Hamas leadership in Gaza, who said they are skeptical of Obama’s ability to foster a climate of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or to end long-running conflicts, and suggesting that Obama has not in fact achieved much diplomatically.

But Republican candidate for the Virginia governorship, Bob McDonnell, says he is “delighted to see the President of the United States bring honor to our country by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize”. McDonnell is either worried about what it will take to win in a state that favored Obama or is a more level-headed, civic-minded politician, able to see the virtues in such an award, not just in terms of benefit to Pres. Obama, but to the nation and to the prospects for international peace and cooperation.

What Pres. Obama has done in terms of fostering international cooperation and peace, in just 8 months, far outweighs anything that was done in the last 8 years —when radical rhetoric, threats and intransigence, were hallmarks of national foreign policy—, and we all know that. The award is intended to acknowledge outstanding efforts to spur fraternity among nations, reduce or eliminate standing armies and achieve peace through open talks.

It’s time to take a cue from the Nobel committee and give credit where credit is due. We need more of this persistent, aggressive, collaborative diplomacy, aimed at restoring dignity to those mired in the world’s forgotten crises and promoting democracy and cooperation in concrete ways. The security of the United States depends on it, the stability of nations requires it, and any consideration for the wellbeing of future generations demands it.

At yesterday’s funeral service for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his son Teddy —Edward, Jr.— gave a stirring eulogy, one of many, in which he lauded his father’s spirit of perseverance and his ability to infuse others, himself included, with that optimistic spirit. He tells of his father’s lessons to him as a boy of besting more talented opponents by superior preparation and by working harder and longer to out-perform and outlast them when the time came.

The speech was one of the more moving and poignant of the day. The senator’s son and namesake told of how his father had helped him understand, after he lost a leg to bone cancer, at the age of 12, that he could still climb and icy hillside and sled down, enjoying the experience like any other, how they labored together to climb that hill with the father telling the son they would do it, “even if it takes all day”.

Sen. Kennedy was eulogized by family members and by the president of the United States, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Boston, where he prayed daily for his daughter Kara, when she was fighting lung cancer. Kara was in attendance. The senator’s body was laid to rest at nightfall in Arlington National Cemetery, on a hillside overlooking the nation’s capital, near the tombs of his slain brothers, John and Robert.

A crowd of tens of thousands was already gathering by midnight last night at the John F. Kennedy Library to view the body of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, lying in state. Some mourners had traveled from far away, in the midwest or down the eastern seaboard, as far as Georgia and Florida. Today, a group from the Democratic Republic of Congo entered the library to pay their respects.

Messages from mourners included gratitude to the family and to the Library for opening up the viewing to the public. Some said the experience was spiritual, in that the senator’s work had affected so many areas of American life that to see him brought low by cancer was humbling and bewildering. Others said the senator had helped them personally, assisting with bureaucratic paper jams or honoring their family members.

Surviving family members of some of those who lost their lives in the attacks of 11 September 2001, with whom Sen. Kennedy corresponded at least once per year, paid their respects. Today dignitaries, fellow senators, old friends and family members will speak about their private connections to and mourning for the much-loved but controversial liberal ‘Lion of the Senate’.

Edward Moore Kennedy, United States senator for 46 years, has died from the effects of brain cancer, aged 77. Only two senators served longer, Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond. The fourth of Joseph Kennedy’s sons, Sen. Kennedy entered the nation’s upper house of Congress in 1962, after a special election to replace his brother John, who had become president two years earlier. He devoted his career in the Senate to voting rights, civil rights, education and to the cause of achieving universal healthcare in the United States.

Sen. Kennedy’s last year was one of severe difficulty. After suffering a seizure in 2008, with symptoms of what appeared to be a stroke, he was diagnosed with malignant glioma, an aggressive brain tumor that is nearly always fatal (only 25% of patients survive 2 years after diagnosis). He underwent treatment and was seen little in public, though he did contribute to the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign and cast a few important votes before withdrawing from Senate business.

Just last week, the senior senator from Massachusetts requested that the state amend electoral laws to permit the governor to appoint his replacement, so that Massachusetts would have two votes on comprehensive healthcare reform. Kennedy’s weight in the Senate is unrivaled, and his urging that his constituents have continuity of representation is seen by many as the last act of civic responsibility by a man whose public life was devoted to serving the interests of the people of Massachusetts.

In the 2008 Democratic primary, Sen. Kennedy threw his weight behind the underdog junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, saying he was the leader the nation needed in a time of crisis, a transformative figure that comes along once in a generation. There was talk of a party split, between the Kennedy and Clinton power blocs, but Kennedy’s voice elevated Sen. Obama and lent him the gravitas of one of the most revered political leaders in the nation, famously called the ‘Lion of the Senate’.

Ted Kennedy has said “The fundamental test of our society is how it treats the least powerful among us”, and he devoted his life of public service to that principle. He was infused with the belief that those privileged enough to serve at so high a level as he are not the ones that need the defenses of government, but rather that the average citizen, the defenseless and the marginalized do need a government that works for social justice and the common good.

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman said on the night after Kennedy’s passing that “If you could quantify humanness, there was nobody more fully, more exuberantly but also tragically, human than Ted Kennedy.” He was a man who suffered human loss in a repeated and severe way, and who endured, who learned what it was to endure, to grow and to overcome his own errors in judgment. He was a man of the Senate who was also a man of devotion to the rights and the plight of the average citizen.

Nancy Reagan told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that she and her husband were close friends with Ted Kennedy, a fact she said would likely surprise many people who think party comes before humanity. She said she became close to him personally due to their work in favor of stem cell research. “I’ll miss him, very much, and I’m sure we’ll all miss him. We would have gotten farther in the whole health issue, if Ted had been in there fighting”, adding that “I hope we get something”.

Sen. Kennedy’s work to improve the level of healthcare and the range of treatments available to patients around the world, by driving initiatives to fund advanced medical research, including not only stem cell research, but HIV/AIDS research, cancer research, experimental treatments and coverage under Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP for such treatment programs, has been instrumental to improving the quality and the length of millions of lives.

In a life of flawed and uniquely impassioned choices and commitments, the senator was a Kennedy to the core: his commitment to public service gave the people of Massachusetts a resounding voice at the forefront of national discussions on issues ranging from civil rights to voting rights to health rights to privacy and international law. He was a crusader for social justice who would not countenance the deliberate marginalization of any group, and so he was willing to work with political rivals to ensure the most needed legislative work got done.

Pres. Obama is reported to be scheduled to deliver Sen. Kennedy’s eulogy at a service near his home in Massachusetts. The president had become close to Sen. Kennedy while seeking his counsel in the Senate. And Kennedy’s endorsement, his passionate campaigning for the young senator, and their shared commitment to healthcare reform, have left the impression that Obama was, in many respects, the leader to whom Ted Kennedy wanted to pass the mantle of progressive leadership in American politics.

Obama yesterday echoed the opinions of countless other commentators, colleagues and historians, saying “he became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.” Obama praised Kennedy for both his determined fight for liberal Democratic values and for his talent for working “across party lines”, winning Republican support for needed legislation.

Ted Kennedy brought a sense of purpose and deep human devotion to the work of legislating, and his determination to find allies to reason and justice in both parties and to get the work of reason and justice done in the august body of the Senate, will be greatly missed. No senator at present, with former senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House, has exhibited such a talent for reaching out and building sound coalitions on the thorniest issues.

Kennedy himself made a bid for the presidency in 1980, challenging the incumbent from his own party, Jimmy Carter, whom he thought too soft a liberal to do the work he believed the nation most needed. Kennedy seemed at times genuinely reluctant and stumbled as a candidate. Some attribute his poor performance to fears related to the assassinations of his older brothers, while other say Teddy was reluctant to depart the Senate, where he was not only one of the great students of the Senate, its history and procedures, but also one of its most able and effective organizers and a potent leader on issues of historic importance.

Still others say he might have defeated Carter and even Reagan in 1980 if not for the tragedy of 10 years earlier on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s Vineyard. The senator had left a party held in honor of the “Boiler-room Girls” —a group of young aides who had helped his brother Robert in the 1968 campaign that was cut short by his assassination— to drive one of the aides, Mary Jo Kopechne, to a ferry. After losing his way on dark island roads, Kennedy drive his car onto a small wooden bridge, and it slipped over the edge.

The senator escaped, but Miss Kopechne, 28 years of age, did not. Kennedy later testified that he repeatedly swam to reach her but was unable to free her from the vehicle. Reportedly suffering a concussion, he swam to shore and sought help on foot but was unsuccessful in rescuing Miss Kopechne.

He reportedly returned to his hotel to recuperate and did not visit the police station until 10 hours after the crash, the following morning. He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident. A judge later suggested that more immediate police intervention might have given Mary Jo Kopechne a chance at survival.

Kennedy was given a 2-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident and publicly apologized in a somber 13-minute statement, saying his leaving was “indefensible” and that he bore the weight and the sorrow of that responsibility every day of his life. Friends and family have since said that, indeed, he carried the tragedy always in his mind.

Kennedy’s personal struggles, including the tragic deaths of John and Robert, as well as the eldest brother Joe, Jr., in World War II, and of Mary Jo Kopechne, his own near-fatal plane crash in 1964 and his defeat in 1980, all contributed to steeling his resolve to work on behalf of the most defenseless.

After his loss in 1980, he pledged openly to devote his remaining years, though still not 50 years of age, to achieving as much as he could for his causes and for the least powerful in society, through total commitment to his work as senator. He died in his 47th consecutive year as a United States senator. His legacy is unparalleled and the programs he successfully enacted have helped to educate, heal and defend the rights of every American and of people beyond America’s borders.

Among his legislative achievements (of the more than 2,500 bills he wrote throughout his 46 years in the Senate, several hundred became law — one of history’s most significant contributions to the shaping of American law), he not only contributed to every major civil rights law since 1964 and helped lower the voting age to 18, he also won expanded medical coverage for children of the working poor.

He won passage for the Americans with Disabilities Act, Meals on Wheels (which delivers food to the elderly), family leave, women’s rights, labor rights, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He was instrumental in shaping the student-centered elements of the No Child Left Behind act championed by Pres. George W. Bush, and ensuring it would steer money to poor districts lacking basic materials like textbooks.

After the attacks of 11 September 2001 on New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, Sen. Kennedy called Massachusetts families who had lost loved ones. He began placing the calls within 24 hours of the attacks, and his words and his expression of condolence and grief were important to many who received them. In all, he called 177 families, offering assistance, and delivering when it was requested. He wrote individual hand-signed letters to each of the families every year since the attacks.

One after another figure from both parties and a wide range of interests have come forward to assert that were Ted Kennedy leading the Senate’s work on producing comprehensive healthcare reform, a bill agreeable to both parties would have been passed by June and signed into law by now by Pres. Obama. Many are now suggesting consensus should be sought in Kennedy’s honor and the final bill named for him, due to his devoting his energies throughout all 46-plus years of his Senate career to the cause.

Vice President Joe Biden said of Kennedy, “Every day that I was with him, he restored my sense of idealism and my faith in the possibilities of what this country could do.” Larry Cohen, of the Communications Workers of America, said “Every major advance, every step forward for working families came about because of his efforts. Medicare and Medicaid, family and medical leave, workers’ rights, retirement security, equal rights and fair treatment for women, civil rights for people of color, the list goes on and on.”

George W. Bush praised him, saying “In a life filled with trials, Ted Kennedy never gave in to self-pity or despair.” And California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, who is married to Kennedy’s niece Maria Shriver, said “He was the rock of our family: a loving husband, father, brother, and uncle.”

Sen. Robert Byrd, who wept openly when Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal cancer called Kennedy “my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend” and urged colleagues to “stop the shouting and name-calling and have a civilized debate on healthcare reform” to honor his life of service.

• Obama Statement on the Death & Legacy of Sen. Kennedy (video + transcript)
• Ted Kennedy’s Eulogy for Fallen Brother, Robert (video)
• Ted Kennedy Tribute & Speech from 2008 DNC (video)
• Ted Kennedy Speaks of Devotion to Healthcare Reform (video)
• Sen. Kennedy Seeks Change in Law to Allow Interim Replacement (updated)
• Kennedy Wins Medal of Freedom, Highest US Civilian Honor
• Democrats Launch Convention with Ted Kennedy, Michelle Obama
• Kennedy to endorse Obama in wake of South Carolina win…

When his brother Robert was assassinated, in June 1968, in the midst of a celebration for his victory in the California Democratic primary, Ted Kennedy became his family’s patriarch, and young as he was, he delivered an historic eulogy, outlining and elevating the political ideals his brother Robert, and John before him, the fallen president, had so devotedly pursued.

The eulogy was not only eloquent and worthy of the moment of national mourning, but a riveting emotional labor, a well-known US senator hardly able to speak the words of honor and commemoration for the third of his brothers to die a violent death. Though Sen. Ted Kennedy, through 46-plus years in the Senate, established himself as a firmly committed liberal, he also shepherded one bipartisan bill after another to passage with Republican members who understood his commitment and the weight of his determination.

The eulogy for his brother Robert was perhaps the moment when the young senator became Uncle Teddy to people across the nation, and in the political sphere, as he had become to his two brothers’ 13 children, a flawed father figure with an emotional commitment to seek the best outcome and to work on behalf of those who needed him.

