Obama Sends Hopeful New Year’s Message Urging Americans to Remember ‘What’s Best About America’

‘There Are Countless Stories From This Year That Remind Us What’s Best About America’ Obama Says

President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan during the general election was “Hope.” It’s emblematic of how he approached his presidency, and even in the year after leaving office, Barack Obama has maintained a focus on optimism. 

In his first public appearance after exiting the White House, Obama told college students America’s problems are “serious and daunting, but they are not insoluble.”

The former President, who in a Gallup poll for the tenth year in a row was just named “most admired” man, shared his emblematic optimism in a speech this past October.

Campaigning for Democrat Ralph Northam (who won the Virginia gubernatorial race) President Obama told the crowd that if “we are going to talk about our history, then we should do it in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds, not in a way that divides.”

And he talked about moving forward, responding to the worst events by rejecting fear and hate.

“We saw what happened in Charlottesville. But we also saw what happened after Charlottesville, when the biggest gatherings of all rejected fear, and rejected hate, and the decency and good will of the American people came out. That’s how we rise. We don’t rise up by repeating the past, we rise up by learning from the past, and by listening to each other, and by knowing that we’re all flawed.”

The former president also reminded Americans that this is still our country, and we still have the ability to decide what direction we take it.

“That is what our founders understood: that for all of our flaws, our fate is in our own hands. That was the radical idea of America—that we decide our direction, not some king, not some despot, but us. Citizens. And our progress doesn’t always go in a straight line. Sometimes we take two steps forward and we might take a step back. They understood that, too. But the idea of America is not about going backwards. It’s about pushing forward. America is a story of progress.”

Friday morning, President Obama shared more of his hopefulness with the American people.

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