Obama's Chicago Speech

I heard a truly great speech today. It was a speech that hit on points that I have been thinking about a lot myself. The speech was President Obama in Chicago campaigning for his friend Alexi Giannoulias'  Senate campaign. He was both funny and serious at the same time, reminding his audience about where we were but a few short years ago, "Two years ago, you defied the conventional wisdom in Washington-because they said you couldn't overcome the cynicism of our politics. You couldn't overcome the special interests. You can't make big progress on big issues. Can't happen. They said, no, you can't. What did you say? Yes we can. You said, yes, we can"
He goes on to say that after the last election, it was his hope to pull together Democrats and Republicans and tackle the problems, "That was my fervent hope because we may be proud Democrats, but we're prouder to be Americans. And there are Republicans across the country who feel the same way." Obviously that didn't happen, instead most of the opposing party has said no to every suggestion, dragging their heals and trying to make things even more difficult. "And they spent the last 20 months saying no-even to policies that they had supported in the past. They said no to middle-class tax cuts. They said no to help for small businesses. They said no to a bipartisan deficit reduction commission that they had cosponsored. And when I was for it, suddenly they were against it. If I said the sky was blue, they said no. If I said there were fish in the sea-no. Their calculation was if Obama fails, we win. They were very explicit about it."
As he goes on, he draws a mental picture of the Republican Party figuring that since they knew it was going to take years to get out of the mess that President Bush had got us into, it was better politically to just wait it out until people were losing patience and then come in and blame it all on the Democrats to try to win back the Congress.
He likened the recession to the Republican Party driving the car into a ditch and then leaving it for the Democrats to push out and get back on level ground. "We put on our boots; it was muddy, it was hot. There's bugs. But we pushed and we pushed and we pushed. And every once in a while we'd look up and see the Republicans up there, looking comfortable, fanning themselves-sipping Slurpees. And we'd say, why don't you come down here and help? And they'd say, NO! But you're not pushing hard enough. You're not pushing the right way. And we just kept on pushing. And finally, we got the car up on level ground. Finally we got it on level ground."
"Now it's gone through some trauma, so the fender is all dented, needs a tune-up. But it's on level ground, it's pointing in the right direction. And suddenly, we feel this tap on our shoulder, and we look back and it's the Republicans. And we say, what do you want? They say, We want the keys back."
Now that the economy is stable the Republican Party wants to take back over after doing almost nothing to contribute to the recovery even when President Obama tried to reach out to them for thoughts and cooperation. The economy is slowly getting better and we need to have even more patience while things work their way out. We need to get people motivated to vote in the upcoming election, no matter what political party they are for. If people don't vote they lose their right to speak out when things don't go the way they want. You can view the complete speech at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/10/07/remarks-president-reception-alexi-giannoulias.