The bill provides quality affordable health care for all Americans and controls health care cost growth. Key provisions of the bill being released this week [12-18 July] include:

• COVERAGE AND CHOICE
• AFFORDABILITY
• SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
• CONTROLLING COSTS
• PREVENTION AND WELLNESS
• WORKFORCE INVESTMENTS

I. COVERAGE AND CHOICE

The bill builds on what works in today’s health care system and fixes the parts that are broken. It protects current coverage – allowing individuals to keep the insurance they have if they like it – and preserves choice of doctors, hospitals, and health plans.  It achieves these reforms through:

A Health Insurance Exchange. The new Health Insurance Exchange creates a transparent and functional marketplace for individuals and small employers to comparison shop among private and public insurers. It works with state insurance departments to set and enforce insurance reforms and consumer protections, facilitates enrollment, and administers affordability credits to help low? and middle-income individuals and families purchase insurance. Over time, the Exchange will be opened to additional employers as another choice for covering their employees. States may opt to operate the Exchange in lieu of the national Exchange provided they follow the federal rules.

A public health insurance option. One of the many choices of health insurance within the health insurance Exchange is a public health insurance option. It will be a new choice in many areas of our country dominated by just one or two private insurers today. The public option will operate on a level playing field. It will be subject to the same market reforms and consumer protections as other private plans in the Exchange and it will be self?sustaining — financed only by its premiums.

Guaranteed coverage and insurance market reforms. Insurance companies will no longer be able to engage in discriminatory practices that enable them to refuse to sell or renew policies today due to an individual’s health status. In addition, they can no longer exclude coverage of treatments for pre-existing health conditions. The bill also protects consumers by prohibiting lifetime and annual limits on benefits. It also limits the ability of insurance companies to charge higher rates due to health status, gender, or other factors. Under the proposal, premiums can vary based only on age (no more than 2:1), geography and family size.

Essential benefits. A new independent Advisory Committee with practicing providers and other health care experts, chaired by the Surgeon General, will recommend a benefit package based on standards set in the law. This new essential benefit package will serve as the basic benefit package for coverage in the Exchange and over time will become the minimum quality standard for employer plans. The basic package will include preventive services with no cost?sharing, mental health services, oral health and vision for children, and caps the amount of money a person or family spends on covered services in a year.

II. AFFORDABILITY

To ensure that all Americans have affordable health coverage the bill:

Provides sliding scale affordability credits. The affordability credits will be available to low? and moderate? income individuals and families. The credits are most generous for those who are just above the proposed new Medicaid eligibility levels; the credits decline with income (and so premium and cost?sharing support is more limited as your income increases) and are completely phased out when income reaches 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($43,000 for an individual or $88,000 for a family of four). The affordability credits will not only make insurance premiums affordable, they will also reduce cost?sharing to levels that ensure access to care. The Exchange administers the affordability credits with other federal and state entities, such as local Social Security offices and state Medicaid agencies.

Caps annual out?of?pocket spending. All new policies will cap annual out?of?pocket spending to prevent bankruptcies from medical expenses.

Increased competition: The creation of the Health Insurance Exchange and the inclusion of a public health insurance option will make health insurance more affordable by opening many market areas in our country to new competition, spurring efficiency and transparency.

Expands Medicaid. Individuals and families with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level will be eligible for an expanded and improved Medicaid program. Recognizing the budget challenges in many states, this expansion will be fully federally financed. To improve provider participation in this vital safety net – particularly for low?income children, individuals with disabilities and people with mental illnesses – reimbursement rates for primary care services will be increased with new federal funding.

Improves Medicare. Senior citizens and people with disabilities will benefit from provisions that fill the donut hole over time in the Part D drug program, eliminate cost?sharing for preventive services, improve the low-income subsidy programs in Medicare, fix physician payments, and make other program improvements. The bill will also address future fiscal challenges by improving payment accuracy, encouraging delivery system reforms and extending solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund.

III. SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

The bill creates shared responsibility among individuals, employers and government to ensure that all Americans have affordable coverage of essential health benefits.

Individual responsibility. Except in cases of hardship, once market reforms and affordability credits are in effect, individuals will be responsible for obtaining and maintaining health insurance coverage. Those who choose to not obtain coverage will pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income above a specified level.

Employer responsibility. The proposal builds on the employer?sponsored coverage that exists today. Employers will have the option of providing health insurance coverage for their workers or contributing funds on their behalf. Employers that choose to contribute will pay an amount based on eight percent of their payroll. Employers that choose to offer coverage must meet minimum benefit and contribution requirements specified in the proposal.

Assistance for small employers. Recognizing the special needs of small businesses, the smallest businesses (payroll that does not exceed $250,000) are exempt from the employer responsibility requirement. The payroll penalty would then phase in starting at 2% for firms with annual payrolls over $250,000 rising to the full 8 percent penalty for firms with annual payrolls above $400,000. In addition, a new small business tax credit will be available for those firms who want to provide health coverage to their workers. In addition to the targeted assistance, the Exchange and market reforms provide a long?sought opportunity for small businesses to benefit from a more organized, efficient marketplace in which to purchase coverage.

Government responsibility. The government is responsible for ensuring that every American can afford quality health insurance, through the new affordability credits, insurance reforms, consumer protections, and improvements to Medicare and Medicaid.

IV. PREVENTION AND WELLNESS

Prevention and wellness measures of the bill include:

• Expansion of Community Health Centers;
• Prohibition of cost?sharing for preventive services;
• Creation of community?based programs to deliver prevention and wellness services;
• A focus on community?based programs and new data collection efforts to better identify and address racial, ethnic, regional and other health disparities;
• Funds to strengthen state, local, tribal and territorial public health departments and programs.

V. WORKFORCE INVESTMENTS

The bill expands the health care workforce through:

• Increased funding for the National Health Service Corp;
• More training of primary care doctors and an expansion of the pipeline of individuals going into health professions, including primary care, nursing and public health;
• Greater support for workforce diversity;
• Expansion of scholarships and loans for individuals in needed professions and shortage areas;
• Encouragement of training of primary care physicians by taking steps to increase physician training outside the hospital, where most primary care is delivered, and redistributes unfilled graduate medical education residency slots for purposes of training more primary care physicians.  The  proposal also improves accountability for graduate medical education funding to ensure that physicians are trained with the skills needed to practice health care in the 21st century.

VI. CONTROLLING COSTS

The bill will reduce the growth in health care spending in a numerous ways. Investing in health care through stronger prevention and wellness measures, increasing access to primary care, health care delivery system reform, the Health Insurance Exchange and the public health insurance option, improvements in payment accuracy and reforms to Medicare and Medicaid will all help slow the growth of health care costs over time. These savings will accrue to families, employers, and taxpayers.

Modernization and improvement of Medicare. The bill implements major delivery system reform in Medicare to reward efficient provision of health care, rolling out  innovative concepts such as accountable care organizations, medical homes, and bundling of acute and post?acute provider payments. New payment incentives aim to decrease preventable hospital readmissions, expanding this policy over time to recognize that physicians and post?acute providers also play an important role in avoiding readmissions. The bill improves the Medicare Part D program by creating new  consumer protections for Medicare Advantage Plans, eliminating the “donut hole” and improving low?income subsidy programs, so that Medicare is affordable for all seniors and other eligible individuals. A centerpiece of the proposal is a complete reform of the flawed physician payment mechanism in Medicare (the so?called sustainable growth rate or “SGR” formula), with an update that wipes away accumulated deficits, provides for a fresh start, and rewards primary care services, care coordination and efficiency.

Innovation and delivery reform through the public health insurance option. The public health insurance option will be empowered to implement innovative delivery reform initiatives so that it is a nimble purchaser of health care and gets more value for each health care dollar. It will expand upon the experiments put forth in Medicare and be provided the flexibility to implement value?based purchasing, accountable care organizations, medical homes, and bundled payments. These features will ensure the public option is a leader in efficient delivery of quality care, spurring competition with private plans.

Improving payment accuracy and eliminating overpayments. The bill eliminates overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans and improves payment accuracy for numerous other providers, following recommendations by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the President. These steps will extend Medicare Trust Fund solvency, and put Medicare on stronger financial footing for the future.

Preventing waste, fraud and abuse. New tools will be provided to combat waste, fraud and abuse within the entire health care system. Within Medicare, new authorities allow for pre-enrollment screening of providers and suppliers, permit designation of certain areas as being at elevated risk of fraud to implement enhanced oversight, and require compliance programs of providers and suppliers. The new public health insurance option and Health Insurance Exchange will build upon the safeguards and best practices gleaned from experience in other areas.

Administrative simplification. The bill will simplify the paperwork burden that adds tremendous costs and hassles for patients, providers, and businesses today.

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Preceding transcript
PREPARED BY THE HOUSE COMMITTEES ON WAYS AND MEANS, ENERGY AND COMMERCE, AND EDUCATION AND LABOR,
released 14 July 2009

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Documents from the House Energy & Commerce Committee:

• America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, Bill Text [PDF]
• America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, Summary [PDF]
• Chair Waxman’s Statement on the Bill’s Introduction [PDF]
• Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF]
• Summary of Changes in the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF]
• Chair Waxman’s Opening Statement [PDF]

For more legislative information on H.R. 3200: Click here

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Full text of H.R. 3200 at OpenCongress.org

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More reporting on healthcare reform from Cafe Sentido:

• US Congress Stalling on Healthcare Reform, Despite White House Push
• Dispelling Healthcare Falsehoods
• House Energy & Commerce Committee Approves Healthcare Reform Bill
• Healthcare Reform Polling Data Misrepresented by National Media
• U.S. Uninsurance Rate Jumps 13% in 2 Years
• CBO Never Reported Patients’ Healthcare Costs Would Go Up
• American Medical Association Backs House Healthcare Bill
• Hospitals Agree to Lower Medicare Charges in Exchange for Universal Coverage (video)
• Private Not-for-profit Insurance Could Be Part of New Healthcare Market (discussion)
• Obama Composite National Healthcare Plan: Net Cost Decrease for Avg. Family

Pres. Barack Obama’s political opponents, mostly in the Republican party and in private interest groups opposed to major healthcare reform, have launched a multimillion-dollar all-media campaign to cast healthcare reform proposals as a socialist conspiracy, designed to undermine freedom, kill the sick and establish a totalitarian healthcare system. In fact, Obama’s framework for healthcare reform is carefully designed to reinforce market dynamics and lead to expanded choice and long-term resilience for the American healthcare sector.

As Politifact reported during last fall’s election campaign, Obama’s framework for reform “expands existing system” and will allow anyone who would prefer to keep the health plan or doctor(s) they have now to do so. There is no dictated health plan; there is no fine for not using a specific proposal laid out by Barack Obama or the Democratic majority.

Politifact found that when Obama said his plan was designed to lower costs and expand choice, within a market system, he was telling the truth:

“No. 1, let me just repeat, if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it,” Obama said. “All I’m going to do is help you to lower the premiums on it. You’ll still have choice of doctor.”

Obama is accurately describing his health care plan here. He advocates a program that seeks to build on the current system, rather than dismantling it and starting over.

In fact, it was an open secret during the campaign that Obama’s plan was striking in its pro-market design: fellow Democrats criticized Obama for planning to prop up a private sector that was broken and unwilling to do the heavy lifting necessary to really provide meaningful health coverage, and Republicans criticized him for using the language of market dynamics to appeal to conservative moderates and independents or to pick of Republican voters.

But his plan was to build on the current system; he said so then; he had said so throughout the campaign; when he came to the White House, he reiterated that pledge; and the framework he sent to Congress followed those guidelines. Pres. Obama’s proposed framework for healthcare reform aims to build on the current system, not dismantle it, not replace it.

Nobel-laureate economist Paul Krugman notes there are important statistical anomalies in suggesting that the private sector as it currently operates, could “solve healthcare”. The reason is that the private sector is startlingly feeble and unambitious as regards that goal. Only 35% of the population of the United States is covered by private health insurance, while 47% have their healthcare bills paid by one or another government program.

Between Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP —the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan—, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly half of all medical bills are paid by one or another government agency. With 52 million out of 309 million Americans having no coverage whatsoever, the ultra-dynamic and capable private insurance sector we are always hearing about leaves roughly 17% of the population with no healthcare at all.

The first question anyone serious about meaningful reform must ask is: how do we get affordable insurance to those excluded from the dynamics of the current system? Do we…

• order private insurers to lower their rates? expand coverage? issue higher reimbursements?
• order individuals to buy insurance, hoping the larger market will force down costs?
• mandate price controls or profit caps?
• institute a single-payer system where a single government agency takes care of all bills?
• replace the existing public-private market system with something that involves as little consumer choice as possible?
• ban the profit motive from having any role in the administration of healthcare?
• build into the existing public-private market something that meets higher standards and reduces costs, while expanding choice?

The last is the most reasonable, most optimal aim, if we can find a way to do it. In fact, it may be the only way to expand coverage to nearly all 309 million Americans in a cost-effective way. We must also take note of the fact that by doing so, we allow the market to set prices in a way that is more favorable to consumers, even if some of the highest-profit-margin business interests worry their per-patient profit projections may have to change.

There are groups that have a vested short-term financial interest in killing reform that would reduce costs across the board. But the market as a whole, and any private entity competitive enough to expand its own market base, should benefit from more optimized spending: lower costs per patient or per procedure, but higher overall market revenues, based on everyone having coverage and access to care.

