I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign... and this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.
There's one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.
Simply that we are mirroring the trends in society, at any given time smuggling was an issue in the seventies, corruption is an issue today, and we faithfully reflect those issues.
We need to start by having a conversation about climate change. It would be irresponsible to avoid the issue just because it's uncomfortable to talk about.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, are motivated by all kinds of issues. They're sincerely interested in the economy, in terrorism, in social issues. But the one overriding thing they're interested in is getting reelected. And if they think that it's harder for them to get reelected by cooperating with each other, then they won't cooperate.
Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves. Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
Religion as a vital issue is dead except on paper, and whatever beauty-baiting the future may witness will be the work of greed and trade, and not of honest cosmos-facing.
I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can't possibly speak for a diverse group of people. I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy.
I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.
One of the gratifying things, I think, about the end of my presidency even though admittedly my successor ran against a lot of what we stood for, is when you look at the individual issues and the progress that we've made on a lot of those issues, we got the support of a pretty decent majority.
When it comes to immigration, I have actually put more money, under my administration, into border security than any other administration previously. We've got more security resources at the border - more National Guard, more border guards, you name it - than the previous administration. So we've ramped up significantly the issue of border security.
I'm not going to Wall Street [after the presidency]. The amount of time that I'll be investing in issues is going to be high. But it'll be necessarily in a different capacity.