Remarks of President Barack Obama
Video for the “It Gets Better” Project
Washington, DC

Like all of you, I was shocked and saddened by the deaths of several young people who were bullied and taunted for being gay, and who ultimately took their own lives. As a parent of two daughters, it breaks my heart. It’s something that just shouldn’t happen in this country.

We’ve got to dispel the myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage – that it’s some inevitable part of growing up. It’s not. We have an obligation to ensure that our schools are safe forall of our kids. And to every young person out there you need to know that if you’re in trouble, there are caring adults who can help.

I don’t know what it’s like to be picked on for being gay. But I do know what it’s like to grow up feeling that sometimes you don’t belong. It’s tough. And for a lot of kids, the sense of being alone or apart – I know can just wear on you. And when you’re teased or bullied, it can seem like somehow you brought it on yourself – for being different, or for not fitting in with everybody else.

But what I want to say is this. You are not alone. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything to deserve being bullied. And there is a whole world waiting for you, filled with possibilities. There are people out there who love you and care about you just the way you are. And so, if you ever feel like because of bullying, because of what people are saying, that you’re getting down on yourself, you’ve got to make sure to reach out to people you trust. Whether it’s your parents, teachers, folks that you know care about you just the way you are. You’ve got to reach out to them, don’t feel like you’re in this by yourself.

The other thing you need to know is, things will get better. And more than that, with time you’re going to see that your differences are a source of pride and a source of strength. You’ll look back on the struggles you’ve faced with compassion and wisdom. And that’s not just going to serve you, but it will help you get involved and make this country a better place.

It will mean that you’ll be more likely to help fight discrimination – not just against LGBT Americans, but discrimination in all its forms. It means you’ll be more likely to understand personally and deeply why it’s so important that as adults we set an example in our own lives and that we treat everybody with respect. That we are able to see the world through other people’s eyes and stand in their shoes – that we never lose sight of what binds us together.

As a nation we’re founded on the belief that all of us are equal and each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness; to make the most of our talents; to speak our minds; to not fit in; most of all, to be true to ourselves. That’s the freedom that enriches all of us. That’s what America is all about. And every day, it gets better.

Hello, Stanford. It is great to be in California and back in beautiful Palo Alto. Coming here always makes me want to go back to college, although an 18-year-old Barack Obama would not have gotten in. I got more serious, later.

I want to thank the Cyber Policy Center here at Stanford for hosting this event. I want to thank Tiana for that outstanding introduction, and for all the work that you are doing. I want to thank a great friend and a remarkable public servant and Ambassador of Russia, during very difficult times, and one of my top advisors, Michael McFaul, for being here.

Michelle and I set up the Obama Foundation to train the next generation of leaders, and I think you saw in Tiana, the example of the kind of remarkable leadership that’s out there, with the talent and vision to lead us forward, as long as old people get out of the way.

During some of the darkest days of World War II, American philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote the following, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

We’re living through another tumultuous, dangerous moment in history. All of us have been horrified by Russia’s brutal invasion of the Ukraine. A nuclear-armed despot’s response to a neighboring state whose only provocation is its desire to be independent and democratic. An invasion of this scale hasn’t been seen in Europe since World War II, and we’ve all witnessed the resulting death and destruction, and the displacement, in real time.

The stakes are enormous, and the courage displayed by ordinary Ukrainians has been extraordinary and demands our support. Unfortunately, a war in the Ukraine isn’t happening in a vacuum. Vladimir Putin’s aggression is part of a larger trend, even if similar levels of oppression and lawlessness and violence and suffering don’t always attract the same levels of attention if they happen outside of Europe,

Autocrats and aspiring strongmen have become emboldened around the globe. They’re actively subverting democracy, they’re undermining hard-won human rights, they’re ignoring international law.

Worse yet, democratic backsliding is not restricted to distant lands. Right here, in the United States of America, we just saw a sitting president deny the clear results of an election and help incite a violent insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. Not only that, but a majority of his party, including many who occupy some of the highest offices in the land, continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the last election, and are using it to justify laws that restrict the vote, making it easier to overturn the will of the people in states where they hold power.

But for those of us who believe in democracy and the rule of law, this should serve as a wake-up call. We have to admit that, at least in the years since the Cold War ended, democracies have grown dangerously complacent.

That too often, we’ve taken freedom for granted. What recent events remind us, is that democracy is neither inevitable nor self-executed. Citizens like us have to nurture it. We have to tend to it and fight for it, and as our circumstances change, we have to be willing to look at ourselves critically, making reforms that can allow democracy, not just to survive, but to thrive.

That won’t be easy. A lot of factors have contributed to the weakening of democratic institutions around the world. One of those factors is globalization which has helped lift hundreds and millions out of poverty, most notably in China and India, but which, along with automation has also upended entire economies, accelerated global inequality, and left millions of others feeling betrayed and angry at existing political institutions.

There is the increased mobility and urbanization of modern life, which further shakes up societies, including existing family structures and gender roles. Here at home, we’ve seen a steady decline in the number of people participating in unions, civic organizations and houses of worship, mediating institutions that once served as a kind of communal glue.

Internationally, the rise of China as well as chronic political dysfunction, here in the U.S. and in Europe, not to mention the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008, has made it easier for leaders in other countries to discount democracy’s appeal. And as once marginalized groups demand a seat at the table, politicians have found a new audience for old-fashioned appeals to racial and ethnic, religious or national solidarity.

In the rush to protect "us" from "them," virtues like tolerance and respect for democratic processes start to look, not just expendable, but like a threat to our way of life.

So if we’re going to strengthen democracy, we’ll have to address all of these strengths. We’ll have to come up with new models for a more inclusive, equitable capitalism. We’ll have to reform our political institutions in ways that allow people to be heard and give them real agency. We’ll have to tell better stories about ourselves and how we can live together, despite our differences.

And that’s why I’m here today, on Stanford’s campus, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where so much of the digital revolution began, because I’m convinced that right now one of the biggest impediments to doing all of this, indeed, one of the biggest reasons for democracies weakening is the profound change that’s taking place in how we communicate and consume information.

Now let me start off by saying I am not a Luddite, although it is true that sometimes I have to ask my daughters how to work basic functions on my phone. I am amazed by the internet. It’s connected billions of people around the world, put the collected knowledge of centuries at our fingertips. It’s made our economies vastly more efficient, accelerated medical advances, opened up new opportunities, allowed people with shared interests to find each other.

I might never have been elected president if it hadn’t been for websites like, and I’m dating myself, MySpace, MeetUp and Facebook that allowed an army of young volunteers to organize, raise money, spread our message. That’s what elected me.

And since then, we’ve all witnessed the ways that activists use social media platforms to register dissent and shine a light on injustice and mobilize people on issues like climate change and racial justice. So the internet and the accompanying information revolution has been transformative. And there’s no turning back.

But like all advances in technology, this progress has had unintended consequences that sometimes come at a price. And in this case, we see that our new information ecosystem is turbocharging some of humanity’s worst impulses.

Not all of these effects are intentional or even avoidable. They’re simply the consequence of billions of humans suddenly plugged into an instant, 24/7 global information stream. Forty years ago, if you were a conservative in rural Texas, you weren’t necessarily offended by what was going on in San Francisco’s Castro District because you didn’t know what was going on.

If you lived in an impoverished Yemeni village, you had no insight into the spending habits of the Kardashians. For some such exposure may be eye opening, perhaps even liberating, but others may experience that exposure as a direct affront to their traditions, their belief systems, their place in society. Then you have the sheer proliferation of content and the splintering of information and audiences. That’s made democracy more complicated.

I’ll date myself again. If you were watching TV here in the United States between about 1960 and 1990, I Dream of Jeannie, The Jeffersons. Chances are you were watching one of the big three networks. And this had its own problems, particularly the ways in which programming often excluded voices and perspectives of women and people of color and other folks outside of the mainstream. But it did fortify a sense of shared culture and when it came to the news, at least, citizens across the political spectrum tended to operate using a shared set of facts, what they saw, what they heard from Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or others.

Today, of course, we occupy entirely different media realities, fed directly into our phones. You don’t even have to look up. And it’s made all of us more prone to what psychologists call confirmation bias, the tendency to select facts and opinions that reinforce our preexisting worldviews and filter out those that don’t.

So inside our personal information bubbles, our assumptions, our blind spots, our prejudices aren’t challenged, they’re reinforced. And naturally we’re more likely to react negatively to those consuming different facts and opinions. All of which deepens existing racial and religious and cultural divides.

It’s fair to say then that some of the current challenges we face are inherent to a fully connected world. Our brains aren’t accustomed to taking in this much information this fast, and a lot of us are experiencing overload. But not all problems we’re seeing now are an inevitable byproduct of this new technology. They’re also the result of very specific choices made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally and social media platforms in particular. Decisions that, intentionally or not, have made democracies more vulnerable.

Now I’m at Stanford. Most of you know the story by now. Twenty years ago, pillars of web search were comprehensiveness, relevance and speed. But with the rise of social media and the need to better understand people’s online behavior, in order to sell more advertising, companies want to collect more data. More companies optimized for personalization, engagement and speed. And unfortunately, it turns out that inflammatory, polarizing content attracts and engages.

Other features of these platforms have compounded the problem. For example, the way content looks on your phone, as well as the veil of anonymity that platforms provide their users. A lot of times can make it impossible to tell the difference between, say, a peer-reviewed article by Dr. Anthony Fauci and a miracle cure being pitched by a huckster.

And meanwhile, sophisticated actors from political consultants to commercial interests, to intelligence arms of foreign powers can game platform algorithms or artificially boost the reach of the deceptive or harmful messages.

Of course, this business model has proven to be wildly successful. For more and more of us, search and social media platforms aren’t just our window into the internet; they serve as our primary source of news and information.

No one tells us that the window is blurred, subject to unseen distortions and subtle manipulations. All we see is a constant feed of content where useful factual information and happy diversions, and cat videos, flow alongside lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, White supremacist, racist tracts, misogynist screeds. And over time, we lose our capacity to distinguish between fact, opinion and wholesale fiction. Or maybe we just stop caring.

And all of us, including our children, learn that if you want to rise above the crowd, above the din, if you want to be liked and shared, and yes, go viral! Then peddling controversy, outrage, even hate often gives you an edge.

Now it’s true, tech companies and social media platforms are not the only distributors of toxic information. I promise you; I spend a lot of time in Washington, right? In fact, some of the most outrageous content on the web originates from traditional media. What social media platforms have done, though, thanks to their increasing market dominance and their emphasis on speed, is accelerate the decline of newspapers and other traditional news sources.

There are still brand name newspapers and magazines, not to mention network news broadcasts, NPR other outlets that have adapted to the new digital environment while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity. But as more and more ad revenue flows to the platforms that disseminate the news, rather than that money going to the newsrooms that report it, publishers, reporters, editors, they all feel the pressure to maximize engagement in order to compete. Reporters start worrying about, “I gotta tweet something, cause if I don’t, I may be out of a job.”

That’s the information environment we now live in. It’s not just that these platforms have— with narrow exceptions — been largely agnostic regarding the kind of information available and connections made on their sites. It’s that in the competition between truth and falsehood, cooperation and conflict, the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction.

And we’re seeing the results. Take Covid. The fact that scientists developed safe, effective vaccines in record time is an unbelievable achievement. And yet despite the fact that we’ve now, essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around 1 in 5 Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk and put their families at risk rather than get vaccinated. People are dying because of misinformation.

I already mentioned the 2020 presidential election. President Trump’s own attorney general has said that the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud. A review of the ballots in Arizona’s largest county, the results of which were endorsed by some pretty courageous local Republicans, because many of them were harassed and received death threats, actually found more votes for President Biden and fewer votes for President Trump. And yet today, as we speak, a majority of Republicans still insist that President Biden’s victory was not legitimate. That’s a lot of people.

In Myanmar, it’s been well-documented that hate speech shared on Facebook played a role in the murderous campaign targeting the Rohingya community. Social media platforms have been similarly implicated in fanning ethnic violence in Ethiopia, far-right extremism in Europe. Authoritarian regimes and strongmen around the world from China to Hungary, the Philippines. Brazil have learned to conscript social media platforms to turn their own populations against groups they don’t like, whether it’s ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, journalists, political opponents. And of course, autocrats like Putin have used these platforms as a strategic weapon against democratic countries that they consider a threat.

People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe.

Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won. And as Putin discovered leading up to the 2016 election, our own social media platforms are well designed to support such a mission, such a project.

Russians could study and manipulate patterns in the engagement ranking system on a Facebook or YouTube. And as a result, Russian state sponsored trolls could almost guarantee that whatever disinformation they put out there would reach millions of Americans. And that the more inflammatory the story, the quicker it spread.

Now I’ve been writing my memoirs lately, including reflections on events leading up to that election. The regrets I have, the things I might have missed. No one in my administration was surprised that Russia was attempting to meddle in our election. They had been doing that for years. Or that it was using social media in these efforts.

Before the election, I directed our top intelligence officials to expose those efforts to the press and to the public. What does still nag at me, though, was my failure to fully appreciate at the time just how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories, despite having spent years being a target of disinformation myself.

Putin didn’t do that. He didn’t have to. We did it to ourselves. So where do we go from here?

If we do nothing, I am convinced the trends that we’re seeing will get worse. New technologies are already challenging the way we regulate currency, how we keep consumers safe from fraud. And with the emergence of AI, disinformation will grow more sophisticated. I’ve already seen demonstrations of deepfake technology that show what looks like me on a screen saying stuff I did not say. It’s a strange experience, people.

Without some standards, implications of this technology, for our elections, for our legal system, for our democracy, for rules of evidence, for our entire social order are frightening and profound.

Fortunately, I am convinced that it is possible to preserve the transformative power and promise of the open internet, while at least mitigating the worst of its harms. And I believe that those of you in the tech community, soon to be in the tech community, not just its corporate leaders, but employees at every level have to be part of the solution.

The essence of this place, what put Silicon Valley on the map, is a spirit of innovation. That’s what led to the globally integrated internet, and all its remarkable applications. What we’ve now learned is the product has some design flaws. There are some bugs in the software. We don’t have to just leave it like that. Through the same spirit of innovation. We can make it better.

So I want to make some general suggestions for what that work might look like. But before I do, let me offer a few stipulations so we don’t get bogged down in some well-worn, not always productive arguments.

Number one, media companies, tech companies, social media platforms did not create the divisions in our society, here or in other parts of the world. Social media did not create racism or white supremacist groups. It didn’t create the kind of ethnonationalism that Putin’s enraptured with. It didn’t create sexism, class conflict, religious strife, greed, envy, all the deadly sins. All these things existed long before the first tweet or Facebook poke.

Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all that ails our democracies or tears at the fabric of our world, but it can help tamp down divisions and let us rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make our democracy stronger. And to take on anti-women mentalities, and deal with racism in our societies and build bridges between people. It can do that.

Second, we aren’t going to get rid of all offensive or inflammatory content on the web. That is a strawman. We’d be wrong to try. Freedom of speech is at the heart of every democratic society in America those protections are enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. There’s a reason it came first in the Bill of Rights.

I’m pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist. I believe that in most instances the answer to bad speech is good speech. I believe that the free, robust, sometimes antagonistic exchange of ideas produces better outcomes and a healthier society.

No Democratic government can or should do what China, for example, is doing, simply telling people what they can and cannot say or publish while trying to control what others say about their country abroad. And I don’t have a lot of confidence that any single individual or organization, private or public, should be charged or do a good job at determining who gets to hear what.