Make no mistake: the current reform debate is about how to make a hybrid public-private market that already exists into a sustainable system whose quality of care is no longer corroded by soaring price hikes and irrational penalties for the insured. The private sector will benefit if reforms build on the market model but allow them to deal with the segment of the market they prefer to deal with: higher premium payments, and lower “risk”.

There is no other reform proposal on the table that would allow this to occur: while some members of Congress would like to see a single-payer system, and many economists agree that would be more workable than the hybrid public-private American model, and some pro-business conservatives argue that the private sector could be a good fit for 100% of the market, the truth is: the private sector cannot and has no interest in doing so, and single payer would be too great an economic shock to the US as a whole.

Given these conditions in the marketplace, a plan that allows for low-cost insurance that meets all the demands of the reform moment, and allows the existing public-private hybrid market to not only continue, but to thrive in a competitive environment, is required. At present, only the healthcare insurance exchanges, SCHIP and Medicaid expansion and “public option” for low-cost buy-in health insurance, based on the private insurance model but backed by legislation, combine to make such an outcome possible.

Pres. Obama has said he wants a bill that 1) covers everyone, 2) does not deny treatment, 3) privileges the doctor-patient relationship, 4) reduces costs and 5) is “deficit neutral”, but he has also said that if a proposal achieved the aims of the “public option” for buy-in personal health insurance, he could support a bill without the public option. What has not so far transpired is any cohesive plan that does so without the public option.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, an avowed opponent of the public option and leader of the Republicans in the Senate, says tax policy is the way to bring down costs, but has offered no proposal for how to cover everyone without greatly inflating the budget deficit (tax cuts inflate the budget deficit by slashing revenues). Sen. Jim DeMint, who famously said he wants to “kill” reform in order to “break” Obama, wants health insurance vouchers, essentially discount coupons that would allow a fraction of the uninsured to buy private insurance.

Tax cuts don’t help people who are too poor to pay enough in taxes to get back enough to buy insurance. Vouchers would help 22.4 million people, in the best-case scenario, over 5 years. In both cases, the spending would be highly inefficient, because the deficit would swell while private-sector costs would not come down and most of the uninsured would remain uninsured, a problem which distorts insurance premiums for everyone else adding over $1,000 per year to their out-of-pocket expenses.

Free-market ideologues need to take a more sober, more honest look at the ills of the American healthcare system and first of all admit that the system is not a principally private insurance-based system, but a hybrid public-private system, in which government and private insurers work in tandem to cover most but not all of the population. They must also face the fact that the existing business model for private-sector insurance is unable to deal with the most necessary cases of severe, chronic or terminal illness.

Earlier this year, Pres. Obama and Congressional leaders (including Republican Orrin Hatch, senator for Utah) achieved an historic gathering, when over 60 healthcare “stakeholders”, including political representatives, lobbyists, insurers, patients’ rights groups, physicians, researchers and pharmaceutical firms, came together to express consensus on the need for reform and the basic points that most urgently needed solving.

The fact is: the proposals on the table, far from being a Stalinist conspiracy or a sinister attempt to annihilate the private sector, are by far the least ideological, most pragmatic, market-oriented reforms proposed by any president in a century: not Teddy Roosevelt, nor Harry Truman nor Lyndon Johnson nor Bill Clinton, put forward healthcare reform proposals so clearly oriented toward strengthening the resilience of market dynamics in the American healthcare system.

• US Congress Stalling on Healthcare Reform, Despite White House Push
• Dispelling Healthcare Falsehoods
• House Energy & Commerce Committee Approves Healthcare Reform Bill
• Healthcare Reform Polling Data Misrepresented by National Media
• U.S. Uninsurance Rate Jumps 13% in 2 Years
• CBO Never Reported Patients’ Healthcare Costs Would Go Up
• American Medical Association Backs House Healthcare Bill
• Hospitals Agree to Lower Medicare Charges in Exchange for Universal Coverage (video)
• Private Not-for-profit Insurance Could Be Part of New Healthcare Market (discussion)
• Obama Composite National Healthcare Plan: Net Cost Decrease for Avg. Family

The US space agency NASA’s Apollo 11 mission was the first to land a human being on the surface of the Moon, on 20 July 1969. The lunar module, known as Eagle, landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon. They spent one day there, and both stepped outside the lander to explore the otherworldly environment.

Apollo 11 was the culmination of a race to the Moon that was launched when Pres. Kennedy, in 1961, responding to the Soviet Union’s achievements with the first orbiting satellite and the first man in space, pledged the US would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On this day, 40 years ago, that pledge was fulfilled when the Apollo 11 team landed two of its three crew members on the surface of our planet’s moon.

At 9:37 am, on 16 July 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft launched from Merritt Island, Florida, on journey to the Moon that would require reaching Earth orbit, then a jump into lunar orbit, then the detachment of the lunar lander Eagle, which would take Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to the lunar surface, while Michael Collins orbited above, in the command module Columbia.

The Eagle would travel to the lunar surface on 20 July, four days after launch, landing in the southern Sea of Tranquility. The terrain had been judged to be relatively smooth and obstacle-free by unmanned spacecraft that had preceded the Apollo 11 mission. But the first manned journey to the surface of the Moon was not so simple.

As the Telegraph newspaper reports:

As they descended towards the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin were alarmed to note they were passing landmarks on the lunar surface four seconds early. They reported the Mission Control Centre in Houston, Texas that they were “long” and would land miles west of their target point in a boulder-strewn area just north-east of a 400 meter crater.

In fact, the craft would have to be partially taken over by Armstrong, who would try to correct the landing. The Eagle landed with just 25 seconds of fuel remaining, a welcome conclusion to what had become a nerve-racking series of concerning events. The Telegraph reports that when Armstrong uttered the historic words “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed”, his heart was racing at 156 beats per minute.

Ground Control, in Houston Texas, registered Armstrong’s radio communication and told him the news of the successful landing had been a great relief. Charles Duke, Capsule Communicator in Houston, said “You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue here. We’re breathing again.”

At 2:56 am, Neil Armstrong emerged from the lunar module and became the first human being ever to set foot on the Moon. He marked the moment with the now famous words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Aldrin joined him, and the two experimented with the reduced gravity and zero atmosphere of the lunar experience. They planted an American flag, then spoke by radio telephone to Pres. Richard M. Nixon.

Wikipedia lists a number of lunar surface operations, in addition to those listed above:

They deployed the EASEP, which included a passive seismograph and a laser ranging retroreflector. Then Armstrong loped about 120 m (400 ft) from the LM to snap photos at the rim of East Crater while Aldrin collected two core tubes. He used the geological hammer to pound in the tubes – the only time the hammer was used on Apollo 11. The astronauts then collected rock samples using scoops and tongs on extension handles. Many of the surface activities took longer than expected, so they had to stop documented sample collection halfway through the allotted 34 min.

During this period Mission Control used a coded phrase to warn Armstrong that his metabolic rates were high and that he should slow down. He was moving rapidly from task to task as time ran out. However, as metabolic rates remained generally lower than expected for both astronauts throughout the walk, Mission Control granted the astronauts a 15-minute extension.

They had a reserve of fuel for lunar lift-off, and once on lunar module life-support, began preparations for their lift-off and ascent to the orbiting command module Columbia, where fellow astronaut Michael Collins awaited them. Buzz Aldrin apparently inadvertently damaged the circuit-breaker that provided power to the ignition, which initially it was feared would prevent firing the launch rockets, but a felt-tip pen was able to act as substitute, and the two would in fact lift-off as planned and make their rendezvous with Columbia.

The Eagle ascent stage was jettisoned into lunar orbit, but was not tracked. Its position would be a matter of concern for later Moon missions. The astronauts would splash down in the Pacific Ocean and were immediately put in mobile quarantine, and transported to a lunar receiving laboratory to be studied and assessed.

They had left a commemorative plaque on the Eagle’s ladder, at the site of their landing, noting it was the first place human beings set foot on the Moon. There was also a silicon storage disc that listed the leaders of Congress and contained messages of well wishes from US presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. They also mentioned Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin.

Pres. Richard Nixon, when he greeted them in quarantine, told the Apollo 11 crew “As a result of what you’ve done, the world has never been closer together before”. Their achievement had been watched on television around the world, and though it was seen as a kind of Cold War victory for the US, it was treated around the world as a collective achievement of human science and ingenuity.

The crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor marked the 4oth anniversary of the Moon landing with a spacewalk today. Astronauts Dave Wolf and Tom Marshburn will spend six and a half hours outside the controlled environments of the Shuttle Endeavor and International Space Station (ISS), working to complete construction of the Japanese laboratory module Kibo. The STS-127 mission will expand the ISS to its completed size, an important achievement for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.

Pres. Obama remembers TV news “icon” Walter Cronkite

Café Sentido’s own editor and director, J.E. Robertson, wrote today:

American journalism has lost one of its elder statesmen. Walter Cronkite was one of the founders of broadcast journalism, pioneering a warm, conversational style for delivering facts with detachment and gravitas. The old-style newsman delivered news to the American viewing public about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the protests of the 1960s, the Moon landing (40 years ago Monday), Watergate and other major moments of crisis and achievement.

Robertson finished his obituary with the no word-mincing line: “He will be missed, but his example stands implacable.” We stand behind Walter Cronkite’s principled, ethical pursuit of hard facts and truth-telling reportage. We stand behind his willingness to go beyond the story to get to the underlying truth that power-brokers might consider convenient to keep hidden.

Reporter and historian David Halberstam wrote for The Atlantic, today:

He knew by instinct the balance between journalism and show biz; he knew you needed to be good at the latter, but that you must never take it too far. He was enough of an old wire-service man to be uneasy with his new success and fame. He was just sophisticated enough never to show his sophistication.

In addition, he had physical strength and durability. Iron pants, as they say in the trade. He could sit there all night under great stress and constant pressure and never wear down, never blow it. And he never seemed bored by it all, even when it got boring. When Blair Clark and Sig Mickelson recommended him for the anchorman job, that durability, what they called the farm boy in him, was a key factor. He was the workhorse.

Pres. Barack Obama lauded Cronkite’s “integrity” in a video statement released to the press (embedded above), saying:

He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day, a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. In moments of tragedy, Walter looked us in the eye and shared our pain … and he brought us all those stories large and small which would come to define the 20th century.

That’s why we loved Walter, because in an era before blogs and email, cell-phones and cable, he was the news. Walter invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down.

Frazier Moore, writing for the Associated Press, says of Cronkite that he spoke nightly to a “nationwide community gathered to watch [him]“, and that he:

… clearly embraced the possibilities of new media. He had plied his trade in newspapers, radio and at a wire service when, in the early 1950s, he answered the call of a cutting-edge but primitive emerging media platform called television.

Even for Americans who remember Cronkite declaring “and that’s the way it is” every evening in his heyday, it’s hard to fully recall the heights to which he took TV news. And vice versa. Simply put, at CBS News, he invented the role of anchorman and prevailed in that role until his retirement …

Walter Cronkite had openly lamented the direction of television and print news and the corrosive effects of the “24-hour news cycle”, which he felt drained the news business of thought and deliberation, creating a landscape of snap reporting with less and less depth and little to no background to give perspective.

But many in the news business have touted Cronkite’s passionate interest in new technologies and his willingness to take the work of the field reporter to the cutting edge of radio and television media, despite his early start in the business of ink and newsprint. More than oppose emerging media which had shifted the news culture away from his principles, he urged fellow reporters to be rigorous, thoughtful and given to probing investigation, so that the service they provided would be worthy of the expectations the public invests in the free press.

Ted Anthony, also writing for the AP, observes:

Barely a generation has passed since Walter Cronkite disappeared from our evenings. But the notion of one man — a single, authoritative, empathetic man, morally reassuring and mild of temper — wrapping up the world after dinner for America seems incalculably quaint in the technological coliseum that is 21st-century communications.

Many of the network farewells to the CBS anchorman, who died Friday at 92, seemed built around the notion of the father figure. Anchors and reporters who are part of another age — a still-unfolding era of community feedback, viewer outreach and social-media interaction — struggled to summon the idea of anchor as monolith.

NPR’s Scott Simon called Cronkite “a trusted voice of reason”:

Cronkite was a great broadcaster. He spoke to masses, not niches. He grasped that when the news was urgent, people would turn to the broadcaster not only for information, but for sincerity and calm.

Millions of people felt better to hear from this man who seemed experienced, but not jaded. He had a visible sense of grief in tragedies, and a little boy’s delight in the glory of space shots. He had gray hair and hound-dog bags under his eyes, but ageless sincerity.

Al Jazeera said the legendary anchor’s death is “the end of an era”, noting how “his legendary voice became associate with key events” during his long years at CBS. The video tribute notes the rare courage of a mainstream news anchor telling it like it is, giving in one of his most influential broadcasts his assessment as an independent observer of the ill-fated war-effort in Vietnam, in which he said:

… it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people, who lived up to their pledge to defend to democracy, and did the best they could.

Praised by news organizations around the world for his simple and straightforward way of delivering the facts of the day, the Al Jazeera montage gives Cronkite the last word, signing off in his signature style with the phrase “And that’s the way it is”. The online video does not note this, but the message is implicit that 24-hour TV news organizations like Al Jazeera, or CNN or France 24, owe their existence in part to this incomparable pioneer of the medium.

