“Dutch did a job on me,” W began. “A good job, but an incomplete one. He ignored a huge milestone in the history of the United States of America: reaching a population of three hundred million. To me, ‘our continued growth [was] a testament to our country’s dynamism and a reminder that America’s greatest asset is our people.’ All of our people.
“That belief distinguishes the men around the table from the man upstairs. Trump is not president of all our people, just those who believe his lies. And that leaves hundreds of millions on the sidelines or in the shadows of our national life.
“That milestone—three hundred million—made us the third most populous country in the world. And it’s ‘further proof that the American dream remains as bright and hopeful as ever.’1 But life won’t be a bed of roses. Keeping this constitutional republic on the right track takes work, hard work. For there will always be the detractors, the dictators, the disasters—natural and man-made—that could derail the train of American history.
“Greed derailed my presidency. At first, I tried to downplay the ‘situation in America’s financial markets.’ I suggested—wrongly, as it turned out—that ‘the markets are in a period of transition as participants reassess and reprice risk. This process had been unfolding for some time, and it’s going to take more time to fully play out.’ And I felt that the ‘overall economy would remain strong enough to weather any turbulence.’” 2
“Boy, did you get that wrong,” sniped Bill.
“That I did,” replied W. “But my administration did not cause the catastrophe. Yours did. I did my damnedest to control the damage. A trillion dollars here. Six hundred million dollars there. What was an unknowable unknown, to borrow a phrase from my secretary of defense, was how banks, hedge funds, and insurance companies had issued tons of worthless commercial paper and sold what amounted to confetti to clients across the globe.
“Because that meltdown occurred on my watch, I get the blame. I accept that. But Barack’s presidency was also consumed by the crash of ’08. Trump scratched the scar tissue left by the Great Recession until it bled—every chance he got. To him, the damage done to the American dream and his American nightmare were two sides of the same coin.
“Unless we understand that reality—a nation of more than three hundred million souls is still coming to grips with the destruction of their dreams—we are unlikely to reach unanimity. And that’s the simple, unadorned truth.
“Just like Bill did, Barack blamed his predecessor—me—for diminishing the dream. And that’s before the crash of ’08 occurred. During his acceptance speech in Denver, he asked ‘are we going to pass on that same American dream to the next generation? Over the last eight years, we’ve seen that dream diminish.’ Then, while pushing his economic recovery and revitalization plan, he described the woeful tales he had heard on the campaign trail, gratuitously adding that ‘it’s like the American Dream in reverse.’ 3
“No, he never mentioned me by name. But the inference was unmistakable. That level of hyper-partisanship led directly to his recovery plan getting so few Republican votes—none in the House and only three in the Senate.”
“That’s bull,” interjected Harry. “You corralled Democratic votes for bailing out the banks and handing out tax cuts like they were candy. And when the time came for a real stimulus bill for everyday Americans, the Republicans sat on their hands like they always do.”
“You just made my point, Harry. We can’t reach unanimity as partisans. Only as patriots. We must stop fighting each other tooth and nail. Otherwise, the existential threat that brought us together will not only diminish the dream, it will destroy it completely. And ultimately, it will destroy the constitutional Republic we’ve led.
“Now, as Dutch did for me, I will do for Barack. I’m going to ignore his faults and failures. Instead, I intend to focus on his efforts to begin ‘the essential work of keeping the American Dream alive in our time,’ because I believe he meant every word. 4 That doesn’t mean I agreed with the ideas or initiatives he offered the American people. But, in the context of what we are trying to do around the table, I believe he deserves enormous credit for trying.
“Barack warned us that the post-crash years would ‘not be easy. But if we move forward with purpose and resolve, with a deepening appreciation of how fundamental the American Dream is and how fragile it can be when we fail to live up to our collective responsibilities, “if we go back to our roots, our core values, I am absolutely confident we will overcome this crisis and once again secure that dream not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.’ 5 He immediately pointed out our first priority:
And year after year, a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, it’s unsustainable for our democracy, it’s unacceptable for our children, and we can’t afford to let it continue. 6
“He explained that ‘what’s at stake is nothing less than the American Dream. . . . It’s what has led generations of Americans to take on that extra job, to sacrifice the small pleasures, to scrimp and save wherever they can, in hopes of putting away enough, just enough, to give their child the education that they never had. It’s that most American of ideas, that with the right education, a child of any race, any faith, any station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way and fulfill their God-given potential.’ 7 In his view—and mine, for that matter—education was and always will be the cornerstone of the dream.
