Weekly Address: President Obama – Coming Together to Find Solutions

July 16, 2016 JanF Editors' Choice, From the White House 7

The President’s Weekly Address post is also an Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama acknowledged that the aftermath of tragedies like we’ve seen in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Minnesota, can leave us struggling to make sense of these events. However, the President reiterated that the country is not as divided as it may seem. He said he saw it this week when he met with law enforcement on the challenges they face; when he traveled to Dallas for the memorial service of the five brave police officers who died while protecting protesters with whom they may have disagreed; when he convened a more than four-hour long meeting with police chiefs, Black Lives Matter activists, and state and local leaders; and when he participated in a town hall where he said there is no contradiction between honoring police and recognizing racial disparities exist within the criminal justice system. The President said that although these conversations can be challenging, we have to be able to talk about our differences. We have to be open and honest – not just within our own circles, but also with those who offer different perspectives. Because that’s what America is about – finding solutions not only through policy, but also by forging consensus and finding the political will to make change.

Transcript: Weekly Address: Coming Together to Find Solutions

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
​July 16, 2016

Hi, everybody. It’s been a challenging couple weeks. The shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge; the protests; the targeting and murder of police officers in Dallas – it’s left all of us struggling to make sense of things at times. Now, I know that for many, it can feel like the deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, and even widened.

But the America I know – the America I saw this week – is just not as divided as some folks try to insist. I saw it on Monday, when I met with law enforcement to talk about the challenges they face, and how too often, we ask our police to do too much – to be social workers, and teachers, guardians, and drug counselors as well.

I saw it on Tuesday, when I traveled to Dallas for the memorial service for the five courageous officers who died in the line of duty – even as they were protecting protesters with whom they may have disagreed.

I saw it on Wednesday, when I hosted police chiefs, Black Lives Matter activists, state and local leaders, and others for a discussion that lasted more than four hours – a discussion on more steps we can take to continue supporting the police who keep our streets safe, and instill confidence that the law applies to everyone equally.

And I saw it on Thursday, at a town hall in D.C., where we talked about how there is no contradiction between honoring police and recognizing the racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system, and trying to fix these discrepancies.

These conversations were candid, challenging, even uncomfortable at times. But that’s the point. We have to be able to talk about these things, honestly and openly, not just in the comfort of our own circles, but with folks who look differently and think differently than we do. Otherwise, we’ll never break this dangerous cycle. And that’s what America’s all about. Not just finding policies that work – but forging consensus, fighting cynicism, and finding the political will to keep changing this country for the better.

That’s what America gives us – all of us – the capacity to change.

It won’t happen overnight. The issues we’re grappling with go back decades, even centuries. But if we can open our hearts to try and see ourselves in one another; if we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right, as equal parts of one American family – then I’m confident that together, we will lead our country to a better day.

Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend.

Bolding added.

~

7 Comments

  1. President Obama:

    The issues we’re grappling with go back decades, even centuries. But if we can open our hearts to try and see ourselves in one another; if we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right, as equal parts of one American family – then I’m confident that together, we will lead our country to a better day.

  2. President Obama, speaking at a reception for foreign diplomats, finds Newt Gingrich “repugnant” … I do too!!

    “In the wake of last night’s attacks, we’ve heard more suggestions that all Muslims in America be targeted, tested for their beliefs, some deported or jailed,” Obama said. “And the very suggestion is repugnant and an affront to everything we stand for as Americans. We cannot give in to fear or turn on each other or sacrifice our way of life. we cannot let ourselves be divided by religion. Because that’s exactly what the terrorists want. We should never do their work for them.”

    Obama’s remarks seemed to be directed to former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who proposed a loyalty test for American Muslims on Fox News Thursday night.

    “Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person from here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported,” Gingrich told Fox News. “Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door.”

  3. In the news, gay supporters of Trump are upset at Mike Pence VP pick …

    Donald Trump’s choice of Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate has irked some Republican activists who see the Indiana governor’s years of opposition to gay rights initiatives as a setback to efforts to broaden the party’s appeal. […]

    Gay supporters of Trump are hopeful Pence will have little influence on a potential Trump administration.

