OPINION:
President Obama, back on the fund-raising circuit in what has become an eight-year, never-ending campaign, acknowledged that his two terms in office have been less than successful, admitting that he is a place-holder president.
“What we’re also doing is laying the foundation so that we then pass that baton to the next administration,” Obama said in a fancy mansion in Miami.
“Ultimately, an eight-year span in the life of a country is pretty short.”
The president said it will be “a blink of an eye” before he leaves the White House and returns to being an ordinary citizen. He is jamming through executive orders, acting unilaterally in repeated end-runs around Congress, because he’s a lame duck.
“It is a liberating feeling in the sense that the amount of time I have left it concentrates the mind, and I think a lot of folks have been surprised at the degree to which we are moving and pushing and trying whatever we can to advance the goals of making sure that every American in this country and every child in this country, if they’re willing to work hard, can get ahead, and that opportunity and prosperity is broad-based,” Obama said.
Obama ticked off a long list of things he said had improved under his watch — corporate profits, the stock market, high school graduation rates — but said “there is so much work that’s left undone.” Why? “… Because we’re stuck in Congress on so many of these issues.”
In closing, he acknowledged that lawmakers elected by the very type of citizen he’ll soon become will decided his legacy.
“Ultimately, how much staying power these things have depends on a Congress that is thinking about our future. And that’s why your presence here is so important. This is not something I’m doing for me, this is something we are doing together. Because it’s going to be just the blink of an eye before I am, like you, a citizen, who has returned from office but still occupies the most important position in a democracy. And together I want us to make sure that we are doing everything we can to pass on the kind of America that gave us such incredible opportunity and allowed us to be here today.”
“Thanks,” he said, as the incredibly rich people, like him, members of the 1 Percent, applauded.
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