“The drafting committee ought to take note of that fact.
“A month later, Barack spoke about another component of the dream that I believe we, as former presidents, can all agree on. ‘For so many people around this country, the American Dream is owning your own home, being able to have that piece of property that is yours, that allows you to raise your kids, that represents your single biggest investment.’ 8 That too ought to be part of whatever the drafters come up with.
“And while they’re at it, the committee ought to single out veterans, just as Barack did. In his first budget message, he tied their housing and health care together:
And because thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have suffered from traumatic brain injury, one of the signature injuries of these wars, this budget improves services for cognitive injuries. And many with TBI have never been evaluated by a physician. And because such injuries can often have long-term impacts that only show up down the road, this funding will help ensure they receive the ongoing care they need.
Because we all share the shame of 154,000 veterans going homeless on any given night, this budget also funds a pilot program with not-for-profit organizations to make sure that veterans at risk of losing their homes have a roof over their heads. And we will not rest until we reach a day when not one single veteran falls into homelessness.
Finally, this budget recognizes that our veterans deserve something more, an equal chance to reach for the very dream they defend. It’s the chance America gave to my grandfather, who enlisted after Pearl Harbor and went on to march in Patton’s army. When he came home, he went to college on the GI bill, which made it possible for him and so many veterans like him to live out their own version of the American Dream. And now it’s our turn to help guarantee this generation has the same opportunity that the greatest generation enjoyed by providing every returning service member with a real chance to afford a college education. And by providing the resources to effectively implement the post-9/11 GI bill, that is what this budget does. 9
“That’s what we should do. Around the table, all but three of us have worn the uniform. And if we cannot provide our fellow vets with ‘an equal chance to reach for the very dream they defend,’ then shame on us.
“One item on Barack’s litany will not, in all probability, achieve the requisite unanimity. And that’s health care. In his radio address to the nation on January 10, 2010, Barack talked about how ‘hard-working folks who did everything right suddenly found themselves forced to downscale their dreams because of economic factors beyond their control.’ He listed their ‘American dreams: a good job with a good wage, a secure and dignified retirement, stable health care so you don’t go broke just because you get sick, the chance to give our kids a better shot than we got.’ 10 It was his first reference to health care being an element of the American dream. It would not be his last.”
“A month later, he argued that affordable, high-quality health care was at the heart of the American Dream. He was pledging to ‘fight to pass real, meaningful health insurance reforms that will get costs under control for families, businesses, and governments, protect people from the worst practices of insurance companies, and make coverage more affordable and secure for people with insurance, as well as those without it.’ 11 Not surprisingly, he was even more explicit a year later.
“In his State of the Union speech, Barack argued that ‘we do big things.’ And he saw ‘an America where we need to out-innovate, we out-educate, we out-build the rest of the world, where we take responsibility for our deficits.’” 12
“Finally, something I can back,” cracked Dick.
“That was a throwaway line,” W continued. “Barack’s paean to freedom—‘how America will remain a place where each of us is free to choose our own destiny and make of our lives what we will’—was but a prologue to his focus on affordable health care. 13 That was his signature issue. He wanted to make ‘access to quality, affordable health care . . . part of the American Dream.’ 14 And Republican members of Congress and their Tea Party allies were just as determined to repeal what they nicknamed ‘Obamacare.’
“Ten months after signing the Affordable Care Act, Barack argued that ‘Americans already have more power, greater freedom, stronger control of their health care. This law will lower premiums. It is limiting costs. It is reining in the worst abuses of the insurance industry with some of the toughest consumer protections the country has ever known.’ 15 But it was a mirage, a shimmering mirage. Its reality was much messier.
“Fortunately, at least for our purposes, Barack was not a one-issue president. He, like all of us, juggled a complex and often contradictory set of issues. Yet he maintained a firm grasp on what the American dream meant.