That said, the First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter, any more than it applies to editorial decisions made by The New York Times or Fox News. Never has. Social media companies already make choices about what is or is not allowed on their platforms and how that content appears, both explicitly through content moderation, and implicitly through algorithms.

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The problem is, we often don’t know what principles govern those decisions. And on an issue of enormous public interest, there has been little public debate and practically no democratic oversight.

Three, any rules we come up with to govern the distribution of content on the Internet will involve value judgments. None of us are perfectly objective. What we consider unshakeable truth today may prove to be totally wrong tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean some things aren’t truer than others or that we can’t draw lines between opinions, facts, honest mistakes, intentional deceptions.

We make these distinctions all the time in our daily lives, at work, in school, at home, in sports, and we can do the same when it comes to Internet content, as long as we agree on a set of principles, some core values to guide the work. So, in the interest of full transparency, here’s what I think our guiding principles should be.

The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the Internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy, whether it encourages robust debate and respect for our differences, whether it reinforces rule of law and self-governance, whether it helps us make collective decisions based on the best available information, and whether it recognizes the rights and freedoms and dignity of all our citizens.

Whatever changes contribute to that vision, I’m for. Whatever erodes that vision, I’m against, just so you know.

All right. With that as my starting point, I believe we have to address not just the supply of toxic information, but also the demand for it. On the supply side, tech platforms need to accept that they play a unique role in how we, as a people and people around the world, are consuming information and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability, and in democracies like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.

For years, social media companies have resisted that kind of accountability. They’re not unique in that regard. Every private corporation wants to do anything it wants. So, the social media platforms called themselves neutral platforms with no editorial role in what their users saw. They insisted that the content people see on social media has no impact on their beliefs or behavior— even though their business models and their profits are based on telling advertisers the exact opposite.

Now, the good news is, is that almost all the big tech platforms now acknowledge some responsibility for content on their platforms, and they’re investing in large teams of people to monitor it. Given the sheer volume of content, this strategy can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. Still, in talking to people at these companies, I believe they are sincere in trying to limit content that engages in hate speech, encourages violence, or poses a threat to public safety. They genuinely are concerned about it and they want to do something about it.

But while content moderation can limit the distribution of clearly dangerous content, it doesn’t go far enough. Users who want to spread disinformation have become experts at pushing right up to the line of what at least published company policies allow. And at those margins, social media platforms tend not to want to do anything, not just because they don’t want to be accused of censorship, because they still have a financial incentive to keep as many users engaged as possible. More importantly, these companies are still way too guarded about how exactly their standards operate, or how their engagement ranking systems influence what goes viral and what doesn’t.

Now, some companies have been taking the next step in managing toxic content, experimenting with new product designs that, you know to use just one example, add friction to slow the spread of potentially harmful content. And that kind of innovation is a step in the right direction. It should be applauded, but I also think decisions like this shouldn’t be left solely to private interests. These decisions affect all of us, and just like every other industry that has a big impact in our society, that means these big platforms need to be subject to some level of public oversight and regulation.

Right now, a lot of the regulatory debate centers on Section 230 of the United States code, which, as some of you know, says the tech companies generally can’t be held liable for most content that other people post on their platforms. But let’s face it, these platforms are not like the old phone company.

And while I’m not convinced that wholesale repeal of Section 230 is the answer, it is clear that tech companies have changed dramatically over the last 20 years. And we need to consider reforms to Section 230 to account for those changes, including whether platforms should be required to have a higher standard of care, when it comes to advertising on their site.

And by the way, I believe and I’ve seen that regulation and innovation are not mutually exclusive. Here in the United States, we have a long history of regulating new technologies in the name of public safety, from cars and airplanes to prescription drugs to appliances. And while companies initially always complain that the rules are going to stifle innovation and destroy the industry, the truth is, is that a good regulatory environment usually ends up spurring innovation because it raises the bar on safety and quality. And it turns out that innovation can meet that higher bar. And if consumers trust that new technology is doing right by them and is safe, they’re more likely to use it. And if properly structured, regulation can promote competition and keep incumbents from freezing out new innovators.

A regulatory structure, a smart one, needs to be in place, designed in consultation with tech companies, and experts and communities that are affected, including communities of color and others that sometimes are not well represented here in Silicon Valley, that will allow these companies to operate effectively while also slowing the spread of harmful content. In some cases, industry standards may replace or substitute for regulation, but regulation has to be part of the answer.

Beyond that, tech companies need to be more transparent about how they operate. So much of the conversation around disinformation is focused on what people post. The bigger issue is what content these platforms promote. Algorithms have evolved to the point where nobody on the outside of these companies can accurately predict what they’ll do, unless they’re really sophisticated and spend a lot of time tracking it. And sometimes, even the people who build them aren’t sure. That’s a problem.

In a democracy, we can rightly expect companies to subject the design of their products and services to some level of scrutiny. At minimum, they should have to share that information with researchers and regulators who are charged with keeping the rest of us safe.

This may seem like an odd example and forgive me, you vegans out there, but if a meat packing company has a proprietary technique to keep our hot dogs fresh and clean, they don’t have to reveal to the world what that technique is. They do have to tell the meat inspector.

In the same way, tech companies should be able to protect their intellectual property while also following certain safety standards that we, as a country, not just them, have agreed are necessary for the greater good. And we’ve seen this as part of the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act that’s being proposed by a bipartisan group of senators here in the United States. It doesn’t happen often. And we’ve also seen it negotiated in Europe as part of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.

Again, we don’t expect tech companies to solve all these problems on their own. There are folks in these companies and in this community who have shown extraordinary good faith in some cases, but that’s not enough.

We do expect these companies to affirm the importance of our democratic institutions, not dismiss them, and to work to find the right combination of regulation and industry standards that will make democracy stronger. And because companies recognize the often dangerous relationship between social media, nationalism, domestic hate groups, they do need to engage with vulnerable populations about how to put better safeguards in place to protect minority populations, ethnic populations, religious minorities, wherever they operate.

So for example, in the United States, they should be working with, not always contrary to, those groups that are trying to prevent voter suppression and specifically has targeted black and brown communities. In other words, these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share. Fix the problem that, in part, they helped create, but also to stand for something bigger.

And to the employees of these companies, and to the students here at Stanford who might well be future employees of these companies, you have the power to move things in the right direction. You can advocate for change; you can be part of this redesign. And if not, you can vote with your feet and go work with companies that are trying to do the right thing.

That’s on the supply side. Now, let’s talk about the demand side of the equation.

It starts with breaking through our information bubbles. Look, I understand that there are a whole bunch of people in this country who have views diametrically opposed to mine. I promise, they tell me all the time. I get it. I am not suggesting that all of us have to spend our days reading opinions we disagree with or looking for media stories that fundamentally don’t share our values. But it is possible to broaden our perspectives.

An interesting study came out recently, and this is just one study, so take it with a grain of salt. The researchers paid a large group of regular FOX News watchers to watch CNN for almost a month. And these were not swing voters, these were hard core, Hannity, Carlson fans, right? They’re right there.

And what the researchers found was that, at the end of the month, people’s views on certain issues, like whether voting by mail should be allowed or whether electing Joe Biden would lead to more violence against police, on some of these issues, their views are changed by five, eight, ten points. These people didn’t suddenly turn into liberals. I am sure they still don’t like me. But at the margins, they had reshaped their perspectives in meaningful ways.

Studies like this show our opinions aren’t fixed, and that means our divisions aren’t fixed either if we can agree on some common baseline effects and agree on some common baseline of how we debate and sort out our disagreements.

The divisions that exist in this country aren’t going away any time soon, but the information we get, the stories we tell ourselves can, as Lincoln said, encourage the better angels of our nature. It can also encourage the worst. And a healthy democracy depends on our better angels being encouraged.

So, as citizens, we have to take it upon ourselves to become better consumers of news, looking at sources, thinking before we share and teaching our kids to become critical thinkers who know how to evaluate sources and separate opinion from fact. In fact, a number of school districts around the country are working to train kids in this kind of online media literacy, not around any particular ideological perspective, but just how to check a source. Does this person who’s typing in his mother’s basement in his underwear seem a credible authority on climate change? That’s something we should all want to support.

Part of this project is also going to require us finding creative ways to reinvigorate quality journalism, including local journalism, because one of the challenges we have, part of the reason that you’ve seen increased polarization, is all media has become nationalized and hence, more ideological.

And one encouraging trend has been a number of nonprofit newsrooms beginning to pop up in places like Baltimore, Houston, my hometown of Chicago, all aimed at providing essential coverage of what’s happening locally and in statehouses. And that’s an example of how new models of journalism are possible, along with smart ways for communities to reinvigorate local news.

Companies here in Silicon Valley that have reaped some of the largest benefits from the Internet revolution, those companies need to find ways to support them. And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at how can you get more revenue back into local news.

We should also think about how to build civic institutions for a new generation. I mentioned the decline of what are called mediating institutions — unions, Rotary clubs, bowling leagues, right? But the thing is, studies show that if you participated in an organization, like Student Council, which I did not — or the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, groups that allow young people to practice learning, debating, voting, making decisions together, then you’re much more likely to vote and be an active citizen.

Those habits matter. We need to figure out ways to give young people and the rest of us the chance to build up civic muscles. And we have to figure out how to do that, not just in the real world, but also on virtual platforms where young people are spending time. This is one of the things we’re focused on at the Obama Foundation. And great work is also being done by organizations like the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, which is making online conversations more civil and productive, and the News Literacy Project, which is building new tools to help people separate fact from fiction.

And finally, it is important to reinforce these norms and values on an international scale. This is a globally integrated Internet. There’s value in that, but it means that as we’re shaping roles, we have to engage the rest of the world.

Countries like China and Russia have already tried to paint democracy as unworkable, and authoritarianism is the only path to order. China’s built a great firewall around the Internet, turning it into a vehicle for domestic indoctrination and surveillance. And now, they’re exporting some of those same technologies, those same, with similar product designs, to other countries.

In Russia, Putin has weaponized ethnonationalism through disinformation, waging hate campaigns against domestic opponents, delegitimizing democracy itself. And of course, he’s escalated such efforts as part of his war in Ukraine.

As the world’s leading democracy, we have to set a better example. We should be at the lead on these discussions internationally, not in the rear. Right now, Europe is forging ahead with some of the most sweeping legislation nearest to regulate the abuses that are seen in big tech companies. And their approach may not be exactly right for the United States, but it points to the need for us to coordinate with other democracies.

We need to find our voice in this global conversation, and we’ve done it before. After World War II, after witnessing how mass media and propaganda had fanned the flames of hate, we put a framework in place that would ensure our broadcast system was compatible with democracy. We required a certain amount of children’s educational programing, instituted the Fairness Doctrine. Newsrooms changed practices to maximize accuracy.

And the task before us is harder now. We can’t go back to the way things were with three TV stations and newspapers in every major city, not just because of the proliferation of content, but because that content can now move around the world in an instant. And yes, our societies are far more polarized today than they were in the ’50s and ’60s right after the war. And yes, progress will require tradeoffs and hard choices, and we won’t get it right all at once. But that’s how democracy works.

I’m not going to strain this metaphor, but if you think about the U.S. Constitution as software for running a society, really innovative design. It, too, had some pretty big initial bugs. Slavery— you could discriminate against entire classes of people. Women couldn’t vote. Even white men without property couldn’t vote, couldn’t participate. What part of, “We, the people?” So, we came up with a bunch of patches, the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, 19th Amendment. We continued to perfect our union.

And the good news is we’ve got a new generation of activists that seem to be ready to keep moving. Besides Tiana, who introduced me, I’ve had the privilege of meeting young leaders in our Obama Foundation network, like Timothy Franklyn, who founded the National School of Journalism and Public Discourse in India, to train journalists who are committed to justice and democracy in that country; or Sandor Lederer from Hungary, who founded K-Monitor. That’s a group that helps average citizens understand how public money is spent and flags potential corruption; or Juliana Tafur, who’s using documentary film and curated workshops to reduce polarization and help Americans connect across differences.

Young people everywhere are recognizing that this is a problem. They’re not just griping about it, they’re doing their part to fix it. And the rest of us need to follow their lead.

But these idealistic, innovative young people, they’re going to need those of us who are already in positions of power, those of us like me who have a platform to get our act together. If Congress is too polarized to pass anything, we probably won’t make the kind of progress we need. If Republican elected officials with a few notable courageous exceptions, and I’m not going to mention them, because I don’t want them to be criticized for having been praised by me — but if the vast majority of elected Republican officials keep insisting that there’s nothing wrong with saying an election was stolen without a shred of evidence, when they know better, this isn’t going to work.

Each of us, whether we work at a tech company or consume social media, whether we are a parent, a legislator, an advertiser on one of these platforms, now’s the time to pick a side. We have a choice right now. Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better? That’s the choice we face, and it is a choice worth embracing.

In the early days of the Internet and social media, it was a certain joy in finding new ways to connect, and organize and stay informed. There was so much promise. I know, I was there. And right now, just like politics itself, just like our public lives, social media has a grimness to it. We’re so fatalistic about the steady stream of bile and vitriol that’s on there, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, if we’re going to succeed, it can’t be that way.

All of us have an opportunity to do what America has always done at our best, which is to recognize that even when the source code is working, the status quo isn’t, and we can build something better together. This is an opportunity. It’s a chance that we should welcome for governments to take on a big, important problem and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist. It’s a chance for companies to do the right thing. You’ll still make money, but you’ll feel better.

It’s a chance for employees of those companies to push them to do the right thing, because you’ve seen what’s out there and you want to feel better. It’s a chance for journalists and their supporters to figure out how do we adapt old institutions and those core values that made those institutions valuable? How do we adapt that to a new age?

It is a chance for all of us to fight for truth, not absolute truth, not a fixed truth, but to fight for what, deep down, we know is more true, is right. It’s a chance for us to do that not just because we’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t, but because we’re hopeful about what can happen if we do.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen what it looks like when a society loses the ability to distinguish truth from fiction. Mike McFaul and I were talking backstage, and my first time in Moscow as president, we gathered with all these civic activists. Putin at that time had receded from the foreground, and you had all these folks who are working to make Russia better. And we were reminiscing and thinking about that moment of possibility and what might have happened to him.

And now, in Russia, those who control the information have led public opinion further and further and further and further away from the facts, until all of a sudden, almost a quarter of the country’s combat power has been damaged or destroyed in what the government is claiming is a, quote, special military operation. That’s what happens when societies lose track of what is true.

On the other hand, the last couple of months have also shown what can happen when the world pushes back. We have seen it in the people, including some of our Obama leaders in Europe who are organizing on social media to help Ukrainian refugees, offering food and shelter and jobs and rides. We’ve seen in an IT army of volunteers who work to break through Russia propaganda and reach out to mothers of Russian soldiers, asking them to call on Putin to bring their sons home. And we’ve seen it in the combination of old and new media like a viral image of a Russian TV editor walking into a live shot with a handwritten sign, calling for an end to the war.

The handwritten sign was a tool. TV’s a tool. The Internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. At the end of the day, tools don’t control us. We control them, and we can remake them. It’s up to each of us to decide what we value, and then use the tools we’ve been given to advance those values. And I believe we should use every tool at our disposal to secure our greatest gift: a government of, by, for the people, for generations to come. And I hope you agree with me, and I look forward to you joining in the work.

Thank you very much, everybody. Alright. Thank you, Thank you.

