THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________
INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT BY THE TROTTER GROUP
Roosevelt Room
October 15, 2010
10:20 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s good to see you. DeWayne, thank you for organizing this. It’s wonderful to have a chance to speak to all of you. This is really your time, so rather than me filibustering with a lot of statements at the top, what I would suggest is just that we open it up to questions and comments.

DeWAYNE WICKHAM, USA TODAY: Mr. President, let me begin by thanking you and Valerie [Jarrett] and others for making this meeting possible. We know how busy you are and what you have to do, and we appreciate the time you will spend with us.

We actually have some order to our process here, and I will begin, because I want to begin with this question. You did something rather remarkable in winning the election to office as President — cobbled together a coalition of blacks and Hispanics and Asians and young whites that I think is unprecedented, and lifting you into office. But recent polls suggest that this coalition is beginning to fracture. Why do you think this is happening?

THE PRESIDENT: Unemployment is 9.5 percent. And we’ve gone through the worst, first, financial crisis, and then overall economic crisis since the Great Depression. We haven’t seen anything like this in our lifetimes. And so what’s remarkable is, I think, how well that coalition has held together in the face of just extraordinarily difficult times. And that’s primarily because people understand how we inherited a set of problems that defy quick and easy solutions.

I try to remind people we lost 4 million jobs in the six months before I was sworn into office. The month I was sworn in we lost over 750,000 jobs; the month after that, 600,000 jobs; the month after that, 600,000 jobs. We had lost almost 8 million jobs before any of our economic policies had a chance to be put in place.

What we’ve done is take an economy that was shrinking by 6 percent and gotten to the point where it’s now growing again. An economy that was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs, we’ve now had nine straight months of private sector job growth. So we’ve moved from a negative direction to a positive direction. But we have not made up for the enormous losses that occurred before we took office. And people are, understandably, frustrated about that and anxious about that and afraid about that.

All communities have been hit during this crisis. There’s the old saying that when America gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia. Well, that’s true here, too. We have seen obviously a huge spike in unemployment in the African American community, with all the attendant problems that go with that. And so I completely understand I think people’s frustrations. The only thing that I remind people of is, number one, the steps we are taking are working. They’re just not working as fast as everyone would like. The second thing I try to remind people of is even before this crisis we were going through a very difficult time. From 2001 to 2009, we saw the most sluggish job growth of any period since the Great Depression. Job growth has actually been faster in the last year, in the midst of this crisis, than it was during that period of 2001 to 2009.

The wages of middle-class families went down 5 percent during that period. So what you had already seen was the status of middle-class families and working poor families deteriorating steadily even as the economy was growing. And what that pointed to was some core structural problems that had not been attended to: the manufacturing base that was hollowing out; a constant erosion in our exports versus our imports and our standing in terms of the international economy; the failure to adequately train our young people for the jobs of tomorrow; a health care system that was broken and so putting huge burdens on families and businesses and on the federal budget; a infrastructure system that was completely outdated; the lack of an energy policy, which meant that we kept on buying foreign oil and sending our billions of dollars overseas every month.

And so what I said coming in, even before the crisis, was we have to make sure that we are dealing with some of these structural problems in the economy. And we’ve been trying to do that even as we’ve been dealing with the immediate crises that have taken place.

LES PAYNE, NEWSDAY: Mr. President, in your recent interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone you said you carry a checklist of the campaign promises in your pocket and that halfway through your first term here now, that 70 percent of what you outlaid — laid out have been accomplished.

Incidentally, I checked what you told us, the Trotter Group, back in ’07, and I found that you’re right about 70 percent, including the promise to have us here today. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: That’s one more thing I’ve done. (Laughter.)

LES PAYNE: So — but the American public tends not to — would probably be surprised at that — including progressives.

