Obama used a Sunday commencement speech at Ohio State
University
to emphasize the importance of government and collective action.
The country’s founders, he claimed, “left us the keys to a system of
self-government, the tools to do big things and important things
together that we could not possibly do alone — to stretch railroads and
electricity
and a highway system across a sprawling continent … to gradually secure
our God-given rights for all of our citizens, regardless of who they
are, or what they look like, or who they love.”
“We, the people, chose to do these things together — because we know
this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater
than our own individual ambition,” said Obama, who used a Boeing 747
jet to fly into Ohio, the home state of Orville and Wilbur Wright, who
invented the aircraft.
Obama made a few references to the inventors, investors and company
executives who grow employment, but he focused on politics and
government as the engines of progress.
We still face many important challenges,” he said. “Some will require
technological breakthroughs or new policy insights. … [M]ore than
anything, what we will need is political will …. because it takes dogged
determination — the dogged determination of our citizens,” he said.
“I’ll ask for two things from the Class of 2013: to participate, and to persevere,” he declared in Ohio.
He called on the graduates to help government revamp education
programs, to “build better roads and airports and faster Internet, and
to advance the kinds of basic research and technology … to confront the
threat of
climate change before it’s too late … [and] to protect more of our kids from the horrors of gun violence.”
Even while urging greater political activism, Obama seemed to dismiss
the political activism of people who disagree with him, including the
senators who delivered a critical political defeat April 17 by voting
down a bill restricting gun rights.
Some “voices [are] doing their best to gum up the works … [they] warn
that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner,” he said.
When we turn away and get discouraged and cynical … we end up with
lobbyists who set the agenda … the well-connected who publicly demand
that Washington stay out of their
business — and then whisper in government’s ear for special treatment that you don’t get.”
“That’s how a small minority of lawmakers get cover to defeat something the vast majority of their constituents want,” he said.
“I think it’s fair to say our democracy isn’t working as well as we
know it can [in Washington]. … I’m obsessed with this issue because that
sense of citizenship is so sorely needed there,” he claimed.
Throughout his speech, Obama preached the importance of citizenship.
“Sometimes, we see [citizenship] as a virtue from another time, a
distant past, one that’s slipping from a society that celebrates
individual ambition above all else; a society awash in instant
technology that empowers us to leverage our skills and talents like
never before, but just as easily allows us to retreat from the world,”
he claimed.
The family got only a few brief mentions in Obama’s speech, and only
when described as a supplicant for aid from the state, or as a synonym
for the state. “We sometimes forget the larger bonds we share as one
American family,” he said.
Via the government, he said, the public should persevere “to give
more families a fair shake, to reject a country in which only a lucky
few prosper,” he said.
Without a citizenry involved in politics, he said, “we end up with
lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached from what
middle-class families face every day.”
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