Barack Obama Farewell Address Transcript
On January 10, 2017, in Chicago, former president Barack Obama delivered a heartfelt farewell address before an estimated TV audience of 24 million people. See the full transcript of the speech below.

Speaker 1: (04:42) Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. Barack Obama: (04:48) Hello, Chicago. It's good to be home. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Barack Obama: (05:17) Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. Thank you. It's good to be home. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right, everybody sit down. Barack Obama: (05:22) We're on live TV here, I've got to move. Come on. Barack Obama: (07:07) You can tell that I'm a lame duck, because nobody's following instructions. Everybody have a seat. Barack Obama: (07:21) My fellow Americans, Michelle and I have been so touched by all the well-wishes we've received over the past few weeks. But tonight it's my turn to say thanks. Whether we have seen eye-to-eye or rarely agreed at all, my conversations with you, the American people, in living rooms and in schools, at farms and on factory floors at diners and on distant military outposts, those conversations are what have kept me honest, and kept me inspired, and kept me going. Every day, I have learned from you. You made me a better president, and you made me a better man. Barack Obama: (08:33) I first came to Chicago when I was in my early 20s. I was still trying to figure out who I was, still searching for a purpose to my life. It was in neighborhoods not far from here where I began working with church groups in the shadows of closed steel mills. It was on these streets where I witnessed the power of faith, and the quiet dignity of working people in the face of struggle and loss. Barack Obama: (09:10) I can't do that. Barack Obama: (09:24) This is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved, and they get engaged, and they come together to demand it. Barack Obama: (09:38) After eight years as your president, I still believe that. And it's not just my belief. It's the beating heart of our American idea, our bold experiment in self-government. It's the conviction that we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Barack Obama: (10:10) It's the insistence that these rights, while self-evident, have never been self-executing; that we, the people, through the instrument of our democracy, can form a more perfect union. Barack Obama: (10:30) What a radical idea. Barack Obama: (10:34) The great gift our Founders gave us. The freedom to chase our individual dreams through our sweat and toil and imagination, and the imperative to strive together as well, to achieve a common good, a greater good. Barack Obama: (10:56) For 240 years, our nation's call to citizenship has given work and purpose to each new generation. It's what led patriots to choose republic over tyranny, pioneers to trek west, slaves to brave that makeshift railroad to freedom. It's what pulled immigrants and refugees across oceans and the Rio Grande, it's what pushed women to reach for the ballot, it's what powered workers to organize. It's why GIs gave their lives at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima, Iraq and Afghanistan, and why men and women from Selma to Stonewall were prepared to give theirs as well. Barack Obama: (11:58) So that's what we mean when we say America is exceptional. Not that our nation has been flawless from the start, but that we have shown the capacity to change, and make life better for those who follow. Barack Obama: (12:19) Yes, our progress has been uneven. The work of democracy has always been hard, it's always been contentious. Sometimes it's been bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back. But the long sweep of America has been defined by forward motion, a constant widening of our founding creed to embrace all, and not just some. Barack Obama: (13:08) If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history ... If I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran's nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, and take out the mastermind of 9/11 ... If I had told you that we would win marriage equality, and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens, if I had told y'all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high. Barack Obama: (14:11) But that's what we did. That's what you did. You were the change. You answered people's hopes, and because of you, by almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place than it was when we started. Barack Obama: (14:48) In ten days, the world will witness a hallmark of our democracy. No, no, no, no no. The peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected president to the next. I committed to President-elect Trump that my administration would ensure the smoothest possible transition, just as President Bush did for me. Because it's up to all of us to make sure our government can help us meet the many challenges we still face. Barack Obama: (15:36) We have what we need to do so. We have everything we need to meet those challenges. After all, we remain the wealthiest, most powerful, and most respected nation on Earth. Our youth, our drive, our diversity and openness, our boundless capacity for risk and reinvention means that the future should be ours. Barack Obama: (16:04) But that potential will only be realized if our democracy works. Only if our politics better reflects the decency of the our people. Only if all of us, regardless of party affiliation or particular interest, help restore the sense of common purpose that we so badly need right now. Barack Obama: (16:36) That's what I want to focus on tonight, the state of our democracy. Barack Obama: (16:45) Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders argued, they quarreled, and eventually they compromised. They expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity, the idea that for all our outward differences, we're all in this together; that we rise or fall as one. Barack Obama: (17:30) There have been moments throughout our history that threatened that solidarity. The beginning of this century has been one of those times. A shrinking world, growing inequality, demographic change and the specter of terrorism. These forces haven't just tested our security and prosperity, but are testing our democracy as well. And how we meet these challenges to our democracy will determine our ability to educate our kids, and create good jobs, and protect our homeland. Barack Obama: (18:12) In other words, it will determine our future. Barack Obama: (18:19) To begin with, our democracy won't work without a sense that everyone has economic opportunity. And the good news is that today, the economy is growing again; wages, incomes, home values, and retirement accounts are all rising again; poverty is falling again. The wealthy are paying a fairer share of taxes even as the stock market shatters records. The unemployment rate is near a 10-year low. The uninsured rate has never, ever been lower. Healthcare costs are rising at the slowest rate in 50 years. And I've said and I mean it, if anyone can put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we've made to our healthcare system, that covers as many people at less cost, I will publicly support it. Barack Obama: (19:34) Because that, after all, is why we serve, not to score points or to get credit, but to make people's lives better. But for all the real progress we've made, we know it's not enough. Our economy doesn't work as well or grow as fast when a few prosper at the expense of a growing middle class and ladders for folks who want to get into the middle class. Barack Obama: (20:12) That's the economic argument. But stark inequality is also corrosive to our democratic idea. While the top 1% has amassed a bigger share of wealth and income, too many of our families, in inner cities and in rural counties, have been left behind. The laid-off factory worker, the waitress or healthcare worker who struggle to pay the bills, convinced that the game is fixed against them, that their government only serves the interests of the powerful. That's a recipe for more cynicism and polarization in our politics. Barack Obama: (20:55) There are no quick fixes to this long-term trend. I agree, our trade should be fair and not just free. But the next wave of economic dislocations won't come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete. Barack Obama: (21:15) So we're going to have to forge a new social compact, to guarantee all our kids the education they need, to give workers the power to unionize for better wages, to update the social safety net to reflect the way we live now and make more reforms to the tax code so corporations and individuals who reap the most from the new economy don't avoid their obligations to the country that's made their very success possible. We can argue about how to best achieve these goals. But we can't be complacent about the goals themselves. For if we don't create opportunity for all people, the disaffection and division that has stalled our progress will only sharpen in years to come. Barack Obama: (22:21) There's a second threat to our democracy, and this one is as old as our nation itself. After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society. I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. Barack Obama: (23:10) But we're not where we need to be. All of us have more work to do. If every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hard-working white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades are going to be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves. If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants just because they don't look like us, we will diminish the prospects of our own children, because those brown kids will represent a larger and larger share of America's workforce. And we have shown that our economy doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Last year, incomes rose for all races, all age groups, for men and for women. Barack Obama: (24:34) So we're going to be serious about race going forward. We need to uphold laws against discrimination in hiring, and in housing, and in education and in the criminal justice system. That is what our Constitution and our highest ideals require. But laws alone won't be enough. Hearts must change. It won't change over night. Social attitudes oftentimes take generations to change. But if our democracy is to work the way it should in this increasingly diverse nation, then each one of us need to try to heed the advice of a great character in American fiction, Atticus Finch, who said, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Barack Obama: (25:39) For blacks and other minorities, that means tying our own very real struggles for justice to the challenges that a lot of people in this country face. Not only the refugee or the immigrant or the rural poor or the transgender American, but also the middle-aged white guy who from the outside may seem like he's got advantages, but has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change. Barack Obama: (26:10) We have to pay attention and listen. Barack Obama: (26:23) For white Americans, it means acknowledging that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn't suddenly vanish in the '60s; that when minority groups voice discontent, they're not just engaging in reverse racism or practicing political correctness. When they wage peaceful protest, they're not demanding special treatment, but the equal treatment that our Founders promised. Barack Obama: (26:49) For native-born Americans, it means reminding ourselves that the stereotypes about immigrants today were said, almost word for word, about the Irish and Italians and Poles, who it was said were going to destroy the fundamental character of America. And as it turned out, America wasn't weakened by the presence of these newcomers. These newcomers embraced this nation's creed, and this nation was strengthened. Barack Obama: (27:44) So regardless of the station that we occupy, we all have to try harder. We all have to start with the premise that each of our fellow citizens loves this country just as much as we do, that they value hard work and family just like we do, that their children are just as curious and hopeful and worthy of love as our own. And that's not easy to do. Barack Obama: (28:30) For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses or places of worship or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship and increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste, all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there. Barack Obama: (29:41) This trend represents a third threat to our democracy. Politics is a battle of ideas. That's how our democracy was designed. In the course of a healthy debate, we prioritize differing goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, then we're going to keep talking past each other, and we'll make common ground and compromise impossible. Barack Obama: (30:31) And isn't that part of what so often makes politics dispiriting? How can elected officials rage about deficits when we propose to spend money on preschool for kids, but not when we're cutting taxes for corporations? How do we excuse ethical lapses in our own party, but pounce when the other party does the same thing? It's not just dishonest, this selective sorting of the facts. It's self-defeating. Because as my mom used to tell me, reality has a way of catching up with you. Barack Obama: (31:20) Take the challenge of climate change. In just eight years, we've halved our dependence on foreign oil, we've doubled our renewable energy, we've led the world to an agreement that has the promise to save this planet. But without bolder action, our children won't have time to debate the existence of climate change. They'll be busy dealing with its effects, more environmental disasters, more economic disruptions, waves of climate refugees seeking sanctuary. Barack Obama: (32:02) Now, we can and should argue about the best approach to the problem. But to simply deny the problem not only betrays future generations, it betrays the essential spirit of this country, the essential spirit of innovation and practical problem-solving that guided our Founders. Barack Obama: (32:37) It is that spirit, born of the Enlightenment, that made us an economic powerhouse. The spirit that took flight at Kitty Hawk and Cape Canaveral, the spirit that that cures disease and put a computer in every pocket. Barack Obama: (32:57) It's that spirit, a faith in reason, and enterprise, and the primacy of right over might, that allowed us to resist the lure of fascism and tyranny during the Great Depression, that allowed us to build a post-World War II order with other democracies, an order based not just on military power or national affiliations but built on principles, the rule of law, human rights, freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and an independent press. Barack Obama: (33:47) That order is now being challenged, first by violent fanatics who claim to speak for Islam; more recently by autocrats in foreign capitals who see free markets and open democracies and civil society itself as a threat to their power. The peril each poses to our democracy is more far-reaching than a car bomb or a missile. They represent the fear of change, the fear of people who look or speak or pray differently, a contempt for the rule of law that holds leaders accountable, an intolerance of dissent and free thought, a belief that the sword or the gun or the bomb or the propaganda machine is the ultimate arbiter of what's true and what's right. Barack Obama: (34:51) Because of the extraordinary courage of our men and women in uniform, because of the intelligence officers, law enforcement, and diplomats who support our troops, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland these past eight years. And although Boston and Orlando and San Bernardino and Fort Hood remind us of how dangerous radicalization can be, our law enforcement agencies are more effective and vigilant than ever. We have taken out tens of thousands of terrorists, including bin Laden. The global coalition we're leading against ISIL has taken out their leaders, and taken away about half their territory. ISIL will be destroyed, and no one who threatens America will ever be safe. To all who serve or have served, it has been the honor of my lifetime to be your Commander-in-Chief. And we all owe you a deep [inaudible 00:36:08] of gratitude. Barack Obama: (36:30) But protecting our way of life, that's not just the job of our military. Democracy can buckle when it gives in to fear. So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are. That's why, for the past eight years, I've worked to put the fight against terrorism on a firmer legal footing. That's why we've ended torture, worked to close Gitmo, reformed our laws governing surveillance to protect privacy and civil liberties. That's why I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans, who are just as patriotic as we are. Barack Obama: (37:51) That's why we cannot withdraw from the global fights to expand democracy, and human rights, women's rights, and LGBT rights, no matter how imperfect our efforts, no matter how expedient ignoring such values may seem. That's part of defending America. For the fight against extremism and intolerance and sectarianism and chauvinism are of a piece with the fight against authoritarianism and nationalist aggression. If the scope of freedom and respect for the rule of law shrinks around the world, the likelihood of war within and between nations increases, and our own freedoms will eventually be threatened. Barack Obama: (38:55) So let's be vigilant, but not afraid. ISIL will try to kill innocent people. But they cannot defeat America unless we betray our Constitution and our principles in the fight. Rivals like Russia or China cannot match our influence around the world, unless we give up what we stand for and turn ourselves into just another big country that bullies smaller neighbors. Barack Obama: (39:33) Which brings me to my final point. Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted. All of us, regardless of party, should be throwing ourselves into the task of rebuilding our democratic institutions. When voting rates in America are some of the lowest among advanced democracies, we should make it easier, not harder, to vote. When trust in our institutions is low, we should reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics, and insist on the principles of transparency and ethics in public service. When Congress is dysfunctional, we should draw our congressional districts to encourage politicians to cater to common sense and not rigid extremes. Barack Obama: (40:56) But remember, none of this happens on its own. All of this depends on our participation, on each of us accepting the responsibility of citizenship, regardless of which way the pendulum of power happens to be swinging. Barack Obama: (41:21) Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift. But it's really just a piece of parchment. It has no power on its own. We the people give it power. We the people give it meaning with our participation, and with the choices we make and the alliances that we forge. Whether or not we stand up for our freedoms. Whether or not we respect and enforce the rule of law. That's up to us. America is no fragile thing. But the gains of our long journey to freedom are not assured. Barack Obama: (42:16) In his own farewell address, George Washington wrote that self-government is the underpinning of our safety, prosperity, and liberty, but from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth. And so, we have to preserve this truth with jealous anxiety, that we should reject the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties that make us one. Barack Obama: (43:07) America, we weaken those ties when we allow our political dialogue to become so corrosive that people of good character aren't even willing to enter into public service, so coarse with rancor that Americans with whom we disagree are seen not just as misguided, but as malevolent. We weaken those ties when we define some of us as more American than others; when we write off the whole system as inevitably corrupt, and when we sit back and blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them. Barack Obama: (44:03) It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy; to embrace the joyous task we've been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we in fact all share the same proud title. The most important office in the democracy, citizen. Citizen. Barack Obama: (44:37) So you see, that's what our democracy demands. It needs you. Not just when there's an election, not just when your own narrow interest is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime. If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking with one in real life. If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing. If you're disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself. Show up. Dive in. Stay at it. Sometimes you'll win. Sometimes you'll lose. Presuming a reservoir of goodness in other people, that can be a risk, and there will be times when the process will disappoint you. But for those of us fortunate enough to have been a part of this work and to see it up close, let me tell you, it can energize and inspire. And more often than not, your faith in America, and in Americans, will be confirmed. Barack Obama: (46:43) Mine sure has been. Over the course of these eight years, I've seen the hopeful faces of young graduates and our newest military officers. I have mourned with grieving families searching for answers, and found grace in a Charleston church. I've seen our scientists help a paralyzed man regain his sense of touch. I've seen wounded warriors, who at points were given up for dead, walk again. I've seen our doctors and volunteers rebuild after earthquakes and stop pandemics in their tracks. I've seen the youngest of children remind us, through their actions and through their generosity, of our obligations to care for refugees or work for peace, and above all to look out for each other. Barack Obama: (47:48) That faith that I placed all those years ago, not far from here, in the power of ordinary Americans to bring about change ... That faith has been rewarded in ways I could not possibly have imagined. I hope your faith has, too. Some of you here tonight or watching at home, you were there with us in 2004, in 2008, in 2012. Maybe you still can't believe we pulled this whole thing off. Barack Obama: (48:34) Let me tell you, you're not the only ones. Michelle ... Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the south side, for the past 25 years, you have been not only my wife and mother of my children, you have been my best friend. You took on a role you didn't ask for and you made it your own with grace and with grit and with style and good humor. You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody. And a new generation sets its sights higher because it has you as a role model. You have made me proud and you have made the country proud. Barack Obama: (50:48) Malia and Sasha, under the strangest of circumstances, you have become two amazing young women. You are smart and you are beautiful, but more importantly, kind and thoughtful and full of passion. You wore the burden of years in the spotlight so easily. Of all that I've done in my life, I am most proud to be your dad. Barack Obama: (51:28) To Joe Biden, the scrappy kid from Scranton who became Delaware's favorite son. You were the first decision I made as a nominee, and it was the best. Not just because you have been a great vice president, but because in the bargain, I gained a brother. We love you and Jill like family, and your friendship has been one of the great joys of our lives. Barack Obama: (52:37) To my remarkable staff. For eight years, and for some of you, a whole lot more, I have drawn from your energy. Every day I tried to reflect back what you displayed, heart and character and idealism. I've watched you grow up, get married, have kids, and start incredible new journeys of your own. Even when times got tough and frustrating, you never let Washington get the better of you. You've guarded against cynicism. The only thing that makes me prouder than all the good we've done is the thought of all the amazing things you are going to achieve from here. Barack Obama: (53:37) And to all of you out there, every organizer who moved to an unfamiliar town, every kind family who welcomed them in, every volunteer who knocked on doors, every young person who cast a ballot for the first time, every American who lived and breathed the hard work of change ... You are the best supporters and organizers anybody could hope for, and I will forever be grateful. Because you did change the world. You did. Barack Obama: (54:17) That's why I leave this stage tonight even more optimistic about this country than when we started. Because I know our work has not only helped so many Americans, it has inspired so many Americans, especially so many young people out there, to believe you can make a difference; to hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourselves. Let me tell you, this generation coming up, unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic. I've seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair and just and inclusive America. You know that constant change has been America's hallmark, that it's not something to fear, but something to embrace. You are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You'll soon outnumber all of us, and I believe as a result the future is in good hands. Barack Obama: (55:17) My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you. I won't stop. In fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my remaining days. But for now, whether you are young or whether you're young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your president, the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago. Barack Obama: (56:01) I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change, but in yours. I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents, that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists, that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice, that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon, a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written. Barack Obama: (56:38) Yes we can. Yes we did. Yes we can. Barack Obama: (56:39) Thank you. God bless you. May God continue to bless the United States of America. Thank you.