And my question is —progressives are hammering you on Afghanistan — my question on Afghanistan is this: Are you satisfied — you asked for an exit strategy. You did not get it. You might comment on that. But beyond that, are you satisfied that the top military brass accepts your, at least tentative now, withdrawal plan — July begin to move back and then by 2012 —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, I mean, there’s been a lot of reporting around Afghanistan. Some of it’s been accurate; some of it hasn’t. A lot of attention paid to Woodward’s book on this issue. Let me just be very clear. When we came in, we had been adrift in Afghanistan for a long time — and everybody would acknowledge this. Iraq was a huge distraction from our efforts in Afghanistan, huge drain of resources. And so what happened was that the Taliban had built momentum and were in a position where if we didn’t slow them down they could have retaken the country.

So I made a series of decisions about how we were going to bolster the efforts inside of Afghanistan. But it wasn’t with the intention that we were going to stay there in some open-ended enterprise. What I said to the military very clearly was that our job is to train Afghan security forces so that they can provide for their own country’s security, and to bolster the Afghan government so that they can start providing basic services, to provide themselves with more legitimacy and to provide the Afghan people with greater opportunity.

Now, this is the second-poorest country on Earth. Think about this. This is — you think of all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, all the countries in Asia, all the countries in Central Asia — this ranks second from the bottom. It’s got a 70 percent illiteracy rate. And the amount of time and energy and resources and assistance from the outside that Afghanistan needs just to make slight progress is significant. It’s enormous. And understandably, I think as we’ve gone forward over the last two years, first to blunt the Taliban’s momentum, and then also to get a more effective government in place in Afghanistan, people looked at it and said, gosh, it looks like it’s still not where it needs to be. Of course it isn’t because it’s starting off from a very low point.

Having said all that, I think everybody from Bob Gates, my Defense Secretary, to Dave Petraeus, the commander on the ground, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, understand very clearly that starting in July of next year we are going to begin a process of transitioning out of Afghanistan. Now, that does not mean that we’re going to be just turning off the lights. What it means is that, having built up our forces to provide the Afghan security forces with the time and the space to train, we can steadily start bringing down those high troop levels as they start being more effective.

It also gives us an opportunity to cooperate with the Afghan government in its efforts to reintegrate with certain factions of the Taliban that may be tired of fighting, to see if we can ultimately come up with a resolution to this issue. The bottom line, though, from my perspective is, is that we’re not doing this for Afghanistan, per se — that’s a good byproduct of our efforts, is that the Afghan people benefit — but the main reason we do this is because I cannot have al Qaeda able to operate freely within Afghanistan in the same way that right now they are — still have safe havens in the northwest regions of Pakistan. That would make it that much harder for us to contain them. It would mean the prospect of greater or more frequent or more sophisticated attacks against our homeland. And that’s not something that I intend to have happen during my watch.

Obama tells the group, “What we’ve done is take an economy that was shrinking by 6 percent and gotten to the point where it’s now growing again.” From left: Tonyaa Weathersbee, DeWayne Wickham, Obama, Valerie Jarrett and Joe Davidson. (Credit: Chuck Kennedy/White House)

ROCHELLE RILEY, DETROIT FREE PRESS: Mr. President, when I got my first newspaper job at the Greensboro Daily News, they hired me because I was black. The fact that I was good was gravy. As you think about the legacy of this term or the next term, as much as you accomplish and with all the things you’ve already done, is there anything that’s bittersweet about for some people focusing just on the fact that you’re the first person of color to be commander-in-chief and the leader of the free world? Does it — is it important?

THE PRESIDENT: I have to say that if we hadn’t been dealing with nonstop crises over the last two years, maybe that would be something that folks would be more focused on. But I think a week after the inauguration everybody had forgotten about that. (Laughter.) Everybody said, what are you going to do about the economy? (Laughter.) And so it’s not something I think about. It’s not something that members of the administration think about. I think that’s one of those things that you will look back on with some historical perspective. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, my suspicion is, on a day-to-day basis what he was worrying about was hits — (laughter) — and how was Brooklyn doing. He was thinking about winning games. And then after he retired, he could look back and say, well, that was something. I tend to just be focusing on getting hits and making plays.

