President Barack Obama’s message about overcoming the bitter and seemingly intractable nature of modern politics was particularly applicable in IL, local legislators agreed on Wednesday.
Advertisement
Activists have delivered over 1 million signatures to the White House demanding that Obama sign an executive order on dark money. He has called his failure to do that, seven years after taking office, a regret.
Obama’s speech marks nine years since his presidential campaign announcement in Springfield, a campaign marked by Obama’s expressed desire to promote bipartisanship. “I make no bones about it”, the president said before reeling off a list things he said he believes in, with those items winning applause largely from the Democratic side of the House chamber.
True to form, Obama detaches himself from the meanness and polarization as if he has no part in it. The fact is that President Obama has set the tone for American politics over the last decade and he is the meannest, most polarizing figure of them all.
“Despite our political differences, the President and I share a passion for improving education, especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a belief in the benefits of term limits and redistricting reform for restoring good government, and a strong desire to see more economic opportunity for all Illinoisans”, Rauner said in a statement.
The President said, “We’ve always gone through periods where our democracy seems stuck”.
In Washington, Republicans said Obama was just as much to blame for the nation’s divided politics. Davis also criticized the president’s most recent national budget, “a budget that uses the same failed tactics that leaders from his own party have used in Springfield for decades”.
President Barack Obama returned to Springfield on Wednesday to call on members of the Illinois General Assembly to work together toward a less divisive, more civil politics.
It was an address that carried historical significance on multiple fronts. He noted the importance of basic governance such as fixing roads and passing budgets, a reference to a crisis facing his home state. Chicago State University, for example, last week declared a financial emergency, and furloughs have been imposed at other public universities.
That’s true, but Obama doesn’t just want that in IL.
Reminiscing on his early political days, as he addressed his former colleagues at the Illinois General Assembly, Obama said communication back then was “different”, and left out the insults. “That the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better”.
Obama called for efforts to reduce what he called “the corrosive influence of money in our politics”, an end to gerrymandered congressional districts and making it easier to vote.
“When I hear either side talking about refusal to compromise as actual accomplishment, I’m not impressed”, Obama said.
Advertisement
Obama is returning to the place where he began his political career and the city where he announced his presidential candidacy nine years ago. “One that’s less of a spectacle, and more a battle of ideas”.