A CONVERSATION WITH BARACK OBAMA - TRANSCRIPT

October 20, 2006
JOHN SHATTUCK: Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Library. I’m John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of our Board of Directors, many of whom are here tonight and Tom Putnam, the Acting Director of the Kennedy Library, we are just delighted to be able to host tonight’s very special Kennedy Library Forum.

Before introducing our guest of honor, who in a typical way I could say needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway, I’d like to thank the institutions that make these forums possible, starting with our lead sponsor, Bank of America. We’re also very grateful to Boston Capital and its President, our Board member Jack Manning, who is here with us tonight. Thank you Jack. Also, the Lowell Institute, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, and our media sponsors, The Boston Globe, NECN and WBUR, which broadcasts all Kennedy Library forums on Sunday evenings at eight.

Tonight is a banner night for the Kennedy Library. As a presidential library, we are proud to attract speakers who are making headlines. But the headlines this week about tonight’s speaker tell us that he may be poised, not just to make news, but to make history. Our Guest of Honor is on this week’s cover of Time Magazine. His name is on the lips of Democrats and Republicans across the nation. And his new book, The Audacity of Hope, published this month and now on sale in our book store, tells us about a brand new form of political leadership.

It’s a great privilege to welcome Senator Barack Obama to the Kennedy Library.

[applause]

Senator, you are described by the New York Times as, and I quote, “That rare politician who can write, and write, and write movingly and genuinely about himself.” And your story is extraordinary. As this week’s cover article in Time tells us, and I quote, “Senator Obama’s father was from Kenya, and his mother from Kansas. The Senator has told the story in brilliant, painful detail in his first book, Dreams of My Father, which may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” and I end-quote.

A central theme of the book is that Barack Obama learned from an early age how important it was to bridge the many divides of the world in which he grew up, which is the same world as the one in which we all live today.

At Harvard Law School, he was the first African American to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review. He was chosen for that prestigious position, not only because he was near the top of his class, but also because he had a unique ability to win over conservative and liberal students alike.

As one of his classmates told Time magazine this week, most of the class were liberals, but there was a growing conservative presence, and there were fights between right and left about almost every issue. Barack won the election because the conservatives thought he would take their arguments into account.

After graduating from law school, Senator Obama entered public service. He started as a community organizer and a civil rights attorney in Chicago, representing victims of employment and housing discrimination and teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

In 1997, he was elected to the Illinois Senate, where for the next seven years, he played a leading role reaching across party lines on difficult issues to achieve results.

He forged coalitions of Democrats and Republicans to help working families, creating programs like the state earned income tax credit that provided over 100 million dollars in tax relief for lower and middle income families.

He pushed through a bipartisan expansion of early childhood education, and he worked with law enforcement officials to enact legislation requiring that all interrogations and confessions in cases involving the death penalty be videotaped.

On the national stage, he spoke out early against the war in Iraq, and he supported the war in Afghanistan. Here in Boston, he electrified the Democratic National Convention two years ago in a key note address that charted the common ground that unites all Americans.

“We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” he said, “and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and we’ve got gay friends in the red states. There is not a black America, and white America, and Latino America, and Asian America, there’s the United States of America.”

Elected in an Illinois landslide to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Senator Obama is now in a position to project his special brand of political leadership on the national level; leadership based on consensus building, not slashing and burning; leadership based on listening to opposing views and responding with fact and truth, not destruction distortion; a brand of leadership, I might add, in great demand but very short supply in our political life today.

Senator, again, it’s a great privilege to have you here.

[applause]

SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

SHATTUCK: To moderate this evening’s forum, we’re also privileged to have one of our nation’s leading commentators, Bob Herbert of the New York Times. Bob has been a star, as many of you know, at other Kennedy Library forums, and we’re pleased to welcome him back here tonight.

Bob joined the Times as an Op-ed columnist in 1993. And twice a week he helps us understand what’s important in politics and our national life. Bob Herbert began his career with the Newark Star Ledger, where he became a city editor. Before joining the Times, he was a national correspondent for NBC, a founding panelist on Sunday Edition, the weekly discussion program on WCBS, and the host of Hot Line, a weekly issues program on New York Public Television.

He’s won many awards for his reporting and commentary, including, recently, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Distinguished Commentary. Please join me in welcoming Barack Obama and Bob Herbert to the stage of the Kennedy Library.

[applause]

BOB HERBERT: Senator, it’s an honor to have you here. I know we’re on a tight schedule, so we’re not going to waste a lot of time. Members of the audience will see people coming around with pencils, and we’re going to take some written questions. And if we have time, we’ll answer a few at the end of the interview.

I noticed upstairs, I’m looking at the pictures of President Kennedy, and I recalled from your book that you were born, if I’m not mistaken, in the year Senator Kennedy was inaugurated. Is that right?

OBAMA: That is correct.

HERBERT: Wow. Are you getting enough attention lately?

[laughter]

OBAMA: Well, the first thing I have to say to everybody is I’m sorry I’m late. I had forgotten how wonderful Boston weather is this time of year, and we were delayed in a holding pattern over the skies for about half an hour, and an hour back in New York. But I appreciate everybody taking the time to-- and everybody’s patience.

HERBERT: Let’s start with the war in Iraq, which is going horribly, and which seems to be the big topic in the upcoming elections, and we’re very close to them. You were not in favor of the war, but you have not called for a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops. So what should the United States do in Iraq? And, if the Democrats take control of either or both Houses of Congress, what could the party do to move us toward a more acceptable solution?

OBAMA: Well, as you mentioned, Bob, in fact we talked before I was elected, and at that point, I had made my position clear. I thought that the war was not based on reason and fact but rather on ideology. And unfortunately, most of my worst fears came to pass.

My view had been at the time, and continues to be, that once we were in, we had some obligations to try to stabilize the situation. And so, over the last year, as I’ve watched conditions to continue to deteriorate-- and I made a visit to Iraq in January-- my view was let us see if we can give this political process a chance and try to buck up the capacity of the Iraqi government to create some order.

It’s my view at this point, and I’ve been saying this now for several months, that there is no military solution possible in Iraq at this point, that what you have is a political problem that is going to have to be solved, to a large degree, by the Iraqis themselves.

And so, to my mind, it makes sense for us to now begin a phased withdrawal. Originally, I believed that withdrawal should have started by the end of this year. Now it’s unlikely that we can execute that that quickly.

But I think early next year, the President should sit down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and say, “How do we do this in a way that causes the least threat to our troops and maintains some semblance of stability, whatever is left in Iraq, but sending a strong signal to the Iraqis that they are going to have to make a determination-- do they want to live as Iraqis in a unified national government? Are they Kurds, Shiites, Sunni first? And force them to make some political decisions about what’s going to happen.”

The second thing I think the President needs to do is to gather up all the regional powers, including Iran and Syria who, to some degree, are enjoying watching us flounder there, but will not enjoy millions of refugees if Iraq collapses completely, and to them say, “You have to take some ownership over the process as well, the international community, but particularly, the Arab states in the surrounding region.”

And I think if we send a signal that we are not interested in permanent bases, we are not going to attempt to police a civil war, that we can provide support for whatever plans emerge from those discussions. But we are not going to be able to impose our will in Iraq by ourselves, then we can make some progress.

Now keep in mind-- and I’ll finish up with this-- part of the reason I thought this was a bad idea was because, at this stage, I don’t think there are any good options. I think there are bad options and worse options. And there are risks in a phased withdrawal, because one can argue that, as bad as the situation is now, it could conceivably, in the short term, get worse.

The problem is the alternative, which is to continue on a course that we’re on at this point, where what we’re seeing, typically, is when U.S. casualties get high, the administration pulls back troops into the large consolidated basis. The situation deteriorates, we send them back in. And so this month, now, we’re seeing a huge spike in U.S. casualties. That kind of pattern is unsustainable. It’s not serving our national security interests, and I think the American people have made it, at this point, made it clear that that is not a burden that they wish to bear.

HERBERT: And is there a role for the Democratic Party, if you take one of the Houses of Congress, to move the administration or the country along?

OBAMA: Well, you know, I think the politics of this election are not only going to embolden the Democrats, somewhat belatedly, but I think are also going to cause a lot of soul-searching among those Republicans that remain in Congress. I’m confident at this point that the House is going to go Democratic. I think the Senate is going to be close.

[applause]

I know this is a non-partisan event, but feel free to applaud.

[laughter]

And as a consequence, the Democrats are going to be in a position, now, to, at the very least, hold hearings and provide the kind of oversight that we have not been able to initiate because committee chairmen have essentially refused. That, in and of itself, would put pressure on the administration to make a different set of decisions.

But I think, more fundamentally, the albatross around the Republican Party’s neck in this election is going to cause them to step back and say, “We’re going to have to figure out a new way of doing business.” And the commission that is co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton may provide, if not the administration, at least Republicans in Congress the cover to start rethinking what their position is going to be.

HERBERT: One more question on Iraq, but this also relates to our obligations as citizens. Not too long ago, I went to Tennessee to interview an American soldier who had been sent to the combat zone three times. He went to Afghanistan and then served two year-long tours in Iraq.

And he made the point that it’s a very small percentage of Americans who are bearing the burden and making the sacrifices for this war. Most of us are free to go about our daily business. You can go shopping, go to the mall, do whatever it is you need to do, and it’s only a tiny sliver of the population that’s enduring the suffering. That seems fundamentally unfair, and I’d like to know what your views are about that.

OBAMA: Well, I think it raises two points. The first and most immediate point is that, in fact, the burden of this war has been borne by a small segment of the population. And, to some degree, that’s the only reason that we went in there in the first place. Had there been a draft, we would not have launched this war, I think that’s fair to say.

In fact, one could argue that we wouldn’t even need a universal draft if there was a rule that all members of Congress’s children were eligible for the draft, there would not have been--

[applause]

[laughter]

--We would not have gone in.

We can’t have that conversation in the midst of war. It’s too volatile for us to start thinking about how are we structuring our military, and what does an all-voluntary force mean relative to a universal service requirement. But I think it’s one that we should initiate in times where we can be more reflective and less passionate.

HERBERT: But isn’t it likely, at a time when we can be more reflective, meaning a time when we’re not at war, that we won’t have that conversation?

OBAMA: Well, I would like to start a conversation, and this brings me to, I guess, the larger point about what citizenship means, and what are our obligations to each other, and how do we create a stronger link between the decision-making in Washington and the daily experience of people’s lives?

And this is not just true in foreign policy, the same is true with respect to the economy. This week we saw the Dow go over 12,000 points. If you’re walking down Wall Street, the economy looks great. If you go to Decatur, Illinois or Galesburg, Illinois, or Peoria, Illinois, the economy looks very different. And the reason is because the top 1% is seeing their incomes rise about 500% over the last decades, and the average working stiff has seen their wages and salaries flat lined.

The top 1% is much more likely to participate politically than the other 99%, and so we had these distortions in terms of how decisions are made in Washington. I don’t have a magic solution to it, but part of the reason I wrote this book was to suggest that there have to be ways for us to re-engage the citizenry around the project of American renewal, both domestically and internationally.

And the first step in that, I think, is to restore some mechanisms for honest debate, because the problem with the Iraq war was the debate was dishonest. The problem with our foreign policy right now is that we have posed the problem as either we’re belligerent and the military is the only solution to any national security threats that we have; or, conversely, that we have this vague multilateralism, kum ba yah approach-- at least, that’s how it’s characterized in the press and in our politics. And what we have to do is to say those choices are inadequate.

And we have to return to the kind of serious policy discussions that characterize, for example, after World War II, when Acheson and Marshall and Truman sat down and said, “What are our options?” given a threat that, by all accounts, I think, historically, one would argue was far more dangerous than the threats that we face now from terrorism. I mean, we had nuclear bombs pointed at every major city in the United States.

And yet we were able to negotiate that, because there was not only among policy-makers a sense of seriousness and honesty about the nature of the threat, how we were going to approach it, and so forth, but also among the population, at least in the early years.

I write about it in the book that the Marshall Plan involved an enormous PR campaign to explain to people why it made sense for us to invest in Europe, and why it made sense for us to build the kinds of alliances that ultimately shaped NATO and allowed us to lock in Japan as a long-term ally in Asia.

That kind of a conversation, I think, is one that can’t just be left to the wise men in Washington but has to be something that the population as a whole is engaged in.

HERBERT: Now the book-- and I have to say, it really is a terrific book. Usually, if I’m doing interviews--

OBAMA: He’s got to say that.

