Now, at times this issue has tended to degenerate into an 'either-or' type of debate. Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. But that is a false choice. It asks too little of us and assumes too little about America.
For the Palestinians' efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
One of the things that I've learned, and I think we've all learned, is that we are not going to get the kind of decisive, permanent victories in this fight against terrorism that we would get from fighting another country. We're not going to get that MacArthur/Emperor moment, because by definition, even after decimating Al Qaeda in the Fata, even after taking out [Osama] bin Laden there's still people there who have both the interest and the capacity if we don't maintain vigilance to strike against the United States.
In terms of my conversations with [Vladimir] Putin, these are conversations that took place before the election. As I indicated, there has been very clear proof that they have engaged in cyber attacks. This isn't new. It's not unique to Russia. There are a number of states where we've seen low-level cyber attacks and industrial espionage and, you know, other behavior that we think should be out of bounds.
Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.
Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
I know there are problems that I say to myself, If maybe I was a little more gifted I might have been able to solve. But that's not because I believe what I did was a mistake. It's that maybe it required the talents of a Lincoln.
Reversing structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades, that was gonna take time. It was gonna take more than a year. It was gonna take more than two years. It was gonna take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.
What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions... These so-called "right to work" laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.
We are going through historic times, and my vision is a world, first of all, in which America continues to be that one indispensable nation. Because we're taking care of our own people, because our economy is strong and our middle class is growing, and people feel like hard work is rewarded, and we are continuing to expand opportunity and diversity and tolerance and respect.
A central notion in the Affordable Care Act was we had an inefficient system with a lot of waste that didn't also deliver the kind of quality that was needed that often put health care providers in a box where they wanted to do better for their patients, but financial incentives were skewed the other way... We don't need to reinvent the wheel; you're already figuring out what works to reduce infections in hospitals or help patients with complicated needs.
If you look at sort of how politics has divided itself here in this country, the big divide right now is between urban areas, which have become increasingly Democratic, and rural or exurban areas that feel as if they're being ignored.
The only time I get frustrated with activist criticism is if I have recognized them, and invited them to work with me to figure out how we solve this problem that they're concerned about, and either they don't engage out of the sense of purity - "I'm not going to shake his hand" - or you're not sufficiently prepared so you don't even know what to ask for, or you're not being strategic as an activist and trying to figure out how the process has to work in order for you to get what you want.