Howard Kurtz observes, in his piece for the Washington Post, that:

It is hard to remember, in this age of niche cable channels feeding every obsession, how dominant CBS and NBC (and, much later, ABC) were in their heydays. Every senior member of Cronkite’s news team — including, at various times, Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Bernard Kalb, Fred Graham, Daniel Schorr — was a recognizable celebrity in his own right. (They were almost all men.) You got your morning paper, and then you watched Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley at night, perhaps while eating a TV dinner.

Kurtz delves into the reverence so many in the news business had for Walter Cronkite, for his legendary status, but also for his humanity, his principles, his professionalism, the equanimity with which he approached the work of trying to find out what was true:

[Tom] Brokaw has called Cronkite the “gold standard,” and at a time when journalism commanded a whole lot more respect than it does today, he was its undeniable symbol. Perhaps it was his wire-service training, at a time when print experience was still considered valuable for broadcast journalists. Perhaps it was his calm demeanor, his mastery of understatement, his disdain for on-air showmanship.

Another write-up in the Washington Post credits Cronkite for having “shaped the medium and the nation”. Xinhua editor Wang Guanqun praised Cronkite’s “professional experience and kindly demeanor”, and quoted several American comments on his death. In the short Xinhua newsclip, Wang also wrote: “Cronkite pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was regarded as the ‘voice of TV news’ by New York Times.”

In this moving CBS video, Walter Cronkite gives an account of his long evolution as a journalist, in his own words: “I think I was a workaholic from the very beginning… it was the newspaper work for me; I just fell in love with the darn business”. He laments dropping out of college and says he always regretted it, but goes on to explain how he met his wife and achieved so much as a journalist.

Cronkite talks of how Edward R. Murrow called him and asked him to come to work at CBS, the beginning of the most significant and lasting part of his legacy. He says Murrow’s famed “Good night, and good luck” was in part the inspiration for his adopting the catch-phrase “And that’s the way it is”. He also notes that it was on one of his evening news broadcasts that the Beatles first appeared on American television. In the end, he says he’s lucky to have spent his whole life in journalism, adding “I think it all worked out pretty well”.

7:00 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:   Thank you.  What an extraordinary night, capping off an extraordinary week, capping off an extraordinary 100 years at the NAACP.  (Applause.)

So Chairman Bond, Brother Justice, I am so grateful to all of you for being here.  It’s just good to be among friends.  (Applause.)

It is an extraordinary honor to be here, in the city where the NAACP was formed, to mark its centennial.  What we celebrate tonight is not simply the journey the NAACP has traveled, but the journey that we, as Americans, have traveled over the past 100 years.  (Applause.)

It’s a journey that takes us back to a time before most of us were born, long before the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, Brown v. Board of Education; back to an America just a generation past slavery.  It was a time when Jim Crow was a way of life; when lynchings were all too common; when race riots were shaking cities across a segregated land.

It was in this America where an Atlanta scholar named W.E.B. Du Bois — (applause) — a man of towering intellect and a fierce passion for justice, sparked what became known as the Niagara movement; where reformers united, not by color, but by cause; where an association was born that would, as its charter says, promote equality and eradicate prejudice among citizens of the United States.

From the beginning, these founders understood how change would come — just as King and all the civil rights giants did later.  They understood that unjust laws needed to be overturned; that legislation needed to be passed; and that Presidents needed to be pressured into action.  They knew that the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation had to be lifted in the courtroom, and in the legislature, and in the hearts and the minds of Americans.

They also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people.  It would come from people protesting lynchings, rallying against violence, all those women who decided to walk instead of taking the bus, even though they were tired after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry, looking after somebody else’s children.  (Applause.)  It would come from men and women of every age and faith, and every race and region — taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; sitting down at Greensboro lunch counters; registering voters in rural Mississippi, knowing they would be harassed, knowing they would be beaten, knowing that some of them might never return.

Because of what they did, we are a more perfect union.  Because Jim Crow laws were overturned, black CEOs today run Fortune 500 companies.  (Applause.)  Because civil rights laws were passed, black mayors, black governors, and members of Congress served in places where they might once have been able [sic] not just to vote but even take a sip of water.  And because ordinary people did such extraordinary things, because they made the civil rights movement their own, even though there may not be a plaque or their names might not be in the history books — because of their efforts I made a little trip to Springfield, Illinois, a couple years ago — (applause) — where Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged — and began the journey that has led me to be here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America.  (Applause.)

Because of them I stand here tonight, on the shoulders of giants.  And I’m here to say thank you to those pioneers and thank you to the NAACP.  (Applause.)

And yet, even as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of the past 100 years; even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folk — we know that too many barriers still remain.

We know that even as our economic crisis batters Americans of all races, African Americans are out of work more than just about anybody else — a gap that’s widening here in New York City, as a detailed report this week by Comptroller Bill Thompson laid out.  (Applause.)

We know that even as spiraling health care costs crush families of all races, African Americans are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anybody else.

We know that even as we imprison more people of all races than any nation in the world, an African American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a prison.

We know that even as the scourge of HIV/AIDS devastates nations abroad, particularly in Africa, it is devastating the African American community here at home with disproportionate force.  We know these things.  (Applause.)

These are some of the barriers of our time.  They’re very different from the barriers faced by earlier generations.  They’re very different from the ones faced when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on young marchers; when Charles Hamilton Houston and a group of young Howard lawyers were dismantling segregation case by case across the land.

But what’s required today — what’s required to overcome today’s barriers is the same as what was needed then.  The same commitment.  The same sense of urgency.  The same sense of sacrifice.  The same sense of community.  The same willingness to do our part for ourselves and one another that has always defined America at its best and the African American experience at its best.  (Applause.)

And so the question is, where do we direct our efforts?  What steps do we take to overcome these barriers?  How do we move forward in the next 100 years?

The first thing we need to do is make real the words of the NAACP charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States.  (Applause.)  I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009.  And I believe that overall, there probably has never been less discrimination in America than there is today.  I think we can say that.

But make no mistake:  The pain of discrimination is still felt in America.  (Applause.)  By African American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender.  (Laughter.)  By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country.  (Applause.)  By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their God.  (Applause.)  By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights.  (Applause.)

On the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination cannot stand — not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love.  Prejudice has no place in the United States of America.  That’s what the NAACP stands for.  That’s what the NAACP will continue to fight for as long as it takes.  (Applause.)

But we also know that prejudice and discrimination — at least the most blatant types of prejudice and discrimination — are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today.  The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.

These are barriers we are beginning to tear down one by one — by rewarding work with an expanded tax credit; by making housing more affordable; by giving ex-offenders a second chance.  (Applause.)  These are barriers we’re targeting through our White House Office on Urban Affairs, through programs like Promise Neighborhoods that builds on Geoffrey Canada’s success with the Harlem Children’s Zone — (applause) — that foster a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by putting all children on a pathway to college, and giving them the schooling and after-school support that they need to get there.  (Applause.)

I think all of us understand that our task of reducing these structural inequalities has been made more difficult by the state and structure of our broader economy; an economy that for the last decade has been fueled by a cycle of boom and bust; an economy where the rich got really, really rich, but ordinary folks didn’t see their incomes or their wages go up; an economy built on credit cards, shady mortgage loans; an economy built not on a rock, but on sand.

That’s why my administration is working so hard not only to create and save jobs in the short-term, not only to extend unemployment insurance and help for people who have lost their health care in this crisis, not just to stem the immediate economic wreckage, but to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within the reach of not just African Americans, but all Americans.  All Americans.  (Applause.)  Of every race.  Of every creed.  From every region of the country.  (Applause.)  We want everybody to participate in the American Dream.  That’s what the NAACP is all about.  (Applause.)

Now, one pillar of this new foundation is health insurance for everybody.  (Applause.)  Health insurance reform that cuts costs and makes quality health coverage affordable for all, and it closes health care disparities in the process.  Another pillar is energy reform that makes clean energy profitable, freeing America from the grip of foreign oil; putting young people to work upgrading low-income homes, weatherizing, and creating jobs that can’t be outsourced.  Another pillar is financial reform with consumer protections to crackdown on mortgage fraud and stop predatory lenders from targeting black and Latino communities all across the country.  (Applause.)

All these things will make America stronger and more competitive.  They will drive innovation, they will create jobs, they will provide families with more security.  And yet, even if we do all that, the African American community will still fall behind in the United States and the United States will fall behind in the world unless we do a far better job than we have been doing of educating our sons and daughters.  (Applause.)

I hope you don’t mind — I want to go into a little detail here about education.  (Applause.)  In the 21st century — when so many jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or more, when countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow — a world-class education is a prerequisite for success.

There’s no two ways about it.  There’s no way to avoid it.  You know what I’m talking about.  There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools.  There’s a reason Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown.  There’s a reason why the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob.  It’s because there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.  (Applause.)

And yet, more than half a century after Brown v. Board, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across the country.  African American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math — an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way in the civil rights movement.  Over half of all African American students are dropping out of school in some places.  There are overcrowded classrooms, and crumbling schools, and corridors of shame in America filled with poor children — not just black children, brown and white children as well.

The state of our schools is not an African American problem; it is an American problem.  (Applause.)  Because if black and brown children cannot compete, then America cannot compete.  (Applause.)  And let me say this, if Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich can agree that we need to solve the education problem, then that’s something all of America can agree we can solve.  (Applause.)  Those guys came into my office.  (Laughter.) Just sitting in the Oval Office — I kept on doing a double-take.  (Laughter and applause.)  So that’s a sign of progress and it is a sign of the urgency of the education problem.  (Applause.)  All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country — every child –

AUDIENCE:  Amen!

THE PRESIDENT:  Got an “Amen corner” back there — (applause) — every child — every child in this country the best education the world has to offer from cradle through a career.

That’s our responsibility as leaders.  That’s the responsibility of the United States of America.  And we, all of us in government, have to work to do our part by not only offering more resources, but also demanding more reform.  Because when it comes to education, we got to get past this whole paradigm, this outdated notion that somehow it’s just money; or somehow it’s just reform, but no money — and embrace what Dr. King called the “both-and” philosophy.  We need more money and we need more reform.  (Applause.)

When it comes to higher education we’re making college and advanced training more affordable, and strengthening community colleges that are the gateway to so many with an initiative — (applause) — that will prepare students not only to earn a degree, but to find a job when they graduate; an initiative that will help us meet the goal I have set of leading the world in college degrees by 2020.  We used to rank number one in college graduates.  Now we are in the middle of the pack.  And since we are seeing more and more African American and Latino youth in our population, if we are leaving them behind we cannot achieve our goal, and America will fall further behind — and that is not a future that I accept and that is not a future that the NAACP is willing to accept.  (Applause.)

We’re creating a Race to the Top fund that will reward states and public school districts that adopt 21st century standards and assessments.  We’re creating incentives for states to promote excellent teachers and replace bad ones — (applause) — because the job of a teacher is too important for us to accept anything less than the best.  (Applause.)

We also have to explore innovative approaches such as those being pursued here in New York City; innovations like Bard High School Early College and Medgar Evers College Preparatory School that are challenging students to complete high school and earn a free associate’s degree or college credit in just four years.  (Applause.)

And we should raise the bar when it comes to early learning programs.  It’s not enough just to have a babysitter.  We need our young people stimulated and engaged and involved.  (Applause.)  We need our — our folks involved in child development to understand the latest science.  Today, some early learning programs are excellent.  Some are mediocre.  And some are wasting what studies show are by far a child’s most formative years.

That’s why I’ve issued a challenge to America’s governors:  If you match the success of states like Pennsylvania and develop an effective model for early learning; if you focus reform on standards and results in early learning programs; if you demonstrate how you will prepare the lowest income children to meet the highest standards of success — then you can compete for an Early Learning Challenge Grant that will help prepare all our children to enter kindergarten all ready to learn.  (Applause.)

So these are some of the laws we’re passing.  These are some of the policies we are enacting.  We are busy in Washington.  Folks in Congress are getting a little tuckered out.  (Laughter.)  But I’m telling them — I’m telling them we can’t rest, we’ve got a lot of work to do.  The American people are counting on us.  (Applause.)  These are some of the ways we’re doing our part in government to overcome the inequities, the injustices, the barriers that still exist in our country.

But all these innovative programs and expanded opportunities will not, in and of themselves, make a difference if each of us, as parents and as community leaders, fail to do our part by encouraging excellence in our children.  (Applause.)  Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land.  We need a new mind set, a new set of attitudes — because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we’ve internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves.

We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher.  Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face.  But that’s not a reason to get bad grades — (applause) — that’s not a reason to cut class — (applause) — that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school.  (Applause.)  No one has written your destiny for you.  Your destiny is in your hands — you cannot forget that.  That’s what we have to teach all of our children.  No excuses.  (Applause.)  No excuses.

You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete.  Yes we can.  (Applause.)

To parents — to parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home.  (Applause.)  You can’t just contract out parenting.  For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn.  That means putting away the Xbox — (applause) — putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour.  (Applause.)  It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework.  (Applause.)

And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor’s sons and daughters.  (Applause.)  We need to go back to the time, back to the day when we parents saw somebody, saw some kid fooling around and — it wasn’t your child, but they’ll whup you anyway.  (Laughter and applause.)  Or at least they’ll tell your parents — the parents will.  You know.  (Laughter.)  That’s the meaning of community.  That’s how we can reclaim the strength and the determination and the hopefulness that helped us come so far; helped us make a way out of no way.