[laughter]

HERBERT: Now, usually, you kind of go out of your way not to look like you’re trying to promote the book, but this really is an excellent book. And you’ve titled it The Audacity of Hope. But, you know, we’re in a pretty tough environment right now. We’ve got this war that we just talked about, which is going badly.

You’ve mentioned the stock market. Well, the Dow is at record highs, but a lot of working people are feeling economically insecure, the poor have been literally left behind, and Americans are worried about things like terror and the spread of nuclear weapons. We’ve got tragic situations like Darfur.

A lot of people are really depressed. You seem very optimistic. You’ve titled your book The Audacity of Hope. Tell us why we should be hopeful. Make the case for hope right now.

OBAMA: Well, first of all, where I got the title from, some of you remember I actually used the line in the speech that I gave here in Boston. But I actually pilfered it from my pastor. I’m making this confession publicly.

[laughter]

He gave a sermon… My pastor’s name is Jeremiah Wright, he’s the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago. And he gave a sermon about 18 years ago. I was a young community organizer.

And the south side of Chicago-- this particular region is the far south side of Chicago-- had been devastated because steel plants had shut down. This was right when the rust belt was rolling through the Midwest. And there had been massive layoffs, and the communities had been devastated. People were out of work, there was a lot of racial conflict and racial turnover in the area, crime was on the increase, usual maladies facing inner-city schools.

And he delivers this sermon that had a very simple premise. He said, “You know, it’s actually sometimes easier to be cynical. It’s easier to feel hopeless. It doesn’t require much from each of us. What’s audacious, what requires risk, is to be hopeful, to believe that despite what we see around us, what is, there is this other thing that’s possible, what could be.”

And that idea stuck with me and, I think, characterized what not only I’ve ended up finding most valuable in my faith, but also, I think, described an aspect of the American character that’s pretty fundamental. I mean, there’s a reason why, in that speech, I talked about slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; or immigrants coming from distant shores, not really knowing what it was that they were going to find when they arrived in America, but believing somehow across that ocean, there’s something else.

And as rough as our history has been, somehow, we’ve continued to have that stubborn optimism that things can be better. And as a consequence of that, the trajectory of this nation, I think, has been in favor of justice and freedom and equity.

As bad as things are now, they were worse at many times in our history, certainly worse for people who looked like you and me, worse for the women in this audience, worse for poor people before there was any safety in that. And in each juncture, there were a bunch of people who decided, “You know what? It’s possible for us to come together and solve these problems.”

And so the basic theme of the book is that most of the challenges we face-- healthcare, education, the problems we face in terms of globalization, foreign policy, dilemmas as a consequence of rogue states and nuclear proliferation and terrorism-- none of these problems are easy. All of them, though, are amenable to good decision-making, common sense, practicality and improvement. And if we can focus our politics around what our common values are and our common ideals are, then it’s possible for us to make progress, although progress will always be imperfect.

HERBERT: Now one of the things you stress in the book-- it’s a theme throughout-- is what you feel is the need to reach out to people who hold opposing views to your own, to try and understand what the other side is talking about, even if you don’t agree with it, to reach across the aisle, Democrats, Republicans, etc.

But that’s not what I want to ask you about right now. I want you to put your partisan hat on. And we’re very close to the election, and why is it—looking from the perspective of the American people, your constituents-- why is it important, in your view, for Democrats to do well in the upcoming election?

OBAMA: Well, I actually do talk about this in the book. And, by the way, I confess in the book that although-- this book is not balanced. I’m a Democrat, so some people are going to read it, and they say, “Well, that’s not entirely fair, and he mischaracterizes this or that.”

You know, I strive to be fair, but I still have a perspective. And what I believe has happened over the last six, eight, ten years is that the Republican Party has become captive. Now keep in mind, I come from the Land of Lincoln, so I don’t think that any political party in our history has had a monopoly on wisdom or truth.

But over the last ten years, at least, what you’ve seen is the Republican Party has become captive to a narrow band of highly ideological absolutists, folks who see problems through preconceived notions about how the world should work, as opposed to how it actually does work.

And so, in the economy, we’ve had the victory of a radical laissez-faire that has resulted, essentially, in the working people you discussed earlier being entirely on their own. And each and every decision that’s made, whether it’s privatizing Social Security, or setting up private health savings accounts, or diminishing regulation, or essentially eliminating anti-trusts, or not enforcing civil rights laws, in each instance, the basic premise is, “You know what? Anything goes.” And folks will sort it out in some fashion, but the government does not have a role to play in the economy, and that’s defined in a very absolute way.

With respect to foreign policy, the view is, “We don’t need anybody else.” And any encroachment or restraints on our actions as a nation are absolutely unacceptable. Because we are the most powerful nation on earth, we should be able to dictate our will in very absolute terms.

In terms of how we think about culture and social issues, we’ve seen the rise of people who believe that if you do not subscribe to a particular interpretation of a particular religion, then you are suspect, and you are potentially immoral. And that I don’t think characterizes the majority of Republicans in the country. And I would argue that it doesn’t characterize the best of the Republican Party. But those are the folks who have been driving the agenda over the last ten years.

And so there has always been a contrary set of ideas that, at least since FDR, have been at the core of the Democratic Party, and that says, “No, you are not on your own. Yes, we value individual initiative and self-reliance and the freedom of the market place. But we also affirm that we have some mutual obligations toward each other, that we have some fellow feelings, some sort of solidarity, some belief in community. And that has to express itself, not just in our churches or mosques or synagogues, not just in our families or our neighborhoods or our ethnic enclaves, it has to express itself through our government and through our notions of citizenship.

Now the Democrats haven’t always been true to that ideal, and oftentimes we deserve criticism for betraying that ideal. But that idea, I think, continues to be what holds together the Democratic Party. And so, at this stage, when we look at the fact that 46 million people don’t have health insurance, or we look at the fact that we don’t have an energy policy that would not only help our economy but also strengthen our national security and deal with our environment, or we look at an education system that continues to fail large numbers of children so that they have no way of accessing the global economy, then I think it’s clear that things have swung out of balance.

And the last point I’d make on this, that’s why the Democrats, I think, should win. The reason I think Democrats will win is because, as I’ve traveled around the country, what I’m struck by is a sense of soberness and seriousness among people right now. People want substantive responses to the challenges that we face.

And I know that this is a nonpartisan event, but I will go ahead and say, since you asked the question--

[laughter]

I think that the election here in Massachusetts for Governor is a prime example, where my good buddy, Deval Patrick, has presented an agenda.

And the reason people are responding to that agenda and not responding to the usual negative ads that have just been, you know, plastered all over television screens in Massachusetts, is because people want to know what are you going to do about these problems-- and you’re seeing that all across the country. And that, I think, is a terrific turn of events.

Now it forces then Democrats to actually have an affirmative agenda. It’s not going to be sufficient simply to say, “We’re not Bush.” We can’t try to flip the script and simply say, “All right, as bad as they are, you should vote for us,” because that means the next election cycle, they’re going to take it out on Democrats.

HERBERT: Well the election’s close. Is that agenda in place?

OBAMA: Well, I think the other side’s so bad right now that we’re going to get through the next three weeks. But the--

[applause]

But-- So I was referring to ’08--

[laughter]

HERBERT: We’ll get to that.

OBAMA: --Where I think if Democrats don’t show some leadership and affirmative set of solutions to some of these challenges, even if we can’t get all of those solutions passed, then I think we’ll be punished.

You know, people want serious answers to these problems. And if you’re going to talk about energy, for example… You know, the easiest thing in the world is to look at Exxon Mobile’s profits last quarter and say, these folks are making 36 billion dollars in one quarter, and the CEO’s making 500 million dollars, and gas prices are high, and we’re getting gouged. That may be sufficient, because it does describe the degree to which the powerful have made out like bandits over the last several years.

That may be sufficient to get us through this election, but, after the election, people then are going to say, “Okay smart guy, what are we going to do about energy?” And at that point, Democrats are going to have to say, “Okay, we’ve got to sift through the range of proposals that are out there, from, you know, your fellow columnist is Tom Friedman, who’s been pushing, you know, a higher gas tax; to, you know, what can we do to develop cellulosic ethanol in the way that Brazil has done; to expanding, you know, bio-diesel and other sources of alternative fuels; to reducing consumption by, you know, retrofitting buildings and industry.”

We’ve got to make a series of proposals that actually make sense. And I think if we do, then the American people are going to stand up and say keep going. And they will understand, and we can be honest with them, that there’s no panaceas. I mean, most of the challenges that we face, there’s no silver bullet.

I have a lot of town hall meetings in Illinois. And one of the favorite topics that I bring up is the issue of the federal budget, because typically, what will happen is, it will be a crowd. Sometimes we get town hall meetings with 2,000 people, and I’ll get one person who’s saying, you know, “We need health care-- or mental health to be included in health care coverage.” Another person will say, you know, “No Child Left Behind left the money behind. And we need more money for schools.” And somebody else will say, you know, “The bridge needs to be repaired,” and so forth and so on.

And then at some point, somebody will say, you know, “Why are you supporting the death tax?” And then at that point, I will say, “Okay, look. A basic principle to the federal budget, there’s no free lunch. There’s no free lunch.

“You know, if you want to eliminate the estate tax, that will cost us one trillion dollars. It affects .5% of the population. If we completely eliminate it, it costs one trillion dollars. We’ve got three ways of dealing with it, that one trillion dollars. We can make it up by raising taxes on the other 99.5%, we can borrow a trillion dollars from China and South Korea and Mexico, or we can reduce services by a trillion dollars. Those are our choices.”

And I think when you describe those choices to the American people in an honest, straight-forward way, then I’m your representative. You tell me what is going to reflect our borrows, because we can’t… You know, there’s not a trillion dollars worth of waste in the federal budget.

Over 90% of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and payments on the national debt. And about 10% is left over for everything else. We’d have to eliminate everything else, and we would still have to make further cuts. Is that reflective of your values and your ideals?

And most of the time, I don’t care whether it’s a Repub-- You know, I’ll have these town hall meetings in all Republican, red-state areas of Illinois, and people will say, “No, that’s not what we believe.”

HERBERT: The first time I met you, you were running for Senate. You were a State Senator in Illinois, and you were not well-known outside the state of Illinois. And you--

OBAMA: I wasn’t well-known inside the state.

[laughter]

Although, I guess, by the time we met, I’d won the primary, so some folks in the state knew me.

HERBERT: Well, on my ride over here in a cab in the rain this evening, a fellow pulled up here, and he said, “Oh, what’s going on at the forum?” And I said, “Senator Barack Obama will be speaking.” And he just said, “Oh, our next President,” just like that.

[laughter]

[applause]

OBAMA: You know, if the election took place among cab drivers--

[laughter]

I think I would have it. About half of them are from Africa, first of all, so they all have funny names, and so, you know, I’d do well.

[laughter]

HERBERT: He’s ready to work for you. But, you know, I watched you on Oprah the other day. You’re on the cover of Time magazine, you’re in New York magazine, you were on Larry King last night; I checked into the hotel and turned on the television, and you’re on Larry King. You’re everywhere.

OBAMA: Yeah, it’s a bit much, isn’t it?

[laughter]

HERBERT: That’s for you to say.

OBAMA: That’s what my wife says, anyway. “I am fed up with reading about you.”

[laughter]

HERBERT: In any event, the wide-spread assumption is that at some point, you will run for President. So my question is, when you think about yourself and the Presidency, what is it that runs through your mind? What kind of thoughts do you have about that?

OBAMA: Well all the attention is flattering. And as I’ve said before, if you go into public service, then you want to have influence. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. I mean, I suppose there’s the motiva-- just pure vanity can force you into politics. I have found, and I think this is something… You know, as you get older, you discover certain things about yourself that you don’t like so much. But every once in a while, you discover some things about yourself that you do like. And one of the things I’ve discovered that I’m pleased with is that I actually find the attention, and seeing my name in the papers, and the stuff that feeds your ego less satisfying as time goes on.

So the reason you go into politics or any form of public services is, hopefully, because you’re going to have influence, you’re going to create some sort of change out there. And obviously the President has the most influence, and so I think it would be disingenuous for me to say– or, for that matter, let me tell you, any of the other 99 Senators who are the United States Senate, or any Governor across the country– to say at some point they don’t think about what it would be like if you had that platform, that unique office.

What I then also think is that that office is so different from any other office on the planet, that you have to understand that if you seek that office, you have to be prepared to give your life to it– I said this on Charlie Rose last night–

HERBERT: Charlie Rose? I missed that one.

[laughter]

OBAMA: But in case there were folks who were watching, I didn’t want them to think that I didn’t– you know– I acknowledge I’m repeating myself here. But essentially the bargain that any President, I think, strikes with the American people is you give me this office, and in turn, my fears, doubts, insecurities, foibles, need for sleep, family life, vacations, leisure is gone. I am giving myself to you.

And the American people should have no patience for whatever is going through your head, because you’ve got a job to do. And so how I think about it is that you don’t make that decision unless you are prepared to make that sacrifice, that trade-off, that bargain.

And I think that what’s difficult and important for somebody like myself, who has a wonderful forbearing wife and two gorgeous young children, is that they end up having to make some of those sacrifices with you. And that’s a profound decision that you don’t make lightly. You know, I think those who make mistakes, I suspect, in the President’s office, make it because they haven’t fully thought through the dimensions of that choice.

HERBERT: Can you imagine yourself at some point making that kind of a commitment?

OBAMA: Sure.

[applause]

OBAMA: I didn’t say I had, I just said I could imagine myself doing it.

HERBERT: Have you ruled out running in 2008?

[laughter]

OBAMA: At this point, and I’m not trying to be coy here, at this point, I really am focused on these next three weeks, because I’m too tired, and my mind is filled up with too many things. I mean, I literally finished this book, finished session, went on the roads trying to campaign for folks.

HERBERT: So you have not ruled it out?

OBAMA: The–

[laughter]

OBAMA: We’ll leave it there, you know. That was his comment, not mine.

[applause]

HERBERT: All right, we’ll see what you guys have come up with. Interesting question. In the upcoming election and the 2008 election, how should we survive the stumbling blocks of wedge issues, such as gay marriage and abortion that so often have prevented the success of progressive candidates?

OBAMA: Well, point number one, those issues seem to have less traction in this election than they did in the election two years ago and the election two years before that, and I think that’s part of the seriousness that I talked about. It’s not that people don’t care about those issues any more, it’s just that there are other things that they seem to care more about in this cycle. And that, I think, is a healthy thing.

But I also think that it’s important for Democrats or progressives of any stripe to engage in a conversation, to be in the space where a lot of these issues percolate. And one of those places is the church or the synagogue or the mosque, in places of worship and in various religious venues.

I have an entire chapter devoted to faith, and the basic argument I make is that we who consider ourselves progressive, I think, for at least a generation, have felt uncomfortable talking about religion, in part for fear of appearing intolerant. And as a consequence, we’ve sort of emptied the space, and it’s been filled by the Pat Robertsons and the James Falwells. And they’re pervasive on Christian radio and Christian television, and they’re in church, and they’re producing pamphlets and books and so forth. And there’s no answer to their definition of what religion could be in our lives, and so my view is that we’ve got to get in there and have an argument. We’ve got to– Let’s take, you know, the issue of gay marriage. You know, a lot of pastors, those who are literalists, who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, will cite, you know, a passage in Romans that says, “Homosexuality is an abomination”-- you know, it doesn’t say it that way, but it is in the Bible, there are a couple of passages there-- and just start going hog wild on it. And nobody’s there to say, “Well, is that obscure passage in Romans more important than Sermon on the Mount, or the entire story of how Jesus behaved towards all people?” And I think that’s an argument progressives can win, and I think that…

So just to finish up the point in terms of how we deal with these so-called wedge issues, we don’t deal with it on Election Day. We deal with it between elections. You know, if you go into rural Illinois– and this is true all throughout the South– there is a news station, and there are eight Christian radio stations, and maybe a country station. And if that’s all folks are hearing, that’s the only source of information for 24 months or 22 months.

