It’s a goal that Obama readily concedes he has been unable to achieve during his two terms in the White House. In a clear attack on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, Obama said, “I don’t believe that money is speech or that political spending should have no limits”.
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NBC 5 will carry President Barack Obama’s address here live beginning at 1:30 p.m.
While directing his remarks about political dysfunction largely at Washington, Obama did make references to Illinois’ historic stalemate that has kept the state without a budget for eight months.
“The central premise of the Obama presidency was to unite the country, and that’s been an unquestionable failure”, Doug Andres, a spokesman for Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan, said in a statement”.
Obama is leaving one city mired in gridlock and polarized politics to spend a few hours in another with the same problems, albeit one with which he has great sentimental attachment. Dunkin is facing a primary challenge and is being backed for re-election by Rauner allies.
Without delving into specifics about the increasingly nasty campaign to replace him, Obama warned against yielding politics to the loudest or angriest voices.
“In a big, complicated democracy like ours, if we can’t compromise, by definition we can’t govern ourselves”, he said. “Sit down”, Obama said as Democrats – and even some Republicans – erupted into wild cheers.
Speaking to a raucous joint session of the Illinois General Assembly at the state Capitol, Obama said, “The tone of our politics hasn’t gotten better since I was inaugurated; in fact, it has gotten worse”. “Americans are no longer looking in the rear view mirror, we turned a page, and it’s time to write a new chapter”.
“If 99 percent of us voted it wouldn’t matter how much the one percent spent on elections”. “We have to build a better politics”.
Rep. Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston) told The Daily the speech was well received by both Republicans and Democrats in the assembly and his speech provided a framework for a “more productive and mature” political environment. “In part because of what I learned here, in this legislature”.
“When I woke up on February 10, 2007 in Springfield, Illinois, my heart was full of hope about the infinite possibilities that lay ahead”, Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
The president’s trip to Springfield was a nostalgic one, including a stop at a restaurant he frequented during his legislative service and recollections about some of the “hazing” he faced in his early days under the dome.
On Wednesday, Obama spoke at the current state Capitol, which stands as a monument to the bitter partisan divisions that the president has struggled fruitlessly to close.
“I miss you guys”, he said as he left the cheering chamber.
“Thank you for such a warm welcome as I come back home”.
Obama launched his speech with memories of his time in Springfield, where he said he arrived as a lawmaker “passionate, idealistic (and) ready to make a difference”, but one who “needed a little dose of reality”.
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He returned to Springfield nine years later to deliver a more humble and less audacious speech, informed by his own regrets and his nostalgia for a time when politics wasn’t so marked by malice and personal insult.