It also means pushing our children to set their sights a little bit higher.  They might think they’ve got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can’t all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne.  (Applause.)  I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers — (applause) — doctors and teachers — (applause) — not just ballers and rappers.  I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice.  (Applause.)  I want them aspiring to be the President of the United States of America.  (Applause.)

I want their horizons to be limitless.  I don’t — don’t tell them they can’t do something.  Don’t feed our children with a sense of — that somehow because of their race that they cannot achieve.

Yes, government must be a force for opportunity.  Yes, government must be a force for equality.  But ultimately, if we are to be true to our past, then we also have to seize our own future, each and every day.

And that’s what the NAACP is all about.  The NAACP was not founded in search of a handout.  The NAACP was not founded in search of favors.  The NAACP was founded on a firm notion of justice; to cash the promissory note of America that says all of our children, all God’s children, deserve a fair chance in the race of life.  (Applause.)

It’s a simple dream, and yet one that all too often has been denied — and is still being denied to so many Americans.  It’s a painful thing, seeing that dream denied.  I remember visiting a Chicago school in a rough neighborhood when I was a community organizer, and some of the children gathered ’round me.  And I remember thinking how remarkable it was that all of these children seemed so full of hope, despite being born into poverty, despite being delivered, in some cases, into addiction, despite all the obstacles they were already facing — you could see that spark in their eyes.  They were the equal of children anywhere.

And I remember the principal of the school telling me that soon that sparkle would begin to dim, that things would begin to change; that soon, the laughter in their eyes would begin to fade; that soon, something would shut off inside, as it sunk in — because kids are smarter than we give them credit for — as it sunk in that their hopes would not come to pass — not because they weren’t smart enough, not because they weren’t talented enough, not because of anything about them inherently, but because, by accident of birth, they had not received a fair chance in life.

I know what can happen to a child who doesn’t have that chance.  But I also know what can happen to a child that does.  I was raised by a single mom.  I didn’t come from a lot of wealth.  I got into my share of trouble as a child.  My life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.  When I drive through Harlem or I drive through the South Side of Chicago and I see young men on the corners, I say, there but for the grace of God go I.  (Applause.)  They’re no less gifted than me.  They’re no less talented than me.

But I had some breaks.  That mother of mine, she gave me love; she pushed me, she cared about my education; she took no lip; she taught me right from wrong.  Because of her, I had a chance to make the most of my abilities.  I had the chance to make the most of my opportunities.  I had the chance to make the most of life.

The same story holds true for Michelle.  The same story holds true for so many of you.  And I want all the other Barack Obamas out there, and all the other Michelle Obamas out there — (applause) — to have the same chance — the chance that my mother gave me; that my education gave me; that the United States of America has given me.  That’s how our union will be perfected and our economy rebuilt.  That is how America will move forward in the next 100 years.

And we will move forward.  This I know — for I know how far we have come.  Some, you saw, last week in Ghana, Michelle and I took Malia and Sasha and my mother-in-law to Cape Coast Castle, in Ghana.  Some of you may have been there.  This is where captives were once imprisoned before being auctioned; where, across an ocean, so much of the African American experience began.

We went down into the dungeons where the captives were held.  There was a church above one of the dungeons — which tells you something about saying one thing and doing another.  (Applause.)  I was — we walked through the “Door Of No Return.”  I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities on the voyage from slavery to freedom.

But I was reminded of something else.  I was reminded that no matter how bitter the rod, how stony the road, we have always persevered.  (Applause.)  We have not faltered, nor have we grown weary.  As Americans, we have demanded, and strived for, and shaped a better destiny.  And that is what we are called on to do once more.  NAACP, it will not be easy.  It will take time.  Doubts may rise and hopes may recede.

But if John Lewis could brave Billy clubs to cross a bridge — (applause) — then I know young people today can do their part and lift up our community.  (Applause.)

If Emmet Till’s uncle, Mose Wright, could summon the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew, I know we can be better fathers and better brothers and better mothers and sisters in our own families.  (Applause.)

If three civil rights workers in Mississippi — black, white, Christian and Jew, city-born and country-bred — could lay down their lives in freedom’s cause, I know we can come together to face down the challenges of our own time.   (Applause.)  We can fix our schools — (applause) — we can heal our sick, we can rescue our youth from violence and despair.  (Applause.)

And 100 years from now, on the 200th anniversary of the NAACP — (applause) — let it be said that this generation did its part; that we too ran the race; that full of faith that our dark past has taught us, full of the hope that the present has brought us — (applause) — we faced, in our lives and all across this nation, the rising sun of a new day begun.  (Applause.)

Thank you,  God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END
7:37 P.M. EDT

Speech as delivered by Pres. Obama at Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Normandy, France, to Honor the Fallen on the 65th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion

Good afternoon.  Thank you, President Sarkozy, Prime Minister Brown, Prime Minister Harper, and Prince Charles for being here today.  Thank you to our Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, for making the trip out here to join us.  Thanks also to Susan Eisenhower, whose grandfather began this mission 65 years ago with a simple charge: “Ok, let’s go.”  And to a World War II veteran who returned home from this war to serve a proud and distinguished career as a United States Senator and a national leader:  Bob Dole.  (Applause.)

I’m not the first American President to come and mark this anniversary, and I likely will not be the last.  This is an event that has long brought to this coast both heads of state and grateful citizens; veterans and their loved ones; the liberated and their liberators.  It’s been written about and spoken of and depicted in countless books and films and speeches.  And long after our time on this Earth has passed, one word will still bring forth the pride and awe of men and women who will never meet the heroes who sit before us:  D-Day.    

Why is this?  Of all the battles in all the wars across the span of human history, why does this day hold such a revered place in our memory?  What is it about the struggle that took place on the sands a few short steps from here that brings us back to remember year after year after year?

Part of it, I think, is the size of the odds that weighed against success.  For three centuries, no invader had ever been able to cross the English Channel into Normandy.  And it had never been more difficult than in 1944.

That was the year that Hitler ordered his top field marshal to fortify the Atlantic Wall against a seaborne invasion.  From the tip of Norway to southern France, the Nazis lined steep cliffs with machine guns and artillery.  Low-lying areas were flooded to block passage.  Sharpened poles awaited paratroopers.  Mines were laid on the beaches and beneath the water.  And by the time of the invasion, half a million Germans waited for the Allies along the coast between Holland and northern France. 

At dawn on June 6th, the Allies came.  The best chance for victory had been for the British Royal Air Corps to take out the guns on the cliffs while airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines.  But all did not go according to plan.  Paratroopers landed miles from their mark, while the fog and clouds prevented Allied planes from destroying the guns on the cliffs.  So when the ships landed here at Omaha, an unimaginable hell rained down on the men inside.  Many never made it out of the boats.  

And yet, despite all of this, one by one, the Allied forces made their way to shore — here, and at Utah and Juno; Gold and Sword.  They were American, British, and Canadian.  Soon, the paratroopers found each other and fought their way back.  The Rangers scaled the cliffs.  And by the end of the day, against all odds, the ground on which we stand was free once more.

The sheer improbability of this victory is part of what makes D-Day so memorable.  It also arises from the clarity of purpose with which this war was waged.  

We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true.  It’s a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government.  In such a world, it’s all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.  

The Second World War did that.  No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good.  But all know that this war was essential.  For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests.  It was a competing vision of humanity.  Nazi ideology sought to subjugate and humiliate and exterminate.  It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior.  It was evil.

The nations that joined together to defeat Hitler’s Reich were not perfect.  They had made their share of mistakes, had not always agreed with one another on every issue.  But whatever God we prayed to, whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped.  Citizens of all faiths and of no faith came to believe that we could not remain as bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and destruction.  And so we joined and sent our sons to fight and often die so that men and women they never met might know what it is to be free. 

In America, it was an endeavor that inspired a nation to action.  A President who asked his country to pray on D-Day also asked its citizens to serve and sacrifice to make the invasion possible.  On farms and in factories, millions of men and women worked three shifts a day, month after month, year after year.  Trucks and tanks came from plants in Michigan and Indiana, New York and Illinois.  Bombers and fighter planes rolled off assembly lines in Ohio and Kansas, where my grandmother did her part as an inspector.  Shipyards on both coasts produced the largest fleet in history, including the landing craft from New Orleans that eventually made it here to Omaha.

But despite all the years of planning and preparation, despite the inspiration of our leaders, the skill of our generals, the strength of our firepower and the unyielding support from our home front, the outcome of the entire struggle would ultimately rest on the success of one day in June.    

Lyndon Johnson once said that there are certain moments when “¼history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.”  

D-Day was such a moment.  One newspaper noted that “we have come to the hour for which we were born.”  Had the Allies failed here, Hitler’s occupation of this continent might have continued indefinitely.  Instead, victory here secured a foothold in France.  It opened a path to Berlin.  It made possible the achievements that followed the liberation of Europe:  the Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance, the shared prosperity and security that flowed from each.   

It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide.

More particularly, it came down to the men who landed here — those who now rest in this place for eternity, and those who are with us here today.  Perhaps more than any other reason, you, the veterans of that landing, are why we still remember what happened on D-Day.  You’re why we keep coming back.

For you remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control.  You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance.  Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman.  It has always been up to us.   

You could have done what Hitler believed you would do when you arrived here.  In the face of a merciless assault from these cliffs, you could have idled the boats offshore.  Amid a barrage of tracer bullets that lit the night sky, you could have stayed in those planes.  You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the seawall.  You could have done only what was necessary to ensure your own survival. 

But that’s not what you did.  That’s not the story you told on D-Day.  Your story was written by men like Zane Schlemmer of the 82nd Airborne, who parachuted into a dark marsh, far from his objective and his men.  Lost and alone, he still managed to fight his way through the gunfire and help liberate the town in which he landed — a town where a street now bears his name.   

It’s a story written by men like Anthony Ruggiero, an Army Ranger who saw half the men on his landing craft drown when it was hit by shellfire just a thousand yards off this beach.  He spent three hours in freezing water, and was one of only 90 Rangers to survive out of the 225 who were sent to scale the cliffs.

And it’s a story written by so many who are no longer with us, like Carlton Barrett.  Private Barrett was only supposed to serve as a guide for the 1st Infantry Division, but he instead became one of its heroes.  After wading ashore in neck-deep water, he returned to the water again and again and again to save his wounded and drowning comrades.  And under the heaviest possible enemy fire, he carried them to safety.  He carried them in his own arms. 

This is the story of the Allied victory.  It’s the legend of units like Easy Company and the All-American 82nd.  It’s the tale of the British people, whose courage during the Blitz forced Hitler to call off the invasion of England; the Canadians, who came even though they were never attacked; the Russians, who sustained some of the war’s heaviest casualties on the Eastern front; and all those French men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than lived within its grasp.   

It is the memories that have been passed on to so many of us about the service or sacrifice of a friend or relative.  For me, it is my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived on this beach six weeks after D-Day and marched across Europe in Patton’s Army.  And it is my great uncle who was part of the first American division to reach and liberate a Nazi concentration camp.  His name is Charles Payne, and I’m so proud that he’s with us here today.   

I know this trip doesn’t get any easier as the years pass, but for those of you who make it, there’s nothing that could keep you away.  One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene, was a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Division of the 101st Airborne.  Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep.  Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return.  But just as he did 65 years ago, he came anyway.  May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here. 

In the end, Jim Norene came back to Normandy for the same reason we all come back.  He came for the reason articulated by Howard Huebner, another former paratrooper who is here with us today.  When asked why he made the trip, Howard said, “It’s important that we tell our stories.  It doesn’t have to be something big¼just a little story about what happened — so people don’t forget.”

So people don’t forget.   

Friends and veterans, we cannot forget.  What we must not forget is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and the selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century.  At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found within themselves the ability to do something extraordinary.  They fought for their moms and sweethearts back home, for the fellow warriors they came to know as brothers.  And they fought out of a simple sense of duty — a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their countrymen had once fought and bled for over two centuries.

That is the story of Normandy — but also the story of America; of the Minutemen who gathered on a green in Lexington; of the Union boys from Maine who repelled a charge at Gettysburg; of the men who gave their last full measure of devotion at Inchon and Khe San; of all the young men and women whose valor and goodness still carry forward this legacy of service and sacrifice.  It’s a story that has never come easy, but one that always gives us hope.  For as we face down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore.

To those men who achieved that victory 65 years ago, we thank you for your service.  May God bless you, and may God bless the memory of all those who rest here. (Applause.)

Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, jailed in Tehran on allegations of espionage, has had her sentence reduced from 8 years to 2 years, suspended for 5 years. Iranian officials announced today that she was free to leave Evin prison immediately. Saberi, originally detained for buying a bottle of wine, was subsequently charged with reporting without government credentials, then espionage. Her trial was a 15-minute closed-door hearing in which no defense was permitted.

The case had become a major international diplomatic issue, with the US government calling the charges “baseless” and both Sec. of State Clinton and Pres. Obama repeatedly demanding her immediate release. Today, Sec. of State Clinton announced today that Saberi’s release had been confirmed, adding that she was “heartened” by the news.

According to the Washington Post:

Saberi’s release was confirmed by the semi-official state news agency Mehrnews. She did not immediately appear before the crowd of reporters that had gathered at the gray metal gate of Evin Prison in northwest Tehran. Saberi’s attorney, Abdolsamad Khorramshai, said Saberi apparently had been sent out of the prison through another door.