And then the last two months, we’re running some ads on CNN, we lose that argument. And so I think it’s important for us to engage.

Now we have to be true to certain principles in how we engage, so I believe in separation between church and state. And as I point out in the book, historically, that’s not to protect just the state, that’s to protect the church.

And the biggest advocates of church and state separation weren’t just Jefferson and Madison, they were the Baptists, the forbearers of today’s evangelicals, because, you know, they were worried that the Congregationalists and, you know, essentially the Anglican Church, which

was dominant, would impose their views. And they said, “No, no, no. We want to worship the way we want.”.

So we need to retain that principle, and we need to retain the notion that if we’re going to talk about faith, we shouldn’t say that people leave their faith at the door, that’s not possible. Martin Luther King didn’t every time he started marching on Washington suddenly say, “Okay, I’m not a preacher any more.”

But what you do have to insist on in a pluralistic democracy, if you want somebody to listen to you, is to translate whatever religiously-motivated ideals that you have into a language that is accessible to all people, some sort of universal language, a set of ethics or principles, moral ideas, that is subject to reason and subject to argument. And you can’t close the conversation up by simply saying, “God told me so.”

HERBERT: To what extent do you think that a new Democratic majority will have to occupy itself with repair work, with systematic reversal of a long list of policies of the recent Republican majority, without enough funds to work with?

OBAMA: I think that we have to be very clear and honest with the American people about the constraints that we’re under right now. As I said, in terms of foreign policy, you know, just because the Democrats take over, Kim Jong Ill is still going to be in North Korea, and there’s no easy solution to that problem. Iran is developing nuclear weapons, there are no easy solutions to that problem. And Iraq is a mess. Changes in tone from an administration could make an enormous difference.

It’s hard for Congress to entirely force that tone. Domestically, our budget is shot. And even if we begin a phase-down of troops, we’re still looking at tens of billions of dollars going to Iraq over the next several years, even if we phase down our occupation there.

And so we’re not going to have a lot of pleasant choices over the next couple of years. I think the American people understand that, as long as we are leveling with them and not trying to over promise in terms of what can be accomplished.

HERBERT: And the final question, I think, for the evening, is give us a sense of what it’s like; You went to the Senate at the beginning of last year. Give us a sense of what it’s like to be a United States Senator. What was it that you encountered that was surprising when you got to Washington? What was it that was disappointing? And what might have been particularly rewarding?

OBAMA: Well, I open up the book by talking about walking into the Senate Chamber, and I have the same feeling each time I walk in. Everybody has these little mahogany desks. They’re like third-grade desks– you can’t really work on them.

[laughter]

OBAMA: But they’re very pretty. And some of them date back to, you know, 1819. Daniel Webster’s desk is still in the floor of the Senate. And if you open up the drawer, the previous occupants of each desk have carved their names in their own hand, inside the desk, so it’s sort of an early form of graffiti. I don’t know who started it; It’s like, you know, “Webster was here.”

[laughter]

OBAMA: But so the tradition began. And so I pulled open my desk and, you know, I’ll see names like Taft and Simon and Wellstone and Kennedy– Robert. And you realize that you’re connected to this amazing history, that you’re part of this experiment that’s been going on for a couple of centuries, that in no way was guaranteed to succeed.

And, you know, you can imagine, sort of, the debates that were taking place around secession and abolition and through the wars, and then the filibustering of the civil rights movement, and decisions about war and peace. And to be part of that conversation– that’s a continuous conversation– from the days of the Founding Fathers is powerful. So that’s on the plus-side.

The disappointment is that most of the time, that chamber is empty except for one or two people who are talking. And I think a lot of folks here are probably aware of the fact that when you hear Senators speaking on the floor of the Senate, they are almost always speaking to an empty room, except to the C-SPAN camera. And they may be turning and pretending like they’re giving this great oration, but it’s all a play, an act. The structure of the Senate… Everybody’s so busy, and there are committees, and the demands of the press, and fund-raising, and so forth.

And the way the rules are structured are such where it’s almost never the case that all 100 Senators are on the floor listening to a debate.

And when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, every Senator had to be on the floor on every bill. And the sponsor would stand up and present it, and anybody could ask questions and force that sponsor to defend their views, and so you’d actually have a sense of deliberation. Now, nine out of ten times, you know, the votes were already determined, and they’d go along party lines often times.

But one out of ten times, you’d see an actual debate take places, and democracy, as one envisions it, would occur. And that almost never happens in the floor of the Senate. What you have is passing press statements, essentially, that are never joined. And that, I think, is the disappointment. And what was the last one?

HERBERT: Well, I’ll ask you about just one related item, and that has to do with fund-raising, which apparently is relentless. And I don’t think many Americans really understand how that works and what the implications of begging for money all the time are. So if you would just talk a little bit about fund-raising…

OBAMA: You pick up the phone, and you call people, and you beg them for money.

[laughter]

HERBERT: But you can’t do it–

OBAMA: But you can’t do it on the floor of the Senate.

HERBERT: So what happens?

OBAMA: So people run off to the Democratic Senate Committee Office or the Republican Committee Office, which are close to the Senate, and they beg for money. And the consequences are–

HERBERT: And how frequently? How often?

OBAMA: Well, you know, it’s hard… Chuck Schumer’s doing it a lot right now, you know, because he’s the head of the DSCC. It’s hard to say. I don’t have a typical situation. One of the virtues of celebrity is my fundraising capacity is higher, just because I get a lot of attention. And so, it’s not entirely fair, but I don’t have to go and just work the phones now, the way I had to do when I was an unknown candidate, for example. But folks, if they’re up, they spend a lot of time doing it. So that, obviously, distorts not… And I write about this in the book.

It’s rare… Obviously we’re seeing it in the press, where people just take, you know, bags of money and trade votes. I mean, that happens, but the corruption is more subtle. It has to do with the fact that special interests in Washington not only are making contributions, but they have the money to hire lobbyists, who are there all the time tracking every piece of legislation for months. And everything moves very slowly.

And that’s really where they exert the most influence, right? It’s the business interest that has a provision in some obscure provision in the tax code that will make them a billion dollars, and that they care deeply about, and nobody else cares that much about or really understands. And that can make an enormous difference.

I think one last thing you asked, and that was, what gives me the most satisfaction? And as I said, the thing that gives me the most satisfaction is when somehow I’ve delivered something useful to the people I represent.

And, you know, it can be, you know, some veteran’s working through red tape at the VA, and we get suddenly a $60,000 check for back disability payments that he hasn’t gotten.

Or it can be a modest measure that I just passed that the President signed to create a website, so that everybody can search, like a Google search, what’s happening with their money, to create transparency. Sometimes you fail, but there’s still satisfaction.

One of the things I was most proud of this last session was the anti-terrorist detention bill that was going to be, you know, the administration’s closing argument, essentially, going into the fall election. And at the time that that started, the conventional wisdom was that you’d only get maybe eight, ten folks voting against it. And for me to be able to stand up and caucus two or three consecutive weeks and say, “How can we junk habeas corpus?”– the basic principle of our country, that if the government rounds you up, that you have the opportunity to answer the charges against you, and say, “Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy,” or “It didn’t happen this way.”

And at the end of the vote, there were 35 votes against it, which may not sound like much, but for me indicated a sense that the debate was shifting a little bit. That provides me great satisfaction.

HERBERT: We are going to wrap it up. I’m going to ask everyone if they could remain in their seats for a little while, while the Senator goes off the stage, and then he’ll be back there signing some books.

I saw you suggest to Oprah that if you run for President, you might announce it on her television show. I don’t have a television show–

[laughter]

OBAMA: He’s going to announce it on his column.

HERBERT: A telephone call, a little bit of a heads up–

[laughter]

[applause]

HERBERT: Thank you so much.

OBAMA: Thank you also.

[applause]

OBAMA: Thank you.

HERBERT: Thank you very much.

OBAMA: Thank you.

Over the last few days, we have seen clearly what's at stake in this election. The news from Wall Street has shaken the American people's faith in our economy. The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that have generated tremendous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

Since this turmoil began over a year ago, the housing market has collapsed. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be effectively taken over by the government. Three of America's five largest investment banks failed or have been sold off in distress. Yesterday, Wall Street suffered its worst losses since just after 9/11. We are in the most serious financial crisis in generations. Yet Senator McCain stood up yesterday and said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong

A few hours later, his campaign sent him back out to clean up his remarks, and he tried to explain himself again this morning by saying that what he meant was that American workers are strong. But we know that Senator McCain meant what he said the first time, because he has said it over and over again throughout this campaign - no fewer than 16 times, according to one independent count.

Now I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for all of the problems we're facing, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. Because the truth is, what Senator McCain said yesterday fits with the same economic philosophy that he's had for 26 years. It's the philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down. It's the philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise. It's a philosophy that lets Washington lobbyists shred consumer protections and distort our economy so it works for the special interests instead of working people.

We've had this philosophy for eight years. We know the results. You feel it in your own lives. Jobs have disappeared, and peoples' life savings have been put at risk. Millions of families face foreclosure, and millions more have seen their home values plummet. The cost of everything from gas to groceries to health care has gone up, while the dream of a college education for our kids and a secure and dignified retirement for our seniors is slipping away. These are the struggles that Americans are facing. This is the pain that has now trickled up.

So let's be clear: what we've seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed. And I am running for President of the United States because the dreams of the American people must not be endangered any more. It's time to put an end to a broken system in Washington that is breaking the American economy. It's time for change that makes a real difference in your lives.

If you want to understand the difference between how Senator McCain and I would govern as President, you can start by taking a look at how we've responded to this crisis. Because Senator McCain's approach was the same as the Bush Administration's: support ideological policies that made the crisis more likely; do nothing as the crisis hits; and then scramble as the whole thing collapses. My approach has been to try to prevent this turmoil.

In February of 2006, I introduced legislation to stop mortgage transactions that promoted fraud, risk or abuse. A year later, before the crisis hit, I warned Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke about the risks of mounting foreclosures and urged them to bring together all the stakeholders to find solutions to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Senator McCain did nothing.

Last September, I stood up at NASDAQ and said it's time to realize that we are in this together - that there is no dividing line between Wall Street and Main Street - and warned of a growing loss of trust in our capital markets. Months later, Senator McCain told a newspaper that he'd love to give them a solution to the mortgage crisis, "but" - he said - "I don't know one."

In January, I outlined a plan to help revive our faltering economy, which formed the basis for a bipartisan stimulus package that passed the Congress. Senator McCain used the crisis as an excuse to push a so-called stimulus plan that offered another huge and permanent corporate tax cut, including $4 billion for the big oil companies, but no immediate help for workers.

This March, in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout, I called for a new, 21st century regulatory framework to restore accountability, transparency, and trust in our financial markets. Just a few weeks earlier, Senator McCain made it clear where he stands: "I'm always for less regulation," he said, and referred to himself as "fundamentally a deregulator."

This is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they can get, however they can get it. This is what happens when you see seven years of incomes falling for the average worker while Wall Street is booming, and declare - as Senator McCain did earlier this year - that we've made great progress economically under George Bush. That is how you can reach the conclusion - as late as yesterday - that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

Well, we have a different way of measuring the fundamentals of our economy. We know that the fundamentals that we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great -that America is a place where you can make it if you try.

Americans have always pursued our dreams within a free market that has been the engine of our progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and rewarded the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon of science, and technology, and discovery. But the American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle - that America prospers when all Americans can prosper. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest.

Too often, over the last quarter century, we have lost this sense of shared prosperity. And this has not happened by accident. It's because of decisions made in boardrooms, on trading floors and in Washington. We failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.

Let me be clear: the American economy does not stand still, and neither should the rules that govern it. The evolution of industries often warrants regulatory reform - to foster competition, lower prices, or replace outdated oversight structures. Old institutions cannot adequately oversee new practices. Old rules may not fit the roads where our economy is leading. But instead of sensible reform that rewarded success and freed the creative forces of the market, too often we've excused an ethic of greed, corner-cutting and inside dealing that threatens the long-term stability of our economic system.

It happened in the 1980s, when we loosened restrictions on Savings and Loans and appointed regulators who ignored even these weaker rules. Too many S&Ls took advantage of the lax rules set by Washington to gamble that they could make big money in speculative real estate. Confident of their clout in Washington, they made hundreds of billions in bad loans, knowing that if they lost money, the government would bail them out. And they were right. The gambles did not pay off, our economy went into recession, and the taxpayers ended up footing the bill. Sound familiar?

And it has happened again during this decade, in part because of how we deregulated the financial services sector. After we repealed outmoded rules instead of updating them, we were left overseeing 21st century innovation with 20th century regulations. When subprime mortgage lending took a reckless and unsustainable turn, a patchwork of regulators systematically and deliberately eliminated the regulations protecting the American people and failed to raise warning flags that could have protected investors and the pensions American workers count on.

This was not the invisible hand of the market at work. These cycles of bubble and bust were symptoms of the ideology that my opponent is running to continue. John McCain has spent decades in Washington supporting financial institutions instead of their customers. In fact, one of the biggest proponents of deregulation in the financial sector is Phil Gramm - the same man who helped write John McCain's economic plan; the same man who said that we're going through a 'mental recession'; and the same man who called the United States of America a "nation of whiners." So it's hard to understand how Senator McCain is going to get us out of this crisis by doing the same things with the same old players.

Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn't offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn't for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement. John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it.

What has happened these last eight years is not some historical anomaly, so we know what to expect if we try these policies for another four. When lobbyists run your campaign, the special interests end up gaming the system. When the White House is hostile to any kind of oversight, corporations cut corners and consumers pay the price. When regulators are chosen for their disdain for regulation and we gut their ability to enforce the law, then the interests of the American people are not protected. It's an ideology that intentionally breeds incompetence in Washington and irresponsibility on Wall Street, and it's time to turn the page.

Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book - you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here's the thing - this isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election.

History shows us that there is no substitute for presidential leadership in a time of economic crisis. FDR and Harry Truman didn't put their heads in the sand, or hand accountability over to a Commission. Bill Clinton didn't put off hard choices. They led, and that's what I will do. My priority as President will be the stability of the American economy and the prosperity of the American people. And I will make sure that our response focuses on middle class Americans - not the companies that created the problem.

To get out of this crisis - and to ensure that we are not doomed to repeat a cycle of bubble and bust again and again - we must take immediate measures to create jobs and continue to address the housing crisis; we must build a 21st century regulatory framework, and we must pursue a bold opportunity agenda that creates new jobs and grows the American economy.

To jumpstart job creation, I have proposed a $50 billion Emergency Economic Plan that would save 1 million jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure, repairing our schools, and helping our states and localities avoid damaging budget cuts.

I worked with leaders in Congress to create a new FHA Housing Security Program, which will help stabilize the housing market and allow Americans facing foreclosure to keep their homes at rates they can afford. Going forward, we need to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as we know them with a structure that is focused on helping people buy homes - not engaging in market speculation. We can't have a situation like the old S&L scandal where its "heads" investors win, and "tails" taxpayers lose. That's going to take ending the lobbyist-driven dominance of these institutions that we've seen for far too long in Washington.