JOE DAVIDSON, THE WASHINGTON POST: Mr. President, I cover federal employees through the Federal Diary with The Washington Post. So I have a question about your employees. There are a number of folks in the country and on Capitol Hill who think that federal employees are overpaid, they’re better paid than people in the private sector who do similar work. A number of Republicans have proposals, legislative proposals, that would limit the pay, cut pay, freeze pay, that kind of thing, or roll back the number of employees to 2008 levels, which is essentially what the “Pledge to America” says.
I’m wondering what your reaction is to these sentiments. Do you think federal employees are fairly paid? And what do you think would happen to the government services if there was a rollback in terms of the federal workforce?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’ve had my team look at this, and the data we get back indicates that high-skilled workers in government are slightly underpaid; lower-skilled workers are slightly overpaid, relative to the private sector. And that’s not surprising because it’s a unionized workforce, and that means that through collective bargaining they obtain better contracts, better benefits. And it’s not surprising that the high-end folks are underpaid because they come in understanding that this is public service. Valerie Jarrett is not going to make what she could make in the private marketplace if she’s working for me. (Laughter.)

Now, having said that, I think that it is very important for us to understand that the country has had to tighten its belt, the private sector has had to tighten its belt; government should have to tighten its belt, as well. We need to do it in an intelligent way. We need to make sure that we are doing
things smarter rather than just lopping something off arbitrarily without having thought it through.

But I think that we’re going to be working over the next couple of years, as we already have over the first two years, to think are there ways that we can deliver services in a more efficient, effective way, and not just assume that because this is how it’s always been done that that is the best deal for the taxpayers.

And so I’ve asked every agency to find savings: What would you do if we had to cut your budget by 5 percent? And I leave it up to smart people like Arne Duncan, Shaun Donovan, Ron Kirk, the rest of the team, to think through what would be the best way to do that. In some cases, they may say we don’t need to fill some vacancies because it turns out we’re not missing people who aren’t doing this work. In some cases they may say we actually need all these people,but there are ways that we can achieve savings in other ways.

So my interest is in achieving the best possible services at the lowest possible price for taxpayers. And I think each agency is going to be thinking through how they best can do that and will report back to me.

LYNNE VARNER, SEATTLE TIMES: Can I follow up on that? But this has become a political football. In my state, the state government has shut down for furlough days — 10 days this past year, five the next year. As the incumbents are coming in, [Rep.] Jay Inslee [D] was in the other day and he was asked, why doesn’t Congress enact furlough days for government workers? He said, well, that’s the President’s role to suggest that. (Laughter.)
[Sen.] Patty Murray [D] was asked the same question.

THE PRESIDENT: Did she say the same thing — it was the President’s role? (Laughter.)

LYNNE VARNER: She said it was an administration choice. And clearly, President Clinton chose furlough days during his administration. But have you thought about doing that? Because this is a question that incumbents are being asked.

THE PRESIDENT: And I think that the answer is that I will certainly do everything I can to avoid more people losing their jobs if they are doing vital services for their constituencies. And so, let’s say, over at Veterans Affairs, where there’s been additional hiring because we were trying to reduce a backlog on claims, something everybody cares deeply about and is very labor intensive, my intention would be to work with Rick Shinseki and figure out are we doing this as efficiently as we can, and are there some other areas within the VA where we don’t need as many folks?

But I guess my point is I think you’ve got to do this on a case-by-case basis. And if I can achieve these savings without furloughing people, without letting people off, then I’m going to do it that way. If that’s the only way to achieve the savings, then we’ve got to make some decisions about what that means in terms of services, because there are consequences. If it means that our veterans then might have to wait longer for their disability claims to be processed, that’s something that people object to pretty vigorously, and rightly so, because we’ve got a sacred trust to our veterans.

So there are going to be a range of negotiations next year around budgets, and I think it is entirely appropriate for us to think about the federal workforce as part of that overall conversation. But keep in mind that when I look at what our big budget-busters are, they tend to be things that most Americans think are really important, like Social Security, Medicare, defense, Veterans Affairs, education, and things that people place a great priority on.

