Obama on regrets, future: ‘Hope and change’ 7 years later
Looking back, was that the change you believed in?
On the eve of his final State of the Union address, President Obama walked the halls of the White House with Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” show during a wide-ranging interview that hit upon the current presidential race and whether he failed to deliver on an essential part of his first campaign platform: hope and change.
Back in 2008, the then-junior senator from Illinois vowed to change the tone of Washington and unite people. But politics in the U.S. are still deeply divided.
“You will be looking out over a room that is arguably as divided as it’s ever been,” Lauer asked in the interview, which aired Tuesday morning. “Do you see that as a failure of your presidency?”
U.S. President Barack Obama waves at the start of his 2015 State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
The commander-in-chief characterized the ongoing division as a “regret” and said he could not be more proud of what they accomplished. He noted that sometimes we look at the past through rose-colored glasses.
“It’s been pretty divided in the past. There have been times where people beat each other with canes,” he said. “We had things like the Civil War. There have been times where it was pretty rough. But there’s no doubt that politics in Washington are so much more divided than the American people are.”
With his last address, Obama said, he wants to remind Americans “we have a lot of good things going for us,” and that we are not as divided ideologically as some people make us out to be.
In 2008, after eight years of President George W. Bush, many Americans were ready for something different, and felt energized by Obama’s message.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign stop in Windham, N.H., on Jan. 11, 2016. (Photo: Jim Cole/AP)
Nowadays, Lauer said, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and others are capitalizing on a sense of fear, frustration and fatigue in the country in their bids for the White House.
“After seven years of the Obama presidency, do you feel you’re responsible for a certain hunger out there for the message Donald Trump is putting out?” Lauer asked.
“The message that Donald Trump’s putting out has had adherents a lot of times during the course of our history,” Obama said. “You know, talk to me if he wins. Then we’ll have a conversation about how responsible I feel about it.”
Despite Trump’s popularity and partisanship in Washington, Obama said he is confident that the overwhelming majority of Americans are united in the kind of politics that they want moving forward.
“[America] isn’t looking for simplistic solutions and scapegoating but looks for us buckling down and figuring out, ‘How do we make things work for the next generation?’” he said.
Watch the State of the Union and commentary right here. Coverage and commentary hosted by Katie Couric begins at 8:45 pm Eastern.