To prevent fraud in the mortgage market, I've proposed tough penalties on fraudulent lenders, and a Home Score system that will ensure consumers fully understand mortgage offers and whether they'll be able to make payments. To help low- and middle-income families, I will ease the burden on struggling homeowners through a universal homeowner's tax credit. This will add up to a 10 percent break off the mortgage interest rate for 10 million households. That's another $500 each year for many middle class families.

Unlike Senator McCain, I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes. Right now, if you're a family that owns one house, bankruptcy judges are actually barred from helping you keep a roof over your head by writing down the value of your mortgage. If you own seven homes, the judge is free to write down any or all of the debt on your second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh homes. Now that may be of comfort to Senator McCain, but that's the kind of out-of-touch Washington loophole that makes no sense. When I'm President, we'll make our laws work for working people.

But as we've seen the last few days, the crisis in our financial markets now reaches well beyond the housing market. That's why it's time to do what I called for last September and again this past March - and it is only more overdue today.

Our capital markets cannot succeed without the public's trust. It's time to get serious about regulatory oversight, and that's what I will do as President. That starts with the core principles for reform that I discussed at Cooper Union.

First, if you're a financial institution that can borrow from the government, you should be subject to government oversight and supervision. When the Federal Reserve steps in as a lender of last resort, it is providing an insurance policy underwritten by the American taxpayer. In return, taxpayers have every right to expect that financial institutions with access to that credit are not taking excessive risks.

Second, we must reform requirements on all regulated financial institutions. We must strengthen capital requirements, particularly for complex financial instruments like some of the mortgage securities and other derivatives at the center of our current crisis. We must develop and rigorously manage liquidity risk. We must investigate rating agencies and potential conflicts of interest with the people they are rating. And we must establish transparency requirements that demand full disclosure by financial institutions to shareholders and counterparties. As we reform our regulatory system at home, we must address the same problems abroad so that financial institutions around the world are subject to similar rules of the road.

Third, we need to streamline our regulatory agencies. Our overlapping and competing regulatory agencies cannot oversee the large and complex institutions that dominate the financial landscape. Different institutions compete in multiple markets - Washington should not pretend otherwise. A streamlined system will provide better oversight and reduce costs.

Fourth, we need to regulate institutions for what they do, not what they are. Over the last few years, commercial banks and thrift institutions were subject to guidelines on subprime mortgages that did not apply to mortgage brokers and companies. This regulatory framework failed to protect homeowners, and made no sense for our financial system. When it comes to protecting the American people, it should make no difference what kind of institution they are dealing with.

Fifth, we must crack down on trading activity that crosses the line to market manipulation. The last six months have shown that this remains a serious problem in many markets and becomes especially problematic during moments of great financial turmoil. We cannot embrace the administration's vision of turning over the protection of investors to the industries themselves. We need regulators that actually enforce the rules instead of overlooking them. The SEC should investigate and punish market manipulation, and report its conclusions to Congress.

Sixth, we must establish a process that identifies systemic risks to the financial system like the crisis that has overtaken our economy. Too often, we end up where we are today: dealing with threats to the financial system that weren't anticipated by regulators. We need a standing financial market advisory group to meet regularly and provide advice to the President, Congress, and regulators on the state of our financial markets and the risks they face. It's time to anticipate risks before they erupt into a full-blown crisis.

These six principles should guide the legal reforms needed to establish a 21st century regulatory system. But the change we need goes beyond laws and regulation. Financial institutions must do a better job at managing risks. There is something wrong when boards of directors or senior managers don't understand the implications of the risks assumed by their own institutions. It's time to realign incentives and CEO compensation packages, so that both high level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders.

Finally, the American people must be able to trust that their government is looking out for all of us - not the special interests that have set the agenda in Washington for eight years, and the lobbyists who run John McCain's campaign.

I've spent my career taking on lobbyists and their money, and I've won. If you wanted a special favor in Illinois, there was actually a law that let you give campaign cash to politicians for their own personal use. In the State House, they called it business-as-usual. I called it legalized bribery, and while it didn't make me the most popular guy in Springfield, I put an end to it.

When I got to Washington, we saw some of the worst corruption since Watergate. I led the fight for reform in my party, and let me tell you - not everyone in my party was too happy about it. When I proposed forcing lobbyists to disclose who they're raising money from and who in Congress they're funneling it to, I had a few choice words directed my way on the floor of the Senate. But we got it done, and we banned gifts from lobbyists, and free rides on their fancy jets. And I am the only candidate who can say that Washington lobbyists do not fund my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am President of the United States. That's how we're going to end the outrage of special interests tipping the scales.

The most important thing we must do is restore opportunity for all Americans. To get our economy growing, we need to recapture that fundamental American promise. That if you work hard, you can pay the bills. That if you get sick, you won't go bankrupt. That your kids can get a good education, and that we can leave a legacy of greater opportunity to future generations.

That's the change the American people need. While Senator McCain likes to talk about change these days, his economic program offers nothing but more of the same. The American people need more than change as a slogan- we need change that makes a real difference in your life.

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it. I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups - that's how we'll grow our economy and create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. My opponent doesn't want you to know this, but under my plan, tax rates will actually be less than they were under Ronald Reagan. If you make less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increase one single dime. In fact, I offer three times the tax relief for middle-class families as Senator McCain does - because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

I will finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And I will stop insurance companies from discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most

I will create the jobs of the future by transforming our energy economy. We'll tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced

And now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. But in exchange, I will ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

This is the change we need - the kind of bottom up growth and innovation that will advance the American economy by advancing the dreams of all Americans.

Times are hard. I will not pretend that the changes we need will come without cost - though I have presented ways we can achieve these changes in a fiscally responsible way. I know that we'll have to overcome our doubts and divisions and the determined opposition of powerful special interests before we can truly reform a broken economy and advance opportunity.

But I am running for President because we simply cannot afford four more years of an economic philosophy that works for Wall Street instead of Main Street, and ends up devastating both.

I don't want to wake up in four years to find that more Americans fell out of the middle-class, and more families lost their savings. I don't want to see that our country failed to invest in our ability to compete, our children's future was mortgaged on another mountain of debt, and our financial markets failed to find a firmer footing.

This time - this election - is our chance to stand up and say: enough is enough!

We can do this because Americans have done this before. Time and again, we've battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other's success. That's why our economy hasn't just been the world's greatest wealth generator - it's bound America together, it's created jobs, and it's made the dream of opportunity a reality for generation after generation of Americans.

Now it falls to us. And I need you to make it happen. If you want the next four years looking just like the last eight, then I am not your candidate. But if you want real change - if you want an economy that rewards work, and that works for Main Street and Wall Street; if you want tax relief for the middle class and millions of new jobs; if you want health care you can afford and education so that our kids can compete; then I ask you to knock on some doors, and make some calls, and talk to your neighbors, and give me your vote on November 4th. And if you do, I promise you - we will win Colorado, we will win this election, and we will change America together.

Yesterday was a special day around my house. It was back-to-school day for my girls. Sasha started second grade and Malia began 5th. I know Malia was really embarrassed when I walked her to the classroom, but I did it anyway because she's still Daddy's girl. And seeing them back at school was a reminder not only that another year had passed and that they're growing up a little faster than I'd sometimes like. It was also a reminder of all the other parents who are dropping their children off at school, and all the other kids who are getting ready for another year of classes.

Every four years, we hear candidates talk about the vital importance of education; about how improving our schools is key to the future of our children and the future of our country. Every four years, we hear about how this time, we're going to make it an urgent national priority. Remember the 2000 election, when George W. Bush promised to be the "education President"?

But just as with energy independence and health care, the urgency of upgrading public education for the 21st century has been talked to death in Washington. And that failure to act has put our nation in jeopardy.

Well, the day of reckoning is here. Our kids and our country can't afford four more years of neglect and indifference. At this defining moment in our history, America faces few more urgent challenges than preparing our children to compete in a global economy. The decisions our leaders make about education in the coming years will shape our future for generations to come. They will help determine not only whether our children have the chance to fulfill their God-given potential, or whether our workers have the chance to build a better life for their families, but whether we, as a nation, will remain in the 21st century the kind of global economic leader that we were in the 20th century.

The rising importance of education reflects the new demands of our new world. In recent decades, revolutions in communications and information technology have broken down barriers that once kept countries and markets apart, creating a single, global economy that is more integrated and interconnected than ever before. In this economy, companies can plant their jobs wherever there's an internet connection and someone willing to do the work, meaning that children here in Dayton are growing up competing with children not only in Detroit, but in Delhi as well.

What matters, then, isn't what you do or where you live, but what you know. When two-thirds of all new jobs require a higher education or advanced training, knowledge is the most valuable skill you can sell. It's not only a pathway to opportunity, but a prerequisite. Without a good pre-school education, our children are less likely to keep up with their peers. Without a high school diploma, you're likely to make about three times less than a college graduate. And without a college degree or industry certification, it's harder and harder to find a job that can help you support your family and keep up with rising costs.

But it's not just that a world-class education is essential for workers to compete and win, it's that an educated workforce is essential for America to compete and win. Without a workforce trained in math, science, and technology and the other skills of the 21st century, our companies will innovate less, our economy will grow less, and our nation will be less competitive. If we want to outcompete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate the world today.

If we want to keep building the cars of the future here in America, we can't afford to see the number of PhDs in engineering climbing in China, South Korea, and Japan even as it's dropped here in America; we can't afford a future where our high school students rank near the bottom in math and science, and our high school drop-out rate is one of the highest in the industrialized world.

If we want to build a 21st century infrastructure and repair our crumbling roads and bridges, we can't afford a future where a third of all 4th graders and a fifth of all 8th graders can't do basic math, and black and Latino students are even further behind; where elementary school kids are only getting an average 25 minutes of science each day when over 80% of the fastest-growing jobs require some knowledge in math and science.

If we want to see middle class incomes rising like they did in the 1990's, we can't afford a future where so many Americans are priced out of college; where only 20 percent of our students are prepared to take college-level English, math, and science; where millions of jobs are going unfilled because Americans don't have the skills to work them; and where barely one in ten low-income students will ever get their college degree.

That kind of future is economically untenable for America. It is morally unacceptable for our children. And it is not who we are as a nation.

We are a nation that has always renewed our system of education to meet the challenges of a new time. Lincoln created the land grant colleges to ensure the success of the union he was fighting to save. Generations of leaders built mandatory public schools to prepare our children for the changing needs of our nation. And Eisenhower doubled federal investment in education after the Soviets beat us to space.

That is the kind of leadership we must show today.

But that's not the leadership we've been getting from Washington. For decades, they've been stuck in the same tired debates over education that have crippled our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves. It's been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There's partisanship and there's bickering, but there's no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we'll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need. And we've fallen further and further behind as a result.

If we're going to make a real and lasting difference for our future, we have to be willing to move beyond the old arguments of left and right and take meaningful, practical steps to build an education system worthy of our children and our future.

In the past few weeks, my opponent has taken to talking about the need for change and reform in Washington, where he has been part of the scene for about three decades.

And in those three decades, he has not done one thing to truly improve the quality of public education in our country. Not one real proposal or law or initiative. Nothing.

Instead, he marched with the ideologues in his party in opposing efforts to hire more teachers, and expand Head Start, and make college more affordable. You don't reform our schools by opposing efforts to fully fund No Child Left Behind. And you certainly don't reform our education system by calling to close the Department of Education. That would just make it harder for us to give out financial aid, harder for us to keep track of how our schools are doing, and lead to widening inequality in who gets a college degree.

That is not my idea of reform. That is not my idea of change. That is not a plan to help your kids compete with those kids in China and India.

After three decades of indifference on education, do you really believe that John McCain is going to make a difference now?

John McCain doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that our success as a nation depends on our success in education.

I do.

That's why last November, I proposed an education agenda that moves beyond party and ideology and focuses instead on what will make the most difference in a child's life. My plan calls for giving every child a world-class education from the day they're born until the day they graduate from college. It's a plan that starts with investing in early-childhood education because we know that children in these programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job and earn more in that job. And it's a plan that will finally put a college degree within reach for anyone who wants one by providing a $4,000 tax credit to any middle class student who's willing to serve their community or their country.

Of course, we also have to fix the broken promises of No Child Left Behind. Now, I believe that the goals of this law were the right ones. Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More accountability is right. Higher standards are right.

But I'll tell you what's wrong with No Child Left Behind. Forcing our teachers, our principals, and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.

And by the way - don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test. Let's finally help our teachers and principals develop a curriculum and assessments that teach our kids to become more than just good test-takers. We need assessments that can improve achievement by including the kinds of research, scientific investigation, and problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st century knowledge economy.

We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind. We must provide the funding we were promised, and give our states the resources they need, and finally meet our commitment to special education. But Democrats have to realize that fixing No Child Left Behind is not enough to prepare our children for a global economy.

We need a new vision for a 21st century education - one where we aren't just supporting existing schools, but spurring innovation; where we're not just investing more money, but demanding more reform; where parents take responsibility for their children's success; where our schools and government are accountable for results; where we're recruiting, retaining, and rewarding an army of new teachers, and students are excited to learn because they're attending schools of the future; and where we expect all our children not only to graduate high school, but to graduate college and get a good paying job.

It's time to ask ourselves why other countries are outperforming us in education. Because it's not that their kids are smarter than ours - it's that they're being smarter about how to educate their kids. They're spending less time teaching things that don't matter and more time teaching things that do. Their students are spending more time in school, and they're setting higher expectations.

That's what we need to be doing - because America isn't a country that accepts second place. When I'm President, we'll fight to make sure we're once again first in the world when it comes to high school graduation rates. We'll push our kids to study harder and aim higher. I've worked with Republican Senator Jim DeMint on a bill that would challenge high school students to take college-level courses - and make sure low-income neighborhoods and rural communities have access to those courses. And I'll make it the law of the land when I'm President. And we'll also set a goal of increasing the number of high school students taking college-level or AP courses by 50 percent in the coming years. Because I believe that when we challenge our kids to succeed, they will.

A while back, I was talking with my friend Arne Duncan, who runs the Chicago Public Schools. He was explaining how he'd managed to increase the number of kids taking and passing AP courses in Chicago over the last few years. What he said was, our kids aren't smarter than they were three years ago; our expectations for them are just higher. Well, I think it's time we raised expectations for our kids all across this country, and that's what we'll do when I'm President of the United States.

The second thing we need to do is make sure that we're preparing our kids for the 21st century economy by bringing our school system into the 21st century. Part of what that means is fostering the kinds of schools that will help prepare our kids, which is why I'm calling for the creation of an Innovative Schools Fund. This fund will invest in schools like the Austin Polytechnical Academy, which is located in a part of Chicago that's been hard hit by the decline in manufacturing over the past few decades. Thanks to partnerships with a number of companies, a curriculum that prepares students for a career in engineering, and a requirement that students graduate with at least two industry certifications, Austin Polytech is bringing hope back to the community. And that's the kind of model we'll replicate across the country when I'm President of the United States.