ANNETTE JOHN-HALL, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Mr. President, when you were in Philadelphia that beautiful autumn Sunday afternoon, you were also in a city that boasts the second hungriest district in the United States. Children, families are suffering. Children are going hungry. A lot of cases, families have to decide whether to pay their rent or buy food. Food pantries are suffering. And studies have shown that when children go to school hungry, it’s hard to learn, creating a cycle of failure. Is there anything that this administration can do to help jumpstart any type of help for those families and communities? And disproportionately, black and Latino kids are going hungry, and whole communities are falling off the rails when it comes to hunger.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, there are four things I can do. Number one, we’ve got to strengthen the economy generally so that they — the parents of these children are getting jobs and can properly feed their kids. Number two, part of the Recovery Act was expanding emergency food stamps for folks who may have been laid off, lost their jobs, put more vulnerable. Number three, we are pushing hard to get a child nutrition bill passed, the First Lady’s top priority, that would start revamping the school lunch program and making sure that kids are getting better food — because, frankly, if you go into any urban neighborhood, the problem is not simply a lack of calories.

I mean, there are situations, in particular households that are going through very difficult times, where you might see kids just not getting enough calories, but a lot of the problem is they’re just getting the wrong calories. They’re having potato chips for breakfast and Popeyes three times a day. Popeyes is good, so I don’t want — (laughter) — Popeyes — I enjoy their chicken once in a while — but having fast food three times a day.

You’ve got these food deserts in places like Philadelphia that you’ve seen some innovative initiatives, green markets, rise up in fact in the very areas that we’re talking about, where suddenly families can start buying vegetables and fruits. And for us to be able to partner with the private sector to figure out how can folks have access to better food, then make sure that the school lunch program is providing kids with the nutrition that they need — all those things wrapped together can make a significant difference. So we have the opportunity to pass the child nutrition bill during the lame duck session. It’s already passed out of the Senate. It needs to pass out of the House.

You will hear some noise potentially during this debate because in the Recovery Act, as we ramped up the food stamp program, we projected a much higher increase in terms of people needing it than it’s turned out, as people have taken — they have used all the money that we’ve had allocated for additional food stamps, and that’s supposed to go out over the next several years, and so one of the ways to pay for the improved school lunch programs is to take some of that money.

And there’s been some controversy among some of the hunger groups about, well, why are we taking food stamp money to pay for the child nutrition agenda? And what I’ve said is we will make sure that the food stamp program is properly funded, but we have to get this child nutrition agenda moving, because otherwise kids are going to keep on being malnourished, and they have to be given a lot of food. Okay?

DWIGHT LEWIS, NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN: Mr. President, yesterday, less than three weeks until the midterm election, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies released analysis showing that African American voters are strategically located in states and districts where, say, if they turn out in substantial numbers, they can make a difference in who controls the House, the Senate, and up to 14 governorships. I know the administration is working with the Democratic National Committee to get blacks out to vote. But what about others? In my — I live in Tennessee, and all I hear from candidates, Republican candidates, is, you got to reelect us to repeal Obamacare, to get rid of the high-spending Democrats. What do you tell people other than blacks why Democrats should be reelected or be elected?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, most of our messages aren’t focused on particular ethnic groups. We’ve got a broad message, which is all those Republicans who have been running all those ads are the very same folks who got us in this mess in the first place, and they haven’t changed policies. They’re promising the exact same policies that resulted in the worst financial crisis and the worst economic crisis in 90 years. Why would we entrust them to make good economic decisions?

The fact that the Republicans have some momentum behind them isn’t because Republicans are popular or their ideas are popular. It’s because people are sufficiently scared and frustrated, where there’s just a very strong anti-incumbent mood.

And I think that my job is to constantly remind people of the fact that this election is a choice. Joe Biden puts it well. He says, don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative. (Laughter.) And if this election is framed simply as a referendum on whether people are satisfied with how things are right now, then obviously none of us are satisfied and we’d lose votes. If the election is posed as a choice between Republican policies that got us into this mess and President Obama’s policies that are getting us out of this mess, then I think we can do very well.