“In a 2011 commencement speech at Miami Dade College in Florida, he offered a powerful argument on why we must ‘carry the American dream forward.’ The school was home to fourteen thousand students who hailed from sixty-six countries. They represented the hopes, aspirations, and sacrifices of two generations—their parents and the students themselves. In the days before that graduation ceremony, two hundred tornadoes had swept across five southeastern states, killing more than three hundred Americans.
“Barack began by reassuring the graduates that ‘when disasters like this strike, all our grievances seem to go away. All our differences don’t seem to matter. All our political disagreements seem so petty. We help each other, we support one another, as one country, as one people.’ He continued in that vein, teaching a lesson neither they nor their parents would ever forget.”
“His speech is worth reading in its entirety on your own time. So there’s a copy in front of you.”
That’s the American spirit. No matter how hard we are tested, we look to our faith and our faith in one another. No matter what the challenge, we’ve always carried the American Dream forward. That’s been true throughout our history.
When bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, when an Iron Curtain fell over Europe, when the threat of nuclear war loomed just 90 miles from this city, when a brilliant September morning was darkened by terror, in none of those instances did we falter. We endured. We carried the dream forward.
We’ve gone through periods of great economic turmoil, from an economy where most people worked on farms to one where most people worked in factories, to now one fueled by information and technology. Through it all, we’ve persevered, we’ve adapted, we’ve prospered. Workers found their voice and the right to organize for fair wages and safe working conditions. We carried forward.
When waves of Irish and Italian immigrants were derided as criminals and outcasts, when Catholics were discriminated against or Jews had to succumb to quotas or Muslims were blamed for society’s ills, when Blacks were treated as second-class citizens and marriages like my own parents’ were illegal in much of the country, we didn’t stop. We didn’t accept inequality. We fought. We overcame. We carried the dream forward.
We have carried this dream forward through times when our politics seemed broken. This is not the first time where it looked like politicians were going crazy. In heated debates over our founding, some warned independence would doom America to “a scene of bloody discord and desolation for ages.” That was the warning about independence. One of our greatest Presidents, Thomas Jefferson, was labeled an “infidel” and a “howling atheist” with “fangs.” Think about that. Even I haven’t gotten that one yet. Lincoln, FDR, they were both vilified in their own times as tyrants, power hungry, bent on destroying democracy. And of course, this State has seen its fair share of tightly contested elections.
And we’ve made it through those moments. None of it was easy. A lot of it was messy. Sometimes there was violence. Sometimes it took years, even decades, for us to find our way through. But here’s the thing: We made it through. We made it through because in each of those moments, we made a choice.
Rather than turn inward and wall off America from the rest of the world, we’ve chosen to stand up forcefully for the ideals and the rights we believe are universal for all men and women.
Rather than give in to the voices suggesting we set our sights lower, downsize our dreams, or settle for something less, we’ve chosen again and again to make America bigger, bolder, more diverse, more generous, more hopeful.
Because throughout our history, what has distinguished us from all other nations is not just our wealth, it’s not just our power. It’s been our deep commitment to individual freedom and personal responsibility, but also our unshakeable commitment to one another, a recognition that we share a future, that we rise or fall together, that we are part of a common enterprise that is greater, somehow, than the sum of its parts. 16
“Barack neatly summed up all that we have said about the American dream over our nearly nine decades in office. Now, right below the Oval Office we once occupied, isn’t it OUR obligation to carry the dream forward?”
“Around the table, a dozen heads nodded in agreement.
“Still there is one thorny issue that Barack sought to address during his first term and which we can ill afford to ignore given Trump’s actions and antics. And that’s immigration reform,” continued W.
“Barack saw immigration reform as an economic imperative. He argued that ‘one way to strengthen the middle class is to reform the immigration system so there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everyone else.’ 17 I doubt his argument proved persuasive, especially for those who believed immigrants took their jobs or were somehow getting benefits they didn’t deserve.
“But as 2011 came to a close, Barack became more upbeat. He talked about a family that had rehabbed a foreclosed home—their first home after emigrating to the United States twenty-six years earlier. The father told Barack that ‘this is part of the American Dream, but I’m not going to be finished with the American Dream until I know my kids have gotten through college, and they have a home of their own and they’re able to provide a better life for their children the same way that I’ve been able to provide a better life for their children the same way that I’ve been able to provide a better life for mine.’18 And Barack, to his credit, thought hard about that conversation.