    Trump has declared himself the most gay-friendly candidate in the election. He expressed support for the gay community after a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in June that killed 49 people, and broke from his party during an argument about transgender bathroom usage, saying people could use the bathroom of their choosing at his office building Trump Tower in New York.

    That has cheered moderate Republicans who have been seeking to appeal to younger, more liberal voters.

    “Donald Trump is the nominee of the party and Donald Trump is going to set policy,” said Chris Barron, who has launched LGBTrump, a group seeking to encourage gays to vote for Trump.

    Left without comment.

  4. In the news, Trumpism is the fault of … Obama!!! So sez Jeb

    Eight years of the divisive tactics of President Obama and his allies have undermined Americans’ faith in politics and government to accomplish anything constructive. The president has wielded his power — while often exceeding his authority — to punish his opponents, legislate from the White House and turn agency rulemaking into a weapon for liberal dogma.

    In turn, a few in the Republican Party responded by trying to out-polarize the president, making us seem anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker and anti-common-sense.

    The result has been the vanishing of any semblance of compromise or bipartisanship in our nation’s capital.

    “Making us seem”???!??. Good lord, this is incredible revisionist history. And obviously forgetting that the Republican Senate leader and other GOP legislators vowed to block allow every part of Barack Obama’s legislative agenda before he was even inaugurated.

    May your party burn to the ground, the ashes thrown to the winds. The Party of Lincoln was destroyed by the Southern Strategy and the Bush family’s hired guns Atwater and Rove. Trump is just presiding over the funeral.

    • Another of the “Party of Lincoln” reality-deniers, Peter Wehner:

      For my entire adult life I have listened to the invective leveled against the Republican Party by liberals: It is a party sustained by racist appeals, composed of haters and conspiracy nuts, indifferent to the plight of the poor and the weak, anti-woman.

      I have repeatedly denied those charges, publicly and forcefully. The broad indictment, the unfair generalizations, were caricature and calumny, the product of the fevered imagination of the left. Then along came Donald J. Trump, who seemed to embody every awful charge made against the Republican Party.[…]

      How on earth did our party produce Mr. Trump as its nominee?

      There’s a powerful temptation for many Republicans to avoid that question — or, in wrestling with it, to look to reassuring explanations and extenuating circumstances. […]

      For many on the left, explaining what happened is simple: The Republican Party has always been this way, and Mr. Trump is the logical and inevitable culmination of what the Republican Party has represented for decades. He is the ugly face of an ugly party.

      Well, yes. Your willful covering of your eyes from what was happening, does not change the reality. It is the ugly party and has won national elections by appealing to ugly people.

      He concludes:

      In every important respect, Donald Trump is a repudiation of Lincoln. Win or lose, on the morning after Election Day, Republicans will have to choose whose vision of the party they want to follow.

      Please, start a new party, call it the Party of Reagan … and let Abraham Lincoln finally rest in peace. He does not deserve to have his name associated with what the Republican Party has become.

    • Two authors at the NY Times put together an analysis of where the party goes after Trump: embrace Trumpism and the white identity politics (and their base) or reject it, if they can: Donald Trump Forces G.O.P. to Choose Between Insularity and Outreach

      Mr. Trump may have endangered the party in a more lasting way: by forging a coalition of white voters driven primarily by themes of hard-right nationalism and cultural identity.