And, frankly, I would feel very confident about our position right now if it weren’t for the fact that these third party independent groups, funded by corporate special interests and run by Republican operatives, without disclosing where that money is coming from, are outspending our candidates in some
cases five to one, 10 to one. And if you go into some of these areas, there are negative ads every minute of every hour of every day, being funded not by candidates but by these shadowy third-party groups.

And it is the unwritten story of this election. It is having a huge influence across the country and it’s probably our biggest challenge right now. And it’s the direct result of a Supreme Court opinion called Citizens United that passed in the last session. So don’t let anybody ever tell you that the Supreme Court doesn’t matter, because here’s a direct example of how what I consider to be a profoundly faulty Supreme Court decision has opened the floodgates to special interest money, undisclosed, and having a significant impact on the election. That’s why we’ve got to constantly remind people that voter turnout is going to be so critical. Our numbers and our ability to organize the grassroots has to counteract those millions of dollars that are coming in to try to take this election.

TONYAA WEATHERSBEE, THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION: I have a good segue into that — what Dwight asked. Gallup says — at least yesterday — said that you have a 26 percent edge in approval over Congress. That’s the highest edge over the last — over the four previous Presidents. Very high. How do you translate that into votes, particularly in the midterm? What, if anything, is being done to translate that into votes? Because basically that’s saying that you still are pretty popular, as compared to Congress, which seems like it’s about to change —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s a low bar. (Laughter.)

TONYAA WEATHERSBEE: But how do you translate that into — how do you usurp that, take advantage of it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, just in terms of the election, my job is to make a broad message to the country about where we want to go and how this is a choice. So I’m very specific about — let’s just take what we’ve done on education. We’ve taken tens of billions of dollars that were going to banks in unwarranted subsidies as pass-throughs for the student loan program — we took that money from them and are giving it to students. So you’ve got millions of students who are now getting more Pell Grants, more loans; that by 2014 every young person who takes on debt and gets a college education, they’re going to know that they will never have to pay more than 10 percent of their income to service their debt — which is huge.

You think — I don’t know about all of you, but I was paying a lot more than 10 percent of my income in servicing my debt. So having that certainty that I’m not going to be broke as a consequence of getting a higher education, that’s a huge accomplishment a lot of people don’t know about.

So we’re going to talk about what we’ve done, and then we’re going to say, now, the Republicans want to cut education funding by 20 percent as part of their “Pledge to America.” That’s a very concrete choice. And I just have to remind people of that.

But ultimately, this election is going to be decided on a race-by-race basis, district by district. And so we can help kind of set the overall tone, make the overall argument, but it’s going to be this hand-to-hand combat that’s taking place in these various districts that is probably going to make the biggest difference.

I think that no institution right now is held in very high esteem by the American people. They feel betrayed by banks, corporations, Washington for failing to oversee what was happening in the financial sector. So we’ve got to win back their trust steadily. I know you guys spoke to [Rep.] Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] earlier today. I think the work that we’re going to be doing on the Consumer Finance Protection Agency can make a huge difference in making people feel like, okay, somebody here is —somebody in Washington is looking out for us, making sure we’re not cheated on our mortgages or our credit cards or payday loans or what have you.

I think that if they see that we’re strong advocates on education, if they see that we are working hand-in-hand with communities, particularly distressed communities, on neighborhood stabilization — all those things over time start building up trust. And I’m confident that we’ll find ourselves
a couple years from now in a much stronger position as a country, and I think that probably people’s estimation of government will have improved by then.
But until that happens, there’s always going to be some of that mistrust that you’re seeing in these polls.

RHONDA GRAHAM, WILMINGTON (Del.) NEWS-JOURNAL: Mr. President, I’m from [tea party-backed U.S. Senate candidate] Christine O’Donnell [R] land — where you are being assailed for tax and spending and there’s a lot of talk about deficits. And so I wonder if, with all the savings that you’re realizing in terms of your projections, your lower projections of TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] money not coming back, would you consider — particularly in regard to this election — earmarking some of that money for deficit spending as a kind of like olive branch?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, I think people may not always have an accurate picture of our budget and where our money goes, what the problem is. And I take some responsibility for that. We’ve had to move so fast over the last two years that people just saw a lot of big numbers flashing on the TV screens without a clear overview of what the challenges are.