“He decided that the story
captures the essence of who we are. [For] most people here — that progression maybe happened 50 years ago or 25 years ago or 100 years ago — but all of us benefited from a combination of parents and grandparents who — and great-grandparents — who were willing to defy the odds and take great risks and fight through discrimination and fight through difficulties and challenges and also a society that said, you know what, if you’re willing to work hard and take responsibility, then you’ll get a fair shake.
“A little bit later, he underscored that point by saying, ‘that idea of America is what inspired the world.’ 19
“As president, I sought to reform our unworkable immigration system . . . and with no success. So I cannot criticize him for trying and failing. Instead, we should applaud his persistence, his longer view of history.
“At a naturalization ceremony on July 4, 2012, Barack reminded his audience that ‘it has taken these men and women—these Americans—years, even decades, to realize their dream.’ But for him, the most important lesson on that Fourth of July was how long it took after our Founding Fathers declared their independence to meet its raised expectations. He reminded these new citizens that they ‘only declared it. It would take another 7 years to win the war, 15 years to forge a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, nearly 90 years and a great civil war to abolish slavery, nearly 150 years for women to win the right to vote, nearly 190 years to enshrine voting rights. And even now we’re still perfecting our Union, still extending the promise of America.’ 20
“He went on to explain
that includes making sure the American Dream endures for all those — like these men and women — who are willing to work hard, play by the rules, and meet their responsibilities. For just as we remain a nation of laws, we have to remain a nation of immigrants. And that’s why, as another step forward, we’re lifting the shadow of deportation from . . . deserving young people who were brought to this country as children. It’s why we still need a “DREAM Act” to keep talented young people who want to contribute to our society and serve our country. It’s why we need, why America’s success demands, comprehensive immigration reform. 21
“He wouldn’t get his immigration bill or his DREAM Act through a recalcitrant, Republican-controlled Congress, but he tried. He worked at it.”
“Barack’s final words to those newly minted American citizens are worth remembering as we wrestle with including or excluding immigration in our final document.
Because the lesson of these 236 years is clear: Immigration makes America stronger, immigration makes us more prosperous, and immigration positions America to lead in the 21st century. And these young men and women are testaments to that. No other nation in the world welcomes so many new arrivals. No other nation constantly renews itself, refreshes itself with the hopes and the drive and the optimism and the dynamism of each new generation of immigrants. You are all one of the reasons that America is exceptional. You’re one of the reasons why, even after two centuries, America is always young, always looking to the future, always confident that our greatest days are still to come. 22
“I would hope we could find a way to include similar language in whatever we agree upon.” offered W.
“I have yet to cover Barack’s second term. The good news is his reliance on the American dream decreased dramatically after his reelection. And, if you bear with me, I can move through his most salient speeches fairly quickly.”
“In a speech in Galesburg, Illinois—the site of the first campaign speech during his only Senate campaign—Barack touched on an issue that would grow in intensity in the years ahead: inequality. He argued that ‘the link between higher productivity and people’s wage and salaries was broken.’ Engaging in class warfare, he pointed out that ‘the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, but the typical family’s incomes barely budged.’ Then he argued that ‘nearly all the income gains of the past ten years have continued to flow to the top 1 percent. The average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009. The average American earns less than he or she did in 1999. And companies continue to hold back on hiring those who have been out of work for some time.’ 23 That was only the opening salvo in his attack on inequality.
“In early December 2013, he expanded his assault. He did so by first decrying childhood poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth as heartbreaking. ‘[T]he idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us, and it should compel us to action. We are a better country than this.’ 24 And quite frankly, we are.
“But then, Barack steered into uncharted and extremely dangerous waters. It’s a long-winded sail, even after clipping off a whole page. You’d better read this one on your own time.”
So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility.
So this is an issue that we have to tackle head on. And if in fact the majority of Americans agree that our number-one priority is to restore opportunity and broad-based growth for all Americans, the question is, why has Washington consistently failed to act? And I think a big reason is the myths that have developed around the issue of inequality.