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Saberi had undertaken a hunger-strike in protest of her detention and has been described in recent days as being gaunt and frail. Her father just yesterday said he was concerned that if her sentence were upheld, she would starve herself to death, in protest or in despair. Iran’s Pres. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, considered a hardline ideologue and fierce opponent of the US, had ordered prosecutors to permit Saberi to present a complete defense.

In a 5-hour hearing yesterday, Saberi’s lawyers presented her defense and argued that the charges were illegitimate and that the process used to convict her violated due process requirements. No specifics about the defense arguments have been released so far, and the courts have not made the proceedings public.

Her attorney told the press that his client was free to leave Iran after her release and that “They explained [to] me that the two years were conditional and would not be carried out if she would not commit any crimes in the coming five years”. Though Saberi’s release may signal a slight thaw in Washington-Tehran relations, there are still at least 7 journalists in jail in Iran, and observers note that Iran may be trying to curry favor with the release.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln faced the challenge of proving himself worthy of national leadership, with only 2 years experience in the House of Representatives, 11 years prior to his candidacy. He arranged to deliver a major policy address in New York City. The topic was daunting: he would make the argument in favor of federal control of slavery in the territories which might become new states. Southern states where slavery was not only legal but was the structural basis for their economic culture, were opposed to such a policy, believing it would lead to the powerful and populous northern states forcing Congress to ban slavery throughout the US.

Lincoln had become a national figure two years earlier when he engaged in a series of arduous (3-hour-long) debates on Constitutional law and the abolition of slavery, with Sen. Stephen Douglas. The debates were rapidly transcribed and in subsequent days published in full in newspapers throughout the country. The debates raised Lincoln’s standing from one of midwestern lawyer and founder of a radical party to that of leading political intellectual and prospective leader of a major national party.

Lincoln undertook an exhaustive research of the policies and political philosophies of the 39 individuals who signed the United States Constitution. He found that 21 favored allowing Congress to control the question of slavery in the territories, which were, after all, under federal authority and without functioning state governments. A successful address would elevate the cause of gradual legislative abolition to mainstream legitimacy and the Republican cause to national prominence.

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An eyewitness reportedly commented on Lincoln’s famously “ungainly” appearance, then added that when he spoke “his face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man.” Excerpts from the speech, like the great final intonation that “Right makes might” were sent by telegraph across the nation, with his full speech to follow.

Tom Wheeler, speaking about his book, Mr. Lincoln’s T-mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War, told a New York Audience in 2007 that Lincoln’s visit to New York in 1860 was designed to help him capitalize on the major technological innovations that had expanded the influence of the publishing industry. He was photographed by Mathew Brady and his portrait was distributed along with his Cooper Union address across the US, standing in for the candidate and allowing him to forgo much of the vigorous campaigning that might otherwise be needed.

What follows is a transcript of that speech:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Mr. President and fellow citizens of New York:

The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.

In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in “The New-York Times,” Senator Douglas said:

“Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: “What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?”

What is the frame of government under which we live?

The answer must be: “The Constitution of the United States.” That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, (and under which the present government first went into operation,) and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the “thirty-nine” who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated.

I take these “thirty-nine,” for the present, as being “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.”

What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood “just as well, and even better than we do now?”

It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?

Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this issue – this question – is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood “better than we.”

Let us now inquire whether the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it – how they expressed that better understanding?

In 1784, three years before the Constitution – the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the “thirty-nine” who afterward framed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the four – James M’Henry – voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it improper to vote for it.

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the “thirty-nine” who afterward signed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition – thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance of ’87.

The question of federal control of slavery in the territories, seems not to have been directly before the Convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question.

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of ’87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the “thirty-nine,” Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James Madison.

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.

Again, George Washington, another of the “thirty-nine,” was then President of the United States, and, as such approved and signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory.

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded territory. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere with it – take control of it – even there, to a certain extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so bought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the “thirty-nine” who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.

In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it – take control of it – in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made, in relation to slaves, was:

First. That no slave should be imported into the territory from foreign parts.

Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into the United States since the first day of May, 1798.

Third. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave.

This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Congress which passed it, there were two of the “thirty-nine.” They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution.

In 1819-20, came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of the “thirty-nine” – Rufus King and Charles Pinckney – were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case.

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the “thirty-nine,” or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover.

To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20 – there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin, three times. The true number of those of the “thirty-nine” whom I have shown to have acted upon the question, which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way.

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers “who framed the government under which we live,” who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they “understood just as well, and even better than we do now;” and twenty-one of them – a clear majority of the whole “thirty-nine” – so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, under such responsibility, speak still louder.

Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohibition of slavery in the federal territories, in the instances in which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of local from federal authority, or some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such question, have voted against the prohibition, on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition, as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the “thirty-nine,” so far as I have discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct question of federal control of slavery in the federal territories. But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the “thirty-nine” even, on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times – as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris – while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one – a clear majority of the whole – certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question “better than we.”

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of “the Government under which we live” consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty or property without due process of law;” while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution – the identical Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical, same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after the act enforcing the Ordinance of ’87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were pre- eminently our fathers who framed that part of “the Government under which we live,” which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we – better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience – to reject all progress – all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live” were of the same opinion – thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from federal authority or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they “understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

But enough! Let all who believe that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now,” speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask – all Republicans desire – in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

And now, if they would listen – as I suppose they will not – I would address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: – You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.” In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite – license, so to speak – among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section – gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started – to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live” thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment’s consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.

But you say you are conservative – eminently conservative – while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;” while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the “gur-reat pur-rinciple” that “if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,” fantastically called “Popular Sovereignty;” but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,” declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, “It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.”

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution – the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling – that sentiment – by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer’s distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact – the statement in the opinion that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in it. Bear in mind, the Judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is “distinctly and expressly” affirmed there – “distinctly,” that is, not mingled with anything else – “expressly,” that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word “slave” nor “slavery” is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word “property” even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a “person;” – and wherever his master’s legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as “service or labor which may be due,” – as a debt payable in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live” – the men who made the Constitution – decided this same Constitutional question in our favor, long ago – decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, “Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.” But we do let them alone – have never disturbed them – so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality – its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension – its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man – such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care – such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance – such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Prime time press conference with Pres. Obama, 8pm EDT, 29 April 2009

OBAMA: Before we begin tonight, I just want to provide everyone with a few brief updates on some of the challenges we’re dealing with right now.

First, we are continuing to closely monitor the emergency cases of the H1N1 flu virus throughout the United States. As I said this morning, this is obviously a very serious situation, and every American should know that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations.

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Our public health officials have recommended that schools with confirmed or suspected cases of this flu strongly consider temporarily closing. And if more schools are forced to close, we’ve recommended that both parents and businesses think about contingency plans if their children do have to stay home.

I’ve requested an immediate $1.5 billion in emergency funding from Congress to support our ability to monitor and track this virus and to build our supply of antiviral drugs and other equipment. And we will also ensure that those materials get to where they need to be as quickly as possible.

And, finally, I’ve asked every American to take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you’re sick; and keep your children home from school if they’re sick.

We’ll continue to provide regular updates to the American people as we receive more information. And everyone should rest assured that this government is prepared to do whatever it takes to control the impact of this virus.

The second thing I’d like to mention is how gratified I am that the House and the Senate passed a budget resolution today that will serve as an economic blueprint for this nation’s future.

I especially want to thank Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, all of the members of Congress who worked so quickly and effectively to make this blueprint a reality.

This budget builds on the steps we’ve taken over the last 100 days to move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity.

We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families. We passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for 11 million American children whose parents work full time. And we launched a housing plan that has already contributed to a spike in the number of homeowners who are refinancing their mortgages, which is the equivalent of another tax cut.

But even as we clear away the wreckage of this recession, I’ve also said that we can’t go back to an economy that’s built on a pile of sand, on inflated home prices and maxed-out credit cards, on overleveraged banks and outdated regulations that allow recklessness of a few to threaten the prosperity of all.

We have to lay a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century. And that’s exactly what this budget begins to do.

It contains new investments in education that will equip our workers with the right skills and training, new investments in renewable energy that will create millions of jobs and new industries, new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses, and new savings that will bring down our deficit.

I also campaigned on the promise that I would change the direction of our nation’s foreign policy. And we’ve begun to do that, as well. We’ve begun to end the war in Iraq, and we forged with our NATO allies a new strategy to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and banning torture without exception.

And we’ve renewed our diplomatic efforts to deal with challenges ranging from the global economic crisis to the spread of nuclear weapons.

So I think we’re off to a good start, but it’s just a start. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved, but I’m not content. I’m pleased with our progress, but I’m not satisfied.

Millions of Americans are still without jobs and homes, and more will be lost before this recession is over. Credit is still not flowing nearly as freely as it should. Countless families and communities touched by our auto industry still face tough times ahead. Our projected long-term deficits are still too high, and government is still not as efficient as it needs to be.

We still confront threats ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation, as well as pandemic flu. And all this means you can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security in the second hundred days, in the third hundred days and all of the days after that.

You can expect us to work on health care reform that will bring down costs while maintaining quality, as well as energy legislation that will spark a clean-energy revolution. I expect to sign legislation by the end of this year that sets new rules of the road for Wall Street, rules that reward drive and innovation, as opposed to shortcuts and abuse.

And we will also work to pass legislation that protects credit card users from unfair rate hikes and abusive fees and penalties. We’ll continue scouring the federal budget for savings and target more programs for elimination. And we will continue to pursue procurement reform that will greatly reduce the no-bid contracts that have wasted so many taxpayer dollars.

So we have a lot of work left to do. It’s work that will take time, and it will take effort. But the United States of America, I believe, will see a better day.

We will rebuild a stronger nation, and we will endure as a beacon for all of those weary travelers beyond our shores who still dream that there’s a place where all of this is possible.

I want to thank the American people for their support and their patience during these trying times, and I look forward to working with you in the next hundred days, in the hundred days after that, all of the hundreds of days to follow to make sure that this country is what it can be.

And with that, I will start taking some questions.

And I’ll start with you, Jennifer.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. With the flu outbreak spreading and worsening, can you talk about whether you think it’s time to close the border with Mexico and whether —

under what conditions you might consider quarantining, when that might be appropriate?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, as I said, this is a cause for deep concern, but not panic. And I think that we have to make sure that we recognize that how we respond intelligently, systematically, based on science and what public health officials have to say, will determine in large part what happens.

I’ve consulted with our public health officials extensively on a day-to-day basis, in some cases an hour-to-hour basis. At this point they have not recommended a border closing. From their perspective it would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out, because we already have cases here in the United States.

We have ramped up screening efforts, as well as made sure that additional supplies are there on the border, so that we can prepare in the eventuality that we have to do more than we’re doing currently.

But the most important thing right now that public health officials have indicated is that we treat this the same way that we would treat other flu outbreaks, just understanding that, because this is a new strain, we don’t yet know how it will respond.

So we have to take additional precautions, essentially, take out some additional insurance. Now, that’s why I asked for an additional $1.5 billion, so that we can make sure that everything is in place should a worst-case scenario play out.

I do want to compliment Democrats and Republicans who worked diligently back in 2005 when the bird flu came up. I was part of a group of legislators who worked with the Bush administration to make sure that we had beefed up our infrastructure and our stockpiles of antiviral drugs, like Tamiflu.

And I think the Bush administration did a good job of creating the infrastructure so that we can respond. For example, we’ve got 50 million courses of antiviral drugs in the event that they’re needed.

So the government is going to be doing everything that we can. We’re coordinating closely with state and local officials. Secretary Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security, newly installed Secretary Sebelius of Health and Human Services, our acting CDC director, they are all on the phone on a daily basis with all public health officials across the states to coordinate and make sure that there’s timely reporting, that if —

as new cases come up, that we’re able to track them effectively, that we’re allocating resources so that they’re in place.

The key now I think is to make sure that we’re maintaining great vigilance, that everybody responds appropriately when cases do come up, and individual families start taking very sensible precautions that can make a huge difference.

So wash your hands when you shake hands. Cover your mouth when you cough. I know it sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference. If you are sick, stay home. If your child is sick, keep them out of school.

To — if you are feeling certain flu symptoms, don’t get on an airplane, don’t get on a —

any system of public transportation where you’re confined and you could potentially spread the virus.

So those are the steps that I think we need to take right now. But understand that because this is a new strain, we have to be cautious. If this was a strain that we were familiar with, then we might have to —

then I think we wouldn’t see the kind of alert levels that we’re seeing, for example, with the World Health Organization. OK?

Deb Price of Detroit News. Where’s Deb?

Good to see you.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. On the domestic auto industry, have you determined that bankruptcy is the only option to restructure Chrysler? And do you believe that the deep cuts in plant closings that were outlined this week by General Motors are sufficient?

OBAMA: Let me speak to Chrysler first because the clock is ticking on Chrysler coming up with a plan. I am actually very hopeful, more hopeful than I was 30 days ago, that we can see a resolution that maintains a viable Chrysler auto company out there.

What we’ve seen is the unions have made enormous sacrifices on top of sacrifices that they had previously made. You’ve now seen the major debt holders come up with a set of potential concessions that they can live with.