The big problem we have with our deficit and our debt arises from structural problems that predate this crisis and predate my administration. Essentially we had two tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under the Bush administration that were not paid for that cost trillions of dollars; two wars that weren’t paid for; a prescription drug plan, which people don’t talk about but was actually as expensive as my entire health care bill, passed by President Bush and that was unpaid for, unlike my health care bill, which is not only paid for but will save $1 trillion. So when I walked in, we already had a $1.3 trillion deficit. We added $700 billion in Recovery Act. I say $700 billion — people sometimes say we added a $1 trillion stimulus.

No, it was $787 billion, but $70 billion of that was actually an adjustment on the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is something that happens every year and Congress has always put off trying to fix, but that cost about $70 billion. But we added about $700 billion in terms of the Recovery Act. TARP — we had essentially a line of credit of $700 billion that could be used in an emergency, but we never used all of the $750 billion — or all of the $700 billion. And in fact, most of that has been paid back. And that includes, by the way, the help we gave to the auto companies.

So what we did added roughly $1 trillion in one-time additional costs. But the real problem is, is that you’ve got a structural deficit where you’ve got about 5 to 6 percent of GDP less money coming in than is going out.

Now, there are only two ways to solve that. You either cut spending or you bring in more revenue. And when it comes to cutting spending, as I mentioned earlier, the big-ticket items are Social Security, Medicare, defense. The entitlements in defense take up about three-quarters of the budget.

So you can’t cut your way through education or parks programs or the Environmental Protection Agency, because that’s not where the money is. So I say all this to say that we’ve managed TARP so well that, in fact, most of the money never even got spent and whatever is remaining will help reduce the deficit. But it doesn’t solve our big problem. Solving the big problem will require us making some much more significant adjustments when it comes to big-ticket items. And that’s a debate that Republicans really don’t want to have.

The other thing we can’t do is to add to the problem, which is what they’re proposing, with these tax cuts for the wealthy that they want to extend to the top 2 percent — $700 billion over the course of 10 years, unpaid for, that we’d have to borrow from China. And that would mean an average $100,000 check to every millionaire and billionaire out there. There is no rationale.

Through a lot of luck, I am now in this category. (Laughter.) If I get an extra $100,000 in reduced taxes, it does not change how I spend money at all, because right now if I want a big-screen TV, I buy a big-screen TV. If I want to take a vacation, I take a vacation. The folks who need help are the people we want to give a tax break to — and the only reason they haven’t gotten a firm signal that their current tax rates are going to stay in place and not go up next year is because the Republicans are holding those middle-class tax breaks hostage to try to leverage it for the top 2 percent of Americans. And that just makes absolutely no sense.

ASKIA MUHAMMAD, WASHINGTON INFORMER: Mr. President, in the D.C. neighborhoods, education is on a lot of people’s minds. The District of Columbia is one of the Race to the Top winners, and people applauded that. And the school’s chancellor, Michelle Rhee, has now announced that she’s leaving after her boss was defeated in the primary. But also people are sort of smarting about the comments that you made on the Today Show that suggest that no D.C. public school is worthy of your children attending. And I’m wondering if you might —

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait, wait, wait. That’s not what I said — right? I mean, what I was asked was — and let me get the phrasing of this exactly right — what I was asked was, did I think that the average D.C. parent had the same opportunity to send their kids to a school that was as good as the school that my girls were going to. And the answer is, absolutely not. Of course not — because the average D.C. parent doesn’t have the same resources to find a school that provides the same resources, teachers, support, that work as Sidwell Friends. That’s not a controversial statement. That’s true. But I cut you off on the question. I just wanted to make sure that — (laughter.)

ASKIA MUHAMMAD: I mean, I think you said you could use your clout, too, on the Today Show, to get them into a good school here.