First, there is the myth that this is a problem restricted to a small share of predominantly minority poor, that this isn’t a broad-based problem, this is a Black problem or a Hispanic problem or a Native American problem. Now, it’s true that the painful legacy of discrimination means that African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans are far more likely to suffer from a lack of opportunity: higher unemployment, higher poverty rates. It’s also true that women still make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. So we’re going to need strong application of anti-discrimination laws. We’re going to need immigration reform that grows the economy and takes people out of the shadows. We’re going to need targeted initiatives to close those gaps.
But here’s an important point. The decades-long shifts in the economy have hurt all groups: poor and middle class, inner-city and rural folks, men and women, and Americans of all races. And as a consequence, some of the social patterns that contribute to declining mobility that were once attributed to the urban poor that’s a particular problem for the inner city—single-parent” “households or drug abuse—it turns out, now we’re seeing that pop up everywhere.
A new study shows that disparities in education, mental health, obesity, absent fathers, isolation from church, isolation from community groups—these gaps are now as much about growing up rich or poor as they are about anything else. The gap in test scores between poor kids and wealthy kids is now nearly twice what it is between White kids and Black kids. Kids with working class parents are 10 times likelier than kids with middle or upper class parents to go through a time when their parents have no income. So the fact is this: The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race, and that gap is growing. 25
“Barack returned to his theme of inequality as a partisan warrior two years later,” W said. At an event filled with high-dollar contributors, he attacked the Republicans in Congress. And in a way, he presaged the differences between his ‘Resistance Party’ and a Republican Party that would kowtow, embarrassingly, to Trump.
“He laid down this challenge: ‘If you want to be the party of higher wages, come on, join the dozens of cities and States, the companies like the Gap and now Walmart, raising wages, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s good for business. Don’t stand in the way. You’ve got votes in Congress. You’ve got votes in the House. You’ve got votes in the Senate. Work with us. Join the rest of the country. Give America a raise! Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go! I’m ready. I’m ready!’26 But he wasn’t. He wanted to shove the shiv deeper into his opponents’ backs:
If you are serious, if you’re really troubled with income inequality, then you can’t put forward proposals that give more tax breaks to the folks who are doing the best and millionaires and billionaires and then propose more cuts to the very programs that help working Americans get ahead. If you want to be the party that’s paving the way for people to get into the middle class, a good way to start is stop trying to strip health insurance from millions of Americans and preventive and contraceptive care for millions of women. And stop trying to deport millions of striving young kids who just want to earn their shot at the American Dream like the rest of us. Help us fix a broken immigration system. There are a lot of ways to help the middle class.
And looking backward is not the answer. We’ve got to look forward, all of us as Americans. And, Democrats, we’ve got to be the party that recognizes and responds to what Americans really face in a 21st-century economy. Our brand of middle class economics is very specific. We detail it: Here’s what we’re going to do. We can show you how that families have more security in a world of constant change. And so we list out how we’re going to help folks afford college. We specify how we’re going to provide health insurance to folks who don’t have it. We talk about how we can help the young family buy a home or the family entering into the middle age—a retirement that they can count on. 27
“Look I’m a lifelong Republican. My daddy is a lifelong Republican. And so was my granddaddy. So there’s no way I can accept that formulation of the American dream,” explained W.
“I can, however, agree with Barack when he says, ‘the Democratic Party is by no means perfect. There are times when I want to smack us across the head. We’re not immune to money. We’re not immune from lobbyists. And we’re not immune from pushing aside what we know to be good policy in favor of something that is a little more expedient.’ 28 That’s the Democratic Party I’ve fought against all my life,” W emphasized.
A round of “amens” echoed through the Blue Room from the five Republicans seated at the table. W finished his dissertation with a thinly veiled threat.
“We cannot reach unanimity if we move too far left or too far right. We’ve gotta play it right down the center of the fairway. Otherwise, our last three months together will have been wasted. And that existential threat to our country will have no answer.”
“Perhaps Barack said it best at that fundraising event. There he bemoaned how the ‘politics of fear [was] being fanned and expanding. And it can express itself in anti-immigration rhetoric. It can express itself in a sort of cheap jingoism and militarism and nationalism that’s not grounded in our national security interests.’29
“Trump doesn’t give a damn. He feeds on fear. He misleads us with what Ike called destructive nationalism. He blathers about a tainted pseudonationalism—tainted by his incessant lies, tainted by his adoration of dictators, tainted by his own business deals. His way is the highway to hell on earth, even for his own voters.