All of that promises the possibility that you can get a Fiat-Chrysler merger and that you have an ongoing concern. The details have not yet been finalized, so I don’t want to jump the gun. But I am feeling more optimistic than I was about the possibilities of that getting done.

With respect to GM, we’re going to have another 30 days. They’re still in the process of presenting us with their plans. But I’ve always said that GM has a lot of good product there, and if they can get through these difficult times and engage in some of the very difficult choices that they’ve already made, that they can emerge a strong, competitive, viable company.

And that’s my goal in this whole process. I would love to get the U.S. government out of the auto business as quickly as possible. We have a circumstance in which a bad recession compounded some great weaknesses already in the auto industry.

And it was my obligation and continues to be my obligation to make sure that any taxpayer dollars that are in place to support the auto industry are aimed not at short-term fixes that continue these companies as wards of the state, but rather institutes the kind of restructuring that allows them to be strongly competitive in the future. I think we’re moving in that direction.

Last point, you asked about Chrysler bankruptcy. It was the prudent and appropriate thing for Chrysler to do to engage in the filings that they —

that received some notice a while back because they had to prepare for possible contingencies.

It’s not clear that they’re going to have to use it. The fact that the major debt-holders appear ready to make concessions means that even if they ended up having to go through some sort of bankruptcy, it would be a very quick type of bankruptcy and they could continue operating and emerge on the other side in a much stronger position.

So my goal is to make sure that we’ve got a strong, viable, competitive auto industry. I think some tough choices are being made. There’s no denying that there’s significant hardship involved, particularly for the workers and the families in these communities.

And we’re going to be coming behind whatever plan is in place to make sure that the federal government is providing as much assistance as we have to ensure that people are landing back on their feet, even as we strengthen these core businesses.

Jake? Where’s Jake? There he is.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture. Torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

OBAMA: What I’ve said — and I will repeat —

is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British —

all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

And then the reason was that Churchill understood — you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s —

what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

And — and so I strongly believed that the steps that we’ve taken to prevent these kinds of enhanced interrogation techniques will make us stronger over the long term and make us safer over the long term because it will put us in a —

in a position where we can still get information.

In some cases, it may be harder, but part of what makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.

At the same time, it takes away a critical recruitment tool that al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations have used to try to demonize the United States and justify the killing of civilians.

And it makes us —

it puts us in a much stronger position to work with our allies in the kind of international, coordinated intelligence activity that can shut down these networks.

So this is a decision that I’m very comfortable with. And I think the American people over time will recognize that it is better for us to stick to who we are, even when we’re taking on an unscrupulous enemy.

OK?

Q: (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I’m sorry?

Q: (OFF-MIKE) sanctioned torture?

OBAMA: I believe that waterboarding was torture. And I think that the —

whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.

Mark Knoller?

Q: Thank you, sir. Let me follow up, if I may, on Jake’s question. Did you read the documents recently referred to by former Vice President Cheney and others saying that the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques not only protected the nation but saved lives?

And if part of the United States were under imminent threat, could you envision yourself ever authorizing the use of those enhanced interrogation techniques?

OBAMA: I have read the documents. Now they have not been officially declassified and released. And so I don’t want to go to the details of them. But here’s what I can tell you, that the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques, which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques, don’t answer the core question.

Which is, could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn’t answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

So when I made the decision to release these memos and when I made the decision to bar these practices, this was based on consultation with my entire national security team, and based on my understanding that ultimately I will be judged as commander in chief on how safe I’m keeping the American people.

That’s the responsibility I wake up with and it’s the responsibility I go to sleep with. And so I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe. But I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure that we are not taking short cuts that undermine who we are.

And there have been no circumstances during the course of this first 100 days in which I have seen information that would make me second guess the decision that I have made. OK?

Chuck Todd.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to move to Pakistan. Pakistan appears to be at war with the Taliban inside their own country. Can you reassure the American people that if necessary America could secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and keep it from getting into the Taliban’s hands or, worst case scenario, even al-Qaida’s hands?

OBAMA: I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure. Primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands. We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan. I’m more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.

And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people. So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there’s a recognition increasingly on the part of both the civilian government there and the army that that is their biggest weakness.

On the military side, you’re starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally. And you’re starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists.

We want to continue to encourage Pakistan to move in that direction. And we will provide them all of the cooperation that we can. We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.

Q: But in a worst-case scenario…

OBAMA: I’m not going to engage in…

Q: (OFF-MIKE) military could secure this nuclear…

OBAMA: I’m not going to engage in —

in hypotheticals of that sort. I feel confident that that nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands.

OK, Jeff Mason?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. One of the biggest changes you’ve made in the first 100 days regarding foreign policy has had to do with Iraq. But do the large-scale —

there’s large-scale violence there right now. Does that affect the U.S. strategy at all for withdrawal? And could it affect the timetable that you’ve set out for troops?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to note that, although you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a —

a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, etc., remain very low relative to what was going on last year, for example.

And so you haven’t seen the kinds of huge spikes that you were seeing for a time. The political system is holding and functioning in Iraq.

Part of the reason why I called for a gradual withdrawal as opposed to a precipitous one was precisely because more work needs to be done on the political side to further isolate whatever remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq still exist.

And I’m very confident that, with our commander on the ground, Gen. Odierno, with Chris Hill, our new ambassador, having been approved and already getting his team in place, that they are going to be able to work effectively with the Maliki government to create the conditions for an ultimate transfer after the national elections.

But there’s some —

some serious work to do on making sure that how they divvy up oil revenues is ultimately settled, what the provincial powers are and boundaries, the relationship between the Kurds and the central government, the relationship between the Shia and the Kurds. Are they incorporating effectively Sunnis, Sons of Iraq, into the structure of the armed forces in a way that’s equitable and just?

Those are all issues that have not been settled the way they need to be settled. And what we’ve done is, we’ve provided sufficient time for them to get that work done, but we’ve got to keep the pressure up, not just on the military side, but on the diplomatic and development sides, as well.

Chip Reid?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. On Senator Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party, you said you were thrilled; I guess nobody should be surprised about that.

But how big a deal is this, really? Some Republicans say it is huge. They believe it’s a game-changer. They say that, if you get the 60 votes in the Senate, that you will be able to ride roughshod over any opposition, and that we’re on the verge of, as one Republican put it, one-party rule.

Do you see it that way? And, also, what do you think his switch says about the state of the Republican Party?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think very highly of Arlen Specter. I think he’s got a record of legislative accomplishment that is as good as any member of the Senate.

And I think he’s always had a strong independent streak. I think that was true when he was a Republican; I think that will be true when he’s a Democrat.

He was very blunt in saying I couldn’t count on him to march lockstep on every single issue. And so he’s going to still have strong opinions, as many Democrats in the Senate do.

I’ve been there. It turns out, all the senators have very strong opinions. And I don’t think that’s going to change.

I do think that having Arlen Specter in the Democratic caucus will liberate him to cooperate on critical issues, like health care, like infrastructure and job creation, areas where his inclinations were to work with us, but he was feeling pressure not to.

And I think the vote on the Recovery Act was a classic example. Ultimately, he thought that was the right thing to do. And he was fiercely berated within his own party at the time for having taken what I consider to be a very sensible step. So —

so I think it’s, overall, positive.

Now, I am under no illusions that suddenly I’m going to have a rubber-stamp Senate. I’ve got Democrats who don’t agree with me on everything, and that’s how it should be.

Congress is a coequal branch of government. Every senator who’s there, whether I agree with them or disagree with them, I think truly believes that they are doing their absolute best to represent their constituencies.

And we’ve got regional differences, and we’ve got some parts of the country that are affected differently by certain policies. And those have to be respected, and there’s going to have to be compromise and give-and-take on all of these issues.

I do think that, to my Republican friends, I want them to realize that me reaching out to them has been genuine. I can’t sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change.

But there are a whole host of areas where we can work together. And I’ve said this to people like Mitch McConnell. I said, look, on health care reform, you may not agree with me that I —

we should have a public plan. That may be philosophically just too much for you to swallow.

On the other hand, there are some areas like reducing the costs of medical malpractice insurance where you do agree with me. If I’m taking some of your ideas and giving you credit for good ideas, the fact that you didn’t get 100 percent can’t be a reason every single time to oppose my position.

And if that is how bipartisanship is defined, a situation in which basically, wherever there are philosophical differences, I have to simply go along with ideas that have been rejected by the American people in a historic election, you know, we’re probably not going to make progress.

If, on the other hand, the definition is that we’re open to each other’s ideas, there are going to be differences, the majority will probably be determinative when it comes to resolving just hard, core differences that we can’t resolve, but there is a whole host of other areas where we can work together, then I think we can make progress.

Q: Is the Republican Party in the desperate straits that Arlen Specter seems to think it is?

OBAMA: You know, politics in America changes very quick. And I’m a big believer that things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem.

You’re talking to a guy who was 30 points down in the polls during a — a primary in Iowa. So — so I never —

I don’t believe in crystal balls.

I do think that our administration has taken some steps that have restored confidence in the American people that we’re moving in the right direction and that simply opposing our approach on every front is probably not a good political strategy.

Ed Henry?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In a couple of weeks, you’re going to be giving the commencement at Notre Dame. And, as you know, this has caused a lot of controversy among Catholics who are opposed to your position on abortion.

As a candidate, you vowed that one of the very things you wanted to do was sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which, as you know, would eliminate federal, state and local restrictions on abortion. And at one point in the campaign when asked about abortion and life, you said that it was above —

quote, above my pay grade.

Now that you’ve been president for 100 days, obviously, your pay grade is a little higher than when you were a senator.

Do you still hope that Congress quickly sends you the Freedom of Choice Act so you can sign it?

OBAMA: You know, the — my view on —

on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.

I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest —

and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take that —

that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their clergy.

So —

so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I’ve got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that’s —

that’s where I’m going to focus.

Jeff Zeleny.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President.

During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?

OBAMA: Now let me write this down.

OBAMA: I’ve got …

Q: Surprised, troubled …

OBAMA: I’ve got —

what was the first one?

Q: Surprised.

OBAMA: Surprised.

Q: Troubled.

OBAMA: Troubled.

Q: Enchanted.

OBAMA: Enchanted, nice.

Q: And humbled.

OBAMA: And what was the last one, humbled?

Q: Humbled. Thank you, sir.

OBAMA: All right. OK. Surprised. I am surprised compared to where I started, when we first announced for this race, by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming to a head all at the same time.

You know, when I first started this race, Iraq was a central issue, but the economy appeared on the surface to still be relatively strong. There were underlying problems that I was seeing with health care for families and our education system and college affordability and so forth, but obviously, I didn’t anticipate the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And so, you know, the typical president, I think, has two or three big problems. We’ve got seven or eight big problems. And so we’ve had to move very quickly and I’m very proud of my team for the fact that we’ve been able to keep our commitments to the American people, to bring about change, while at the same time managing a whole host of issues that had come up that weren’t necessarily envisioned a year-and-a-half ago.

Troubled? I’d say less troubled, but, you know, sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow. That there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we’re in the middle of really big crises.

I would like to think that everybody would say, You know what? Let’s take a time-out on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least this year, and then we can start running for something next year. And that hasn’t happened as much as I would have liked.

Enchanted? Enchanted. I will tell you that when I — when I meet our servicemen and -women, enchanted is probably not the word I would use. But I am so profoundly impressed and grateful to them for what they do. They’re really good at their job. They are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices on our behalf. They do so without complaint. They are fiercely loyal to this country.

And, you know, the more I interact with our servicemen and -women, from the top brass down to the lowliest private, I’m just — I’m grateful to them.

Humbled by the — humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life, and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can’t just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line.

And so, you know, what you do is to — is to make your best arguments, listen hard to what other people have to say, and coax folks in the right direction.

This metaphor has been used before, but the ship of state is an ocean liner. It’s not a speedboat. And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue, of how to bring about the changes that the American people need, is to — is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, you may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say, that was when we started getting serious about clean energy. That’s when health care started to become more efficient and affordable. That’s when we became serious about raising our standards in education.

And — and so I — I have a much longer time horizon than I think you do when you’re a candidate or if you’re listening, I think, to the media reportage on a day-to-day basis.

And I’m humbled, last, by the American people who have shown extraordinary patience and I think a recognition that we’re not going to solve all of these problems overnight.

OK. Lori Montenegro?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, when you met with the Hispanic Caucus a few weeks ago, reports came out that the White House was planning to have a forum to talk about immigration and bring it to the forefront.

Going forward, my question is, what is your strategy to try to have immigration reform? And are you still on the same timetable to have it accomplished in the first year of your presidency?

And, also, I’d like to know if you’re going to reach out to Sen. John McCain, who is Republican and in the past has favored immigration reform?

OBAMA: Well, we reach out to — to Sen. McCain on a whole host of issues. He has been a leader on immigration reform. I think he has had the right position on immigration reform. And I would love to partner with him and others on what is going to be a critical issue.

We’ve also worked with Sen. McCain on what I think is a terrific piece of legislation that he and Carl Levin have put together around procurement reform. We want that moved, and we’re going to be working hard with them to get that accomplished.

What I told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is exactly what I said the very next day in a town hall meeting and what I will continue to say publicly, and that is we want to move this process.