THE PRESIDENT: Which is absolutely true. Everybody here could probably get — if I were living back in Chicago, I could get my kid into Whitney Young, which is where Michelle went to. I could get my kid into Walter Payton. There are a bunch of terrific magnet schools that are out there that would give them a great education. And there are some very fine schools here in Washington, D.C. But if you are an average parent, the odds of you being able to get your child into the limited slots that are available where you can guarantee your child’s success in the school system is not there yet. That is not a controversial statement. That is just a fact.

ASKIA MUHAMMAD: Well, my son attended Hearst Elementary, which is right across 37th Street from Sidwell, thanks mostly to his mother.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m sure it was a great school.

ASKIA MUHAMMAD: It was a great school. My question, though, I wonder with the departure of Michelle Rhee and with the soon departure of Mayor Adrian Fenty, are there positions perhaps awaiting them in an Obama administration — either of them — since education is so important and you’ve talked about —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me, first of all, say that my — Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is doing a great job. And he is so passionate about every child learning, has devoted his whole life to every child learning, is especially passionate about inner-city kids learning, that I think he will go down as one of the finest Secretaries of Education we’ve ever had. Point number two is that I think Mayor Fenty and Michelle Rhee shared a passion for trying to shake up a status quo that wasn’t working. And they deserve enormous credit for that.

Now, what we also know is that in bringing about change, you’ve got to use some sugar and some vinegar. There’s got to be both snapping people to attention, but there’s also got to be some encouragement. And I think that one of the things that Arne has done very well is to say, look, yes, the status quo is not working; yes, we’ve got to improve our performance, and that means everybody — teachers, students, parents, principals, community — but we’ve got something we can build on. And if we all pull together and don’t insist on being tied down to the old ways of doing things, we can make real progress.

And that means, for example, in working with the teachers union, what we’ve been trying to do is to say to the teachers union, look, we’re pro-union.

We’re not trying to put the blame on teachers unions for every problem. We are saying, though, to the teachers unions, you’ve got to get out in front of change, instead of being afraid of change. Because from — my sister has taught in inner-city schools, and I’ve heard stories from her. And oftentimes, what happens is teachers start losing hope because they’re not getting enough support, there’s not enough creativity in terms of how they can design their curriculums.

They’re swamped with a lot of bureaucratic requirements that have nothing to do with learning in the classroom. A teacher like that who is doing a good job, passionate about her kids, but is feeling overwhelmed, school reform can liberate them. And so we’ve got to work with teachers, not against teachers, in order to bring these reforms about. But that does require some flexibility on the part of the unions in saying let’s try some new things.

Because if we’ve got schools where half the kids are dropping out, we’ve got schools where only one out of 10 are reading at grade level — and that includes a lot of schools out there, and it’s been going on for 20, 30, 40 years — you can’t keep on doing the same thing.

The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And we are crazy when it comes to the discussion of school reform if we think somehow that we can just keep on doing the same thing and get a different result, or that if we just gave a little more money to some of these schools, that we’d get a different result.

No — or that somehow it’s not the fault of the schools, it’s the fault of the parents and these are poor neighborhoods, et cetera — we know that’s not true because there are schools that succeed wonderfully in preparing our kids for college and careers even in the toughest neighborhoods. The problem is — it usually has to do with they happen to have a great principal, they happen to have some really motivated teachers and somehow the culture of that one school — changes. But it never gets scaled out to all the other schools. We’ve got to figure out how do we make sure that all schools have that kind of energy.

ASKIA MUHAMMAD: Can Mayor Fenty help in the Obama administration in that regard?

THE PRESIDENT: I suspect right now, after having been mayor for four years, he just wants some rest. (Laughter.) But I haven’t had a conversation with —

DeWAYNE WICKHAM: Mr. President, I’m watching the clock and I know your staff is going to hustle you out.

THE PRESIDENT: I just saw a couple of —it looked like I was about to get the hook. (Laughter.)

