From The One’s 60 Minutes interview, Sunday:
Kroft: You declared your candidacy. And you said, “The reason we’ve not met our challenges is a failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics, the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and the trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our presence for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to take on big problems.” I mean those were eloquent words and true words. Unfortunately, they’re still largely true today. Did you overpromise? Did you underestimate how difficult this was gonna be?
Obama: I didn’t overpromise. And I didn’t underestimate how tough this was gonna be. I always believed that this was a long term project. That reversing a culture here in Washington, dominated by special interests, it was gonna take more than a year. It was gonna take more than two years. It was gonna take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.
From The One’s 2008 Democratic nomination acceptance speech.
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
Nah. No overpromising in any of that. No overpromising in his promise to cut the deficit in half, either. Or in selling the stimulus by promising that unemployment would stay below 8 percent if it passed.
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