“Never one for hyperbole, Barack called his successor’s politics ‘a dangerous path. And a path that, during intervals in our history, we have taken when people feel insecure.’ He quickly added that it was not the only path available. ‘And there’s this other path, and that’s the politics of hope.’30 In that, he severely underestimated the power of hope when hate and fearmongering are unleashed in the pursuit of an absolute, unchallengeable power.
“In his final statement on the American dream, a statement made during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign, a statement made in Michigan no less, Barack hit a three-pointer at the buzzer:
In this country, you don’t have to be born to wealth or privilege to make a difference. You don’t have to practice a certain faith or look a certain way to bend the arc of history in a better direction. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.” That’s what makes America exceptional: all of us equal, all of us having a voice, all of us making a claim on the American Dream. All of us fulfilling our responsibilities, and not just enjoying the rights of this incredible Nation, this amazing experiment in self-government. 31
“That’s the path the thirteen of us must take. All of us—and I do mean ALL of us, with no exceptions—all of us making a claim on the American dream, and all of us fulfilling our responsibilities.
“As former presidents, we know where our duty lies. We swore an oath, an oath with no expiration date. And each of us added the codicil ‘so help me God’ of our own volition. So, as Abraham Lincoln wrote, our oaths were ‘registered in Heaven’ at that moment.
“In a time of extreme peril for our experiment in self-government, that oath is why we’ve come together, tell the truth, learn from each other, listen actively to what our predecessors and successors said about the dream, and seek unanimity. That’s the real challenge—putting aside our egos, our agendas, our party platforms, our partisan biases—to do our Constitutional duty.
“And yet, acting alone, we cannot preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. But we can serve as an example to others. For tens of millions of our countrymen—judges and legislators, military officers and law enforcement officers, cabinet members and government employees—have sworn similar oaths. And three hundred million of us have pledged allegiance to that flag and the Republic for which it stands.
“So if we do our duty, others will too. If we work through our differences, forge compromises, and achieve unanimity, others will follow our lead. For the existential threat is this: the end of this constitutional Republic. The end of the rights enumerated in the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and its remaining seventeen amendments. All endangered by the actions of the man upstairs.
“The only remedy to that American nightmare—the end of our amazing experiment in self-government—is the American Dream . . . and more of it,” asserted W as the mantle clock struck nine.”
1. George W. Bush, Statement on the Population of the United States Reaching 300 Million Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/270197.
2. George W. Bush, Remarks on Homeownership Financing and an Exchange With Reporters Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/276268.
3. Barack Obama, Remarks on Signing Executive Orders Regarding Labor and a Memorandum Creating the Middle Class Working Families Task Force Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/286046.
4. Barack Obama, Remarks on Signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in Denver, Colorado Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/286319.
5. Barack Obama, Remarks at Dodson High School in Mesa, Arizona Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/286332.
6. Barack Obama, Remarks to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/286729.
7. Ibid.
8. Barack Obama, Remarks Following a Roundtable Discussion on the Home Mortgage Industry Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/286415.
9. Barack Obama, Remarks on Veterans Health Care Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/286425.
10. Barack Obama, The President’s Weekly Address Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/287575.
11. Barack Obama, Message to Congress Transmitting the Economic Report of the President Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/300277.
12. Barack Obama, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/289120.
13. Barack Obama, Remarks at the Families USA Health Action 2011 Conference Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/289230.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Barack Obama, Commencement Address at Miami Dade College in Miami, Florida Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/289986.
17. Barack Obama, Remarks in El Paso, Texas Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/290110.
18. Barack Obama, Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in Denver, Colorado Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/297411.
19. Ibid.
20. Barack Obama, Remarks at a Naturalization Ceremony for Active Duty Servicemembers Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/301799.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Barack Obama, Remarks at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/304108.
24. Barack Obama, Remarks at the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/304669
25. Ibid.
26. Barack Obama, Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Meeting Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/310963.
27. Ibid.
28. Barack Obama, Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in Los Angeles, California Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/311377.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Barack Obama, Remarks at a Campaign Rally for Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton in Ann Arbor, Michigan Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/319532.”