DeWAYNE WICKHAM: And so I wanted to ask you this final question. April 2011 will mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. Some Southern states, some states, former Confederate states, are now preparing celebrations — or I should say, observances. How do you think the nation should
observe this anniversary?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s interesting, I’m somebody who is fascinated by the Civil War. I’ve studied the history of it. And I think that it’s very important for the country to have knowledge of that history because it was probably the most important turning point in our history, other than the actual formation of the United States itself — that the Civil War was that breaking point at which we began this journey to perfect the union that had been flawed by slavery and discrimination. So not knowing enough about what exactly the states are planning, I would just — I wouldn’t have an opinion on it.

DeWAYNE WICKHAM: Well, let me ask you —

THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s important for everyone to know that history. And if it’s presented in a smart and thoughtful and balanced way, I think it could be beneficial. And if it’s not presented in a smart and balanced way, it could end up being divisive.

DeWAYNE WICKHAM: There’s some who say when they hear people chant that I want my— we want our country back, and they talk about states rights, that for them the Civil War is unsettled business.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that it’s important not to see race behind every disagreement with me. There’s a long tradition of federalism that predates the civil rights battles of the ‘60s, of the war — the Civil War. There’s a long tradition of suspicion of a powerful federal government that started with Thomas Jefferson and the founding of the country.

And so I think that my approach is always to take people at face value. If they say that they’re concerned about a government that’s grown too large and oppressive, then rather than suggest that they’ve got some illegitimate motives, I’ll take them at their word and I’ll describe to them how the government now is smaller than it was under Ronald Reagan. (Laughter.)

And so what exactly is it that they’re complaining about? They think that Obama has presided over this huge expansion in taxes. And I explain to them, well, actually your taxes are lower now than when I came into office because of the tax breaks we initiated in the recovery package. What is it exactly that you’re worried about? If they point to the health care bill and say somehow that this is unprecedented expansion of government, then I explain to them — as I said before, A, this costs the same as the prescription drug bill that passed under George Bush, and nobody was complaining about it — except that we paid for it — and by the way, that people said the same thing about Medicare, which you love — so what exactly is it that you’re concerned about?

I mean, I think that there’s a way of engaging people in their own terms about the things that they care about, trying to explain to them, look, I don’t want an overweening government either; I don’t want oppressive tax structures either; I’m not interested in imposing socialism on America; here’s what we’re
doing, and we actually think that we’re making the country more productive and more competitive — I may not persuade them, but I continue to have faith that over time, if you make good policies and you try to explain to them as clearly as you can — the American people have decent instincts — that we’ll do okay.

DeWAYNE WICKHAM: Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: All right? Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
END
11:18 A.M. EDT

• Joe Davidson, Washington Post: Dissatisfaction in federal employee pay sign of disconnect
• Editorial, Seattle Times (Lynne Varner): Obama should consider federal furloughs in cost-cutting program
• Askia Muhammad, Final Call: President Obama: ‘Don’t compare me to the Almighty’
• Richard Prince, “Journal-isms”: Spurned Columnists Question Selection Process for Obama Meeting
• DeWayne Wickham, USA Today: What’s at stake in midterm elections

Also Online:

• Les Payne: The Trotter Group: Opening Statement
• DeWayne Wickham: ‘We Wanted to Do What We Could to Insure That the Voices of Black Columnists Would Speak the Loudest . . . ‘
• Derrick Z. Jackson: William Monroe Trotter Was Perhaps the Most ‘Rude’ African American Journalist This Nation Has Produced
• A Session With President Obama, 2010

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About Richard Prince

View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).

• Journalist Richard Prince w/Joe Madison (Sirius XM, April 18, 2018) (podcast) 
• Richard Prince (journalist) (Wikipedia entry)
• February 2018 Podcast: Richard “Dick” Prince on the need for newsroom diversity (Gabriel Greschler, Student Press Law Center, Feb. 26, 2018)
• Diversity’s Greatest Hits, 2017 — Where Will They Take Us in the Year Ahead?
• Book Notes: Best Sellers, Uncovered Treasures, Overlooked History (Dec. 19, 2017)
• An advocate for diversity in the media is still pressing for representation, (Courtland Milloy, Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2017)
• Morgan Global Journalism Review: Journal-isms Journeys On (Aug. 31, 2017)
• Diversity’s Greatest Hits, 2016