      Republicans have wrestled for years with the push and pull of seeking to win over new groups of voters while tending to their overwhelmingly white and conservative base. Now, Mr. Trump’s candidacy may force them into making a fateful choice: whether to fully embrace the Trump model and become, effectively, a party of white identity politics, or to pursue a broader political coalition by repudiating Mr. Trump’s ideas — and many of the voters he has gathered behind his campaign.”\
      …
      [Arizona Senator Jeff Flake] suggested a purge of racists from the party that would recall the expulsion of the John Birch Society, a fringe nationalist group, from Republican ranks a half-century ago. “Those who want a Muslim ban, those who will disparage individuals or groups — yes, we ought to, we need to,” Mr. Flake said.
      …
      Mr. Trump’s approach is an alluring path to prominence on the right: Already, a handful of up-and-coming Republicans from the party’s conservative wing have moved to court his core voters. Some have argued his message could be more potent in the hands of a less flawed messenger.

      It will be interesting to see how much the ‪#‎NeverTrumpersWellOkayNowTrump‬ speakers at the convention, including Pence, embrace Trumpism 2016 versus the future of their party. There may be no future if they tie it tightly to the people who crave Trump’s white identity politics. I disagree with the authors, by the way, that there has been any “wrestling” over their tactics for winning elections. It has been the Southern Strategy, Atwater/Rove, and now Trump … a direct line. The people like Ryan, Flake and Kinzinger who see a more inclusive GOP possible after the defeat seem to be throwing a Hail Mary pass after the rest of the team has left the field and is already in the locker room.

      As far as bringing their base along , they aren’t denying reality, they simply have their own:

      “Last fall, the immigration reform group FWD.us conducted polls in three swing states testing arguments against Mr. Trump, and found that most voters opposed his pledge to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants — but “very conservative” Republicans tended to support the idea. FWD.us found a majority of swing voters aghast at the suggestion that an immigration roundup could resemble Japanese internment in World War II, or that it could lead to “massive racial profiling.” But most Republicans did not say either message raised significant doubts for them.”

  5. Fear this …

    [Trump’s] theory of the election is that policy doesn’t matter much and details don’t matter at all. He’s running on attitude and charisma, on strength and success, on the notion that goo-goo elites made America a loser and that he’s the superhero who can make it win again. For most problems, he has a one-point plan: He’ll fix it.
    …
    The anti-tax activist Grover Norquist has said that the only thing needed for the triumph of conservatism in America is a Republican president with enough working fingers to sign House Speaker Paul Ryan’s budget into law. Trump may not be a typical limited-government Republican, but he is a Republican, and while he’s spent more time talking about the size of his hands than their ability to grasp a pen, he would presumably sign many of the laws congressional Republicans have been unable to pass in the Obama era. He would also appoint judges, determine America’s approach to the rest of the world and guide domestic policies on everything from transportation to innovation to food.
    …
    To Trump, though, Clinton’s Kennedy School of Government approach to the campaign is evidence that she’s out of touch with ordinary people. Who cares about her “super-BABs” or the “MUSH market” or her plan to double some “CDFI Fund”? “She’s got people that sit in cubicles writing policy all day,” he recently marveled. “It’s just a waste of paper.”
    …
    “Who the hell cares if we have a trade war?”—Trump actually told the rich donors in attendance [at a Christie fundraiser] not to waste time thinking about economic policy: “A lot of you don’t know the world of economics and you shouldn’t even bother. Just leave it to me. Just go and enjoy your life.”
    …
    It’s not clear how much voters care which candidate has the most intellectually honest nine-point plans, which candidate’s views are the most consistent, or which candidate gets awarded the most Pinocchios or Pants-on-Fires by fact-checkers. And it isn’t necessary to know the details of Clinton’s $125 billion Revitalization Initiative for downtrodden communities—reentry programs for the formerly incarcerated, down payment assistance for needy homebuyers, tax credits for apprenticeships—to make a reasonably informed decision in November. If you know that Trump thinks Obama has been a disaster and that Clinton was Obama’s secretary of state, you can make a reasonably informed decision in November.
    …
    Voters can find out exactly where Clinton stands on countless major and minor issues, and she inevitably owns every detail of those 205 pages of policy. [Trump’s] vagueness and inconsistency allow voters to fill in his policy blanks, while he stands for unobjectionable things like greatness and strength and winning.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/donald-trump-policy-2016-hillary-clinton-214058

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