We can’t continue with a broken immigration system. It’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for American workers. It’s dangerous for Mexican would-be workers who are trying to cross a dangerous border.

It is — it is putting a strain on border communities, who oftentimes have to deal with a host of undocumented workers. And it keeps those undocumented workers in the shadows, which means they can be exploited at the same time as they’re depressing U.S. wages.

So, what I hope to happen is that we’re able to convene a working group, working with key legislators like Luis Gutierrez and Nydia Velazquez and others to start looking at a framework of how this legislation might be shaped.

In the meantime, what we’re trying to do is take some core — some key administrative steps to move the process along to lay the groundwork for legislation. Because the American people need some confidence that if we actually put a package together, we can execute.

So Janet Napolitano, who has great knowledge of this because of having been a border governor, she’s already in the process of reviewing and figuring out how can we strengthen our border security in a much more significant way than we’re doing.

If the American people don’t feel like you can secure the borders, then it’s hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship who are already here, because the attitude of the average American is going to be, well, you’re just going to have hundreds of thousands of more coming in each year.

On the other hand, showing that there is a more thoughtful approach than just raids of a handful of workers as opposed to, for example, taking seriously the violation of companies that sometimes are actively recruiting these workers to come in. That’s again something we can start doing administratively.

So what we want to do is to show that we are competent and getting results around immigration, even on the structures that we already have in place, the laws that we already have in place, so that we’re building confidence among the American people that we can actually follow through on whatever legislative approach emerges. OK?

Q: (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I see the process moving this first year. And I’m going to be moving it as quickly as I can. I’ve been accused of doing too much. We are moving full-steam ahead on all fronts.

Ultimately, I don’t have control of the legislative calendar, and so we’re going to work with legislative leaders to see what we can do.

Andre Showell? There you go.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President.

As the entire nation tries to climb out of this deep recession, in communities of color, the circumstances are far worse. The black unemployment rate, as you know, is in the double digits. And in New York City, for example, the black unemployment rate for men is near 50 percent.

My question to you tonight is given this unique and desperate circumstance, what specific policies can you point to that will target these communities and what’s the timetable for us to see tangible results?

OBAMA: Well, keep in mind that every step we’re taking is designed to help all people. But folks who are most vulnerable are most likely to be helped because they need the most help.

So when we passed the Recovery Act, for example, and we put in place provisions that would extend unemployment insurance or allow you to keep your health insurance even if you’ve lost your job, that probably disproportionately impacted those communities that had lost their jobs. And unfortunately, the African-American community and the Latino community are probably over represented in those ranks.

When we put in place additional dollars for community health centers to ensure that people are still getting the help that they need, or we expand health insurance to millions more children through the children’s health insurance program, again, those probably disproportionately impact African-American and Latino families simply because they’re the ones who are most vulnerable. They have got higher rates of uninsured in their communities.

So my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all boats as long as it is also supported by, for example, strategies around college affordability and job training, tax cuts for working families as opposed to the wealthiest that level the playing field and ensure bottom-up economic growth.

And I’m confident that that will help the African-American community live out the American dream at the same time that it’s helping communities all across the country.

Michael Scherer of Time?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. During the campaign, you criticized President Bush’s use of the state secrets privilege, but U.S. attorneys have continued to argue the Bush position in three cases in court. How exactly does your view of state secrets differ from President Bush’s? And do you believe presidents should be able to derail entire lawsuits about warrantless wiretapping or rendition if classified information is involved?

OBAMA: I actually think that the state secret doctrine should be modified. I think right now it’s over broad.

But keep in mind what happens, is we come in to office. We’re in for a week, and suddenly we’ve got a court filing that’s coming up. And so we don’t have the time to effectively think through, what exactly should an overarching reform of that doctrine take? We’ve got to respond to the immediate case in front of us.

There — I think it is appropriate to say that there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can’t litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety.

But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it’s not such a blunt instrument.

And we’re interested in pursuing that. I know that Eric Holder and Greg Craig, my White House counsel, and others are working on that as we speak.

STAFF: Last question.

OBAMA: Jonathan Weisman, you get — you get the last word. Where are you? There you are.

Q: Thank you, sir. You are currently the chief shareholder of a couple of very large mortgage giants. You’re about to become the chief shareholder of a car company, probably two.

And I’m wondering, what kind of shareholder are you going to be? What is the government’s role as the keeper of public — public trust and bonds in — in soon-to-be public companies again? Thank you.

OBAMA: Well, I think our — our first role should be shareholders that are looking to get out. You know, I don’t want to run auto companies. I don’t want to run banks. I’ve got two wars I’ve got to run already. I’ve got more than enough to do. So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off we’re going to be.

We are in unique circumstances. You had the potential collapse of the financial system, which would have decimated our economy, and so we had to step in.

As I’ve said before, I don’t agree with every decision that was made by the previous administration when it came to TARP, but the need for significant intervention was there, and it was appropriate that we moved in.

With respect to the auto companies, I believe that America should have a functioning, competitive auto industry. I don’t think that taxpayers should simply put — attach an umbilical cord between the U.S. Treasury and the auto companies so that they are constantly getting subsidies, but I do think that helping them restructure at this unique period when sales — you know, the market has essentially gone from 14 million down to 9 million — I don’t think that there’s anything inappropriate about that.

My goal on all this is to help these companies make some tough decisions based on realistic assumptions about economic growth, about their market share, about what that market is going to look like, to prevent systemic risk that would affect everybody, and, as soon as their situations are stabilized and the economy is less fragile so that those systemic risks are diminished, to get out, find some private buyers, and …

Q: (OFF-MIKE) products or services (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I don’t think that we should micromanage, but I think that, like any investor, the American taxpayer has the right to scrutinize what’s being proposed and make sure that their money is not just being thrown down the drain.

And so, you know, we’ve got to strike a balance. I don’t want to be —

I’m not an auto engineer. I don’t know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid. But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same.

So my job is to ask the auto industry: Why is it you guys can’t do this? And, in some cases, they’re starting to do it, but they’ve got these legacy costs. You know, there are some terrific U.S. cars being made, both by Chrysler and GM.

The question is, you know, give me a plan so that you’re building off your strengths and you’re projecting out to where that market is going to be. I actually think, if you look at the trends, that those auto companies that emerge from this crisis, when you start seeing the pent-up demand for autos coming back, they’re going to be in a position to really do well, globally, not just here in the United States.

So I just want to help them get there. But I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy, you know, meddling in the private sector, if — if you could tell me right now that, when I walked into this office that the banks were humming, that autos were selling, and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran, and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal.

And — and that’s why I’m always amused when I hear these, you know, criticisms of, Oh, you know, Obama wants to grow government. No. I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that’s not the hand that’s been dealt us.

And, you know, every generation has to rise up to the specific challenges that confront them. We happen to have gotten a big set of challenges, but we’re not the first generation that that’s happened to. And I’m confident that we are going to meet these challenges just like our grandparents and forebears met them before.

All right? Thank you, everybody.

END

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was today confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and sworn in as the latest member of Pres. Barack Obama’s cabinet. This White House photo by Peter Souza shows Sebelius being briefed today on the US response to the 2009 H1N1 flu virus outbreak, reported to have begun in Mexico City.

Sebelius’ swearing in is another positive turn of events for Pres. Obama, on his 100th day in office, as her filling the HHS post, along with passage of the FY2010 budget and Sen. Specter’s switching parties, all converge to make it far more likely Obama will be able to achieve major healthcare reform, starting with initial legislation this year.

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The bulk of Sebelius’ labors will likely be devoted, during her tenure at HHS, to Obama’s bold plans for reform of the US healthcare system, with the aim of making sure every American has access to “quality, affordable healthcare”. But on her first day at the post, she was immediately thrust into the heart of a global health scare, as the first confirmed H1N1 death occurred in the US.

A Mexican citizen visiting her relatives in Texas became the first known fatality in US territory resulting from the swine flu or 2009 H1N1 flu virus. The ‘multi-strain’ virus combines DNA segments from avian species, as well as pig and human. It is thought to spread more easily due to low immune resistance in the human population, which has not previously faced this particular strain of influenza.

Warning that “we need all hands on deck”, Pres. Obama spoke briefly upon Sec. Sebelius’ swearing in, saying:

Here we go. We’re just going to make a brief statement. I am thrilled to have Kathleen Sebelius as my new Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Obviously, we have a lot to do to make sure that health care is affordable for the American people, to deal with critical issues like food safety. But we wanted to swear her in right away because we’ve got a significant public health challenge that requires her immediate attention, and that is the H1N1 flu outbreak that we’ve seen initially in Mexico and we now see over at — got some cases here in the United States.

It is something that we have to monitor very carefully. The officials who have been in charge, including the Acting Director at the CDC, those at Department of Homeland Security, have done an outstanding job, a superb job, in managing the situation up to this point.

Her confirmation held up due to some Republicans’ opposition to her pro-choice stance on abortion and women’s rights, a 60-vote majority was required in order to confirm Sebelius and avert a filibuster. The LA Times reported today:

The 65-31 vote came after Democrats urged quick action so that Sebelius could get to work leading the federal response to the flu outbreak.

“We find ourselves in the midst of a global crisis,” Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said. “What we’ve been missing in all of this is the head of the Health and Human Services Department.”

The former Kansas governor was briefed by Obama’s Homeland Security advisor John Brennan, just hours after being confirmed last night, then sworn in this morning. Pres. Obama said he expects her “to hit the ground running”, part of the president’s no-nonsense attitude about doing the work of public service and a signal the administration is taking the swine flu outbreak as a serious public health issue.

The AP’s Charles Babington observed the administration’s effort to get the message out on responsible flu-prevention and treatment options:

President Barack Obama tries to learn from his predecessors’ mistakes, and some see his fast, wide-ranging response to the swine flu threat as a lesson learned from George W. Bush’s much-maligned handling of Hurricane Katrina.

With one confirmed flu death in the United States, it is unclear how severely the disease will affect the nation. But the White House’s communications team forsook a wait-and-see approach Wednesday, sending Obama and several Cabinet members before cameras and Congress to urge vigilance without panic.

‘Vigilance without panic’ or ‘alert without alarm’ has been the message from the beginning. The administration has urged the public to act with common sense about hygiene and about avoiding contact with too many people or with people who might be ill. But the public has been warned not to flood clinics and hospitals in an effort to get preemptive tests (as there is no such effective test) or swine flu vaccinations (as none yet exist).

Sebelius will likely follow Obama’s lead on public demeanor, urging concern, calm and common sense. But Sebelius, as the top health official in the country, can now begin better implementing an organized federal emergency response to the outbreak, which has spread to Israel, and has for the first time left one patient dead on US soil. Other than the one patient visiting relatives in Texas, no other American cases have led to death, and only 5 hospitalizations have been reported.

• Daily updates from the World Health Organization on the H1N1 flu outbreak
• Daily updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the H1N1 flu outbreak
• Café Sentido’s ongoing coverage of the H1N1 flu outbreak

The Congressional negotiation on the budget for fiscal year 2010 has worked out a $3.44 trillion budget proposal that features many of Pres. Obama’s highest-priority initiatives. Healthcare reform will be included as part of the standard budget, meaning that votes on healthcare reforms can pass the Senate with a simple majority, i.e. 50 votes plus the Democratic VP Joe Biden. The agreed budget resolution would cut the budget deficit even in the first year by more than expected. 

The compromise budget passed the House of Representatives today by a 233-193 vote “largely along party lines”. The budget embraces Obama’s spending priorities, including education and healthcare, as well as energy reform. The budget compromise was shaped in part to reach a maximum deficit limit of $523 billion in fiscal year 2014. Much of the deficit spending required over the next five years is “built in” by the need for financial bailouts and the cost overruns of the Iraq war up to date. 

According to Politico, to reach that $523 billion upper-limit for the FY 2014 deficit:

Democrats would have to cut as much as $173 billion from Obama’s five years requests for non-defense appropriations. Equally sensitive is the question of middle-class tax cuts, where the final budget provides less room than many Senate Democrats had hoped and will demand tough votes next year.

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Pay-as-you-go budgeting is popular in the House, but the Senate is less willing to commit to not permitting vital new spending unless funding is cut elsewhere. This helps to explain why tough votes on social programs and Obama’s middle-class tax cut will be needed just one year from now. The new items inherent in the president’s reform and spending priorities were not made permanent and will need renewal, after it can be judged how costly it will be to fund them. 

According to the AP: 

“It’s a budget that reduces taxes, lowers the deficit and creates jobs,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “It honors the three pillars of the Obama initiatives: energy, health care and education.”

Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) reminded Republicans and the public that Obama cannot be blamed for the massive budget deficit emerging in this first of his budget proposals, saying “We inherited a colossal mess”, in reference to the hundreds of billions in bailouts needed to prop up the banking system and the massive military spending tied to the two ongoing wars, one in its eighth year, the other just entering its sixth. 

As many have reported, the budget is not a binding law requiring specific amounts for specific spending areas, but rather a set of rules that will determine how tax-related and spending-related bills are crafted, debated, passed and funded, over the course of the next year. This budget includes, for example, guidelines that will allow the Democrats to rule out a Republican filibuster over healthcare. Bloomberg reports:

The plan would let Democrats use fast-track reconciliation procedures to approve the health-care and education changes, allowing approval in the Senate with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes otherwise needed. The procedures limit floor debate to 20 hours and restrict what sort of amendments lawmakers may offer.