Giving our parents real choices about where to send their kids to school also means showing the same kind of leadership at the national level that I did in Illinois when I passed a law to double the number of charter schools in Chicago. That is why as President, I'll double the funding for responsible charter schools. Now, I know you've had a tough time with for-profit charter schools here in Ohio. That is why I'll work with Governor Strickland to hold for-profit charter schools accountable, and I'll work with all our nation's governors to hold all our charter schools accountable. Charter schools that are successful will get the support they need to grow. And charters that aren't will get shut down. And we'll help ensure that more of our kids have access to quality afterschool and summer school and extended school days for students who need it - because if they can do that in China, we can do that right here in the United States of America.

As we bring our school system into the 21st century, we also have to bring our schools into the 21st century. Because while technology has transformed just about every aspect of our lives - from the way we travel to the way we communicate to the way we look after our health - one of the places where we've failed to seize its full potential is in the classroom.

Imagine a future where our children are more motivated because they aren't just learning on blackboards but on new whiteboards with digital touch screens; where every student in a classroom has a laptop at their desk; where they don't just do book reports but design PowerPoint presentations; where they don't just write papers but build websites; where research isn't done just by taking a book out of the library but by emailing experts in the field; and where teachers are less a source of knowledge than a coach for how best to use it. By fostering innovation, we can help make sure every school in America is a school of the future.

That's what we'll do when I'm President. We'll help schools integrate technology into their curriculum so we can make sure public school students are fluent in the digital language of the 21st century economy. We'll teach our students not only math and science, but teamwork, and critical thinking and communication skills - because that's how we'll make sure they're prepared for today's workplace.

But no matter how many choices we're giving our parents or how much technology we're using in our schools or how tough our classes are, none of it will make much difference if we don't also recruit, prepare, and retain outstanding teachers. Because from the moment a child enters a school, the most important factor in their success is the person standing at the front of the classroom.

That's why last year, I proposed a new Service Scholarship program that will recruit top talent into the profession, and place these new teachers in overcrowded districts and struggling rural towns, or hard-to-staff subjects like special education in schools across the nation. To prepare these new teachers, I'll create more Teacher Residency Programs that will build on a law I recently passed and train 30,000 high-quality teachers a year, especially in math and science. To support our teachers, we'll expand mentoring programs that pair experienced, successful teachers with new recruits.

And when our teachers succeed in making a real difference in our children's lives, we should reward them for it by finding new ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. We can do this. From Prince George's County in Maryland to Denver, Colorado, we're seeing teachers and school boards coming together to design performance pay plans.

So yes, we must give teachers every tool they need to be successful. But we also need to give every child the assurance that they'll have the teacher they need to be successful. That means setting a firm standard - teachers who are doing a poor job will get extra support, but if they still don't improve, they'll be replaced. Because as good teachers are the first to tell you, if we're going to attract the best teachers to the profession, we can't settle for schools filled with poor teachers.

Now, I know this sounds like a lot, but we can do it all - we can increase the number of students taking college-level courses; expand innovation and school choice; invest in the schools of tomorrow; and put a quality teacher in every classroom - all for the cost of just a few days in Iraq. And we'll pay for that cost by carefully winding down the war in Iraq, by ending no-bid contracts, and by eliminating wasteful spending. So we'll make these investments, but we'll do it without mortgaging our children's future on an even larger amount of debt. We'll do it responsibly.

This leads me to my final point - as President, I will lead a new era of accountability in education. But I don't just want to hold our teachers accountable. I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable. That's why every year I'm President, I will report back to you on the progress our schools are making. Because it's time to stop passing the buck on education, and start accepting responsibility, and that's the kind of example I'll set as President of the United States.

Accountability in Washington starts by making sure that every tax dollar spent by the Department of Education is being spent wisely. When I'm President, programs that work will get more money. Programs that don't will get less. And we'll send a team to fix bad programs by replacing bad managers. Because your tax dollars should only be funding programs and grants that actually make a difference in a child's education.

But in the end, responsibility for our children's success doesn't start in Washington. It starts in our homes. It starts in our families. Because no education policy can replace a parent who's involved in their child's education from day one, who makes sure their children are in school on time, helps them with their homework after dinner, and attends those parent-teacher conferences. No government program can turn off the TV, or put away the video games, or read to your children.

But we can help parents do a better job. That's why I'll create a parent report card that will show you whether your kid is on the path to college. We'll help schools post student progress reports online so you can get a regular update on what kind of grades your child is getting on tests and quizzes from week to week. If your kid is falling behind, or playing hooky, or isn't on track to go to college or compete for that good paying job, it will be up to you to do something about it.

So yes, we need to hold our government accountable. Yes, we have to hold our schools accountable. But we also have to hold ourselves accountable.

You know, when I dropped my daughters off at school yesterday, I couldn't help but think about all America had done over the years to give me and my family a good education. This is a country that put my grandfather through college on the GI Bill after he left Patton's Army. This is a country that drew my father - like so many immigrants - across an ocean in search of a college degree. And this is a country that let the child of a teenage mom and an absent father reach for his dreams.

You see, I wasn't born with a lot of advantages. But I was given love, and support, and an education that put me on a pathway to success. The same was true for Michelle. She came from a blue collar family on the south side of Chicago. Even though her father had multiple sclerosis, he went to work every day at the local water filtration plant to support his family. And Michelle and her brother were able to go to a great college, and reach a little further for their dreams.

So I know that the only reason Michelle and I are where we are today is because this country we love gave us the chance at an education. And the reason I'm running for President is to give every single American that same chance; to give the young sisters out there born with a gift for invention the chance to become the next Orville and Wilbur Wright; to give the young boy out there who wants to create a life-saving cure the chance to become the next Jonas Salk; and to give the child out there whose imagination has been sparked by the wonders of the internet the chance to become the next Bill Gates.

Our future depends on it. When the story of our time is told, I don't want it to be said that China seized this moment to reform its education system, but the United States did not. I don't want it to be said that India led the way on innovation, but the United States did not. I want it to be said that we rose to meet this challenge, and educated our people to become the most highly-skilled workers in the world - just like we always have been.

Because I know that if we can just bring our education system into the 21st century, not only will our children be able to fulfill their God-given potential, and our families be able to live out their dreams; not only will our schools out-educate the world and our workers outcompete the world; not only will our companies innovate more and our economy grow more, but at this defining moment, we will do what previous generations of Americans have done - and unleash the promise of our people, unlock the promise of our country, and make sure that America remains a beacon of opportunity and prosperity for all the world. Thank you.

Let me begin by saying thanks to all you who've traveled, from far and wide, to brave the cold today.

We all made this journey for a reason. It's humbling, but in my heart I know you didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union.

That's the journey we're on today. But let me tell you how I came to be here. As most of you know, I am not a native of this great state. I moved to Illinois over two decades ago. I was a young man then, just a year out of college; I knew no one in Chicago, was without money or family connections. But a group of churches had offered me a job as a community organizer for $13,000 a year. And

I accepted the job, sight unseen, motivated then by a single, simple, powerful idea - that I might play a small part in building a better America.

My work took me to some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods. I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant closings. I saw that the problems people faced weren't simply local in nature - that the decision to close a steel mill was made by distant executives; that the lack of textbooks and computers in schools could be traced to the skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away; and that when a child turns to violence, there's a hole in his heart no government could ever fill.

It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith. After three years of this work, I went to law school, because I wanted to understand how the law should work for those in need. I became a civil rights lawyer, and taught constitutional law, and after a time, I came to understand that our cherished rights of liberty and equality depend on the active participation of an awakened electorate. It was with these ideas in mind that I arrived in this capital city as a state Senator.

It was here, in Springfield, where I saw all that is America converge - farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard. I made lasting friendships here - friends that I see in the audience today.

It was here we learned to disagree without being disagreeable - that it's possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst.

That's why we were able to reform a death penalty system that was broken. That's why we were able to give health insurance to children in need. That's why we made the tax system more fair and just for working families, and that's why we passed ethics reforms that the cynics said could never, ever be passed.

It was here, in Springfield, where North, South, East and West come together that I was reminded of the essential decency of the American people - where I came to believe that through this decency, we can build a more hopeful America.

And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States. I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness - a certain audacity - to this announcement. I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.

The genius of our founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed. And we should take heart, because we've changed this country before. In the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an Empire to its knees. In the face of secession, we unified a nation and set the captives free. In the face of Depression, we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty. We welcomed immigrants to our shores, we opened railroads to the west, we landed a man on the moon, and we heard a King's call to let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more - and it is time for our generation to answer that call.

For that is our unyielding faith - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.

That's what Abraham Lincoln understood. He had his doubts. He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people. It is because of the millions who rallied to his cause that we are no longer divided, North and South, slave and free. It is because men and women of every race, from every walk of life, continued to march for freedom long after Lincoln was laid to rest, that today we have the chance to face the challenges of this millennium together, as one people - as Americans.

All of us know what those challenges are today - a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren't learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We've heard them. We've talked about them for years.

What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.

For the last six years we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter, we've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion, we've been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight. And when all else fails, when Katrina happens, or the death toll in Iraq mounts, we've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We're distracted from our real failures, and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants.

And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what's filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page.

We've made some progress already. I was proud to help lead the fight in Congress that led to the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate.

But Washington has a long way to go. And it won't be easy. That's why we'll have to set priorities. We'll have to make hard choices. And although government will play a crucial role in bringing about the changes we need, more money and programs alone will not get us where we need to go. Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility - for instilling an ethic of achievement in our children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice. So let us begin. Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation.

Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let's set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let's recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let's make college more affordable, and let's invest in scientific research, and let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America.

And as our economy changes, let's be the generation that ensures our nation's workers are sharing in our prosperity. Let's protect the hard-earned benefits their companies have promised. Let's make it possible for hardworking Americans to save for retirement. And let's allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country's middle class again.

Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America. Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills, and afford child care so their kids have a safe place to go when they work. Let's do this.

Let's be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis. We can control costs by focusing on prevention, by providing better treatment to the chronically ill, and using technology to cut the bureaucracy. Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.

Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil. We can harness homegrown, alternative fuels like ethanol and spur the production of more fuel-efficient cars. We can set up a system for capping greenhouse gases. We can turn this crisis of global warming into a moment of opportunity for innovation, and job creation, and an incentive for businesses that will serve as a model for the world.

Let's be the generation that makes future generations proud of what we did here.

Most of all, let's be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we've got. Politics doesn't have to divide us on this anymore - we can work together to keep our country safe. I've worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar to pass a law that will secure and destroy some of the world's deadliest, unguarded weapons. We can work together to track terrorists down with a stronger military, we can tighten the net around their finances, and we can improve our intelligence capabilities. But let us also understand that ultimate victory against our enemies will come only by rebuilding our alliances and exporting those ideals that bring hope and opportunity to millions around the globe.

But all of this cannot come to pass until we bring an end to this war in Iraq. Most of you know I opposed this war from the start. I thought it was a tragic mistake. Today we grieve for the families who have lost loved ones, the hearts that have been broken, and the young lives that could have been. America, it's time to start bringing our troops home. It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war. That's why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace.

Finally, there is one other thing that is not too late to get right about this war - and that is the homecoming of the men and women - our veterans - who have sacrificed the most. Let us honor their valor by providing the care they need and rebuilding the military they love. Let us be the generation that begins this work.

I know there are those who don't believe we can do all these things. I understand the skepticism. After all, every four years, candidates from both parties make similar promises, and I expect this year will be no different. All of us running for president will travel around the country offering ten-point plans and making grand speeches; all of us will trumpet those qualities we believe make us uniquely qualified to lead the country. But too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.

That is why this campaign can't only be about me. It must be about us - it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice - to push us forward when we're doing right, and to let us know when we're not. This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail.

But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible.

He tells us that there is power in words.

He tells us that there is power in conviction.

That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people.

He tells us that there is power in hope.

As Lincoln organized the forces arrayed against slavery, he was heard to say: "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought to battle through."

That is our purpose here today.

That's why I'm in this race.

Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.

I want to win that next battle - for justice and opportunity.

I want to win that next battle - for better schools, and better jobs, and health care for all.

I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America.

And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us; if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe past and future generations, then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with you.

Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled — Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Sen. McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Gov. Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the vice-president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next first lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager, David Plouffe; my chief strategist, David Axelrod; and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics — you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to — it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington — it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn't do this just to win an election, and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you: We as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, callused hand by callused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation — as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House — a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends... Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." And, to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world — our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight, we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America — that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election, except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.

When there was despair in the Dust Bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes, we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves: If our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time — to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

"We must make clear that governments exist to serve the interests of citizens, and not the other way around." —@POTUS

"We have to keep making government more open, more efficient, more effective in responding to the daily needs of citizens." —@POTUS

“Today our uninsured rate is at its lowest level on record.” —@POTUS on our progress pic.twitter.com/NQbHiAxwcZ

Today, our businesses have created more than 15 million new jobs.” —@POTUS pic.twitter.com/AWHWyEWV6u

"My Administration will do everything we can to support the smoothest transition possible—because that’s how democracy has to work" —@POTUS

“The next American president and I could not be more different…But American democracy is bigger than any one person.” —@POTUS

"We compete hard in campaigns. But even after elections, democracy depends on a peaceful transition of power" —@POTUS

“Free and fair elections—because citizens must be able to choose their own leaders, even if your candidate doesn’t always win.” —@POTUS

“Freedom of speech and assembly—because true legitimacy can only come from the people, who must never be silenced.” —@POTUS in Athens

"Democracy…is imperfect. It can be slow. It can be frustrating. It can be hard. It can be messy." —@POTUS speaking in Athens, Greece

“Today's @NATO—the world’s greatest alliance—is as strong and ready as it has ever been”-@POTUS speaking in Greece. whitehouse.gov/live/president…

“Countries that uphold democratic governance tend to be more just, more stable & more successful” —@POTUS in Athens

"I want to thank the Greek people publicly for their humanitarian response to the crisis of so many migrants and refugees" —@POTUS in Athens pic.twitter.com/bEQ3GiCSo5

The US values Greece as a democratic & stable member of the Euro-Atlantic family, a @NATO ally, & a member state of the European Union. pic.twitter.com/HcdDUHUPSo

When we #ActOnClimate, we protect our planet—and our economy. Here's how climate change could cost us billions: go.wh.gov/2aA4PB pic.twitter.com/XdpuDizyV5

Failing to #ActOnClimate could cost us billions each year. Here's why we can't afford to ignore these risks: go.wh.gov/2aA4PB pic.twitter.com/zwLHYVyJ8l

“America will be right there with you as your partner, and as your friend.” —@POTUS: go.wh.gov/POTUSabroad snpy.tv/2fscSye

"Kalispera." Watch @POTUS speak alongside PM @tsipras_eu in Athens—his first stop on his final planned foreign trip: snpy.tv/2fUiHFq

"We are proud to count Greece as one of our closest allies and one of our greatest friends. Efharisto." —@POTUS

"I want to thank the Greek people publicly for their humanitarian response to the crisis of so many migrants and refugees" —@POTUS

"We cannot simply look to austerity as a strategy" —@POTUS on Greek's economic recovery

"The ideas of ancient Greece helped inspire America's Founding Fathers as they reached for democracy." —@POTUS

Happening now: Watch @POTUS join Prime Minister @tsipras_eu of Greece for a press conference: go.wh.gov/DGgBXV pic.twitter.com/ALoXmosqh5

Tune in at 8:55am ET as @POTUS holds a press conference with Greek PM @tsipras_eu: go.wh.gov/DGgBXV

Stronger bonds between nations begin with a hello. See how @POTUS has greeted people abroad over the past 8 years: snpy.tv/2fscSye