The Honorable Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, 12/5/17

a few weeks ago Chicago's very own chance the rapper was on Saturday Night Live where he performed a short musical number called comeback Barack I don't know if you saw now I can assure you that chance is not the only person who is nostalgic for those Obama years in the White House but I'm actually going to stick my neck out as I stand here in gasps that our guest speaker is actually not one of them so after all to me being President of the United States is really important but I think being an ex-president is probably really great you get to write books you no longer have to wear ties the hours seem to be much better and from what I hear the pay is a lot better to the 44th president does not mean need much of an introduction to this hometown crowd but I'm going to review a few highlights just for the record as many of you know he was born and raised in Hawaii spent part of his childhood in Indonesia finished college at Columbia in New York and then started his career as a community organizer in Chicago lucky us after a few years he went back to school turn a law degree at Harvard where he was also the first african-american editor of the Harvard Law Review a lot of curse after how Harvard many would say he achieved his life's greatest success he married Michelle [Applause] a few years later as we all know he launched a political career that took him from the Illinois State Senate to the White House in just 12 short years as he entered office we also remember he had inherited one of the worst and most troubled economies in US history and guide us guided us back to prosperity over two terms that included 76 straight months of job growth a historic streak that continues to the present day on his watch unemployment dropped from 10% to under 5% as 15 million jobs were added in the United States the stock market which we know a little about also surged from 8,000 to 20,000 in those eight years pretty remarkable as many know he was a fierce protector of the environment while simultaneously helping us to end America's dependence on foreign oil he extended health care coverage to over 20 million uninsured Americans [Applause] both at home and abroad he fought hard for justice fairness tolerance and freedom those of course are the universal values that have anchored our society in an increasingly diverse country his election symbolized the boundless promise of America where anything is possible that you can go from obscurity to the highest level of office in our country as a loving husband and devoted father he presented a wholesome and positive image of the african-american family at a time when our culture often short more negative depictions Chicagoans and as Americans he always made us proud as one who travels widely I can attest to the respect he commanded and continues to command around the world and yes his absence is painfully felt in a political environment where hateful rhetoric is increasingly becoming normalized today President Obama lives in Washington where a second daughter is completing high school although he's currently writing a book at just 56 years of age I think it's safe to say that he has many chapters left and one of those chapters will take place right here on the south side of Chicago where he's building the presidential center that will not only memorialize his history historic life and politics but also inspire a brand new generation to engage in public service ladies and gentlemen it is my pleasure to introduce the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama [Applause] he's coming from somewhere we may need to go find the presidents he's coming she's saying one minute one minute this was timed exactly but I think I got a little ahead one minute talk amongst yourselves I feel like they need like jeopardy music or something this is rough all right any minute now I promise I don't know how I know that but I know he's in the building maybe he wants to make this kind of insurance or he just wants me to sweat President Obama there he is [Applause] what happened [Applause] again I'm gonna start ramen [Applause] I'm literally sweating like my pets are laughs how long how long were you at her five minutes five minutes well I'm sorry I I just did what I was told I wandered over here it was true that a bunch of the servers were folks that I saw when I was like a state senator and I had one of those seats in the back but they remembered me which was nice I was very appreciative so I wanted to I had some hands to shake on the way in we have a lot to cover we do let's go crazy so I want to start however a little soft because I think that a lot of people feel like they really know you because we saw you and see you very regularly and during the time you were president basically every day so I think we assume a lot so I wanted to start by literally a lightning round just to ask you some questions so that we can really know I'm ready okay do you prefer are you one of these early morning people are you a late night person I don't do you like I know this answer because I'm seeing what you're drinking coffee or tea tea are you a mountains or beach person that's obvious come on I'm from Hawaii what are you talking about I mean Mountains are nice but thin crust or deep dish thin crust with a fork or no four [Applause] for Kondo Florrick first of all for those for those of you who are deep dish I love deep dish but but let's face it deep dish isn't really pizza deep deep deep dish is like a full-blown it's like lasagna with crust it's delicious but it's not a slice right you got to eat it with a knife and fork I'm sorry continue Walter okay me to Superman or Batman Batman Wonder Woman or Catwoman got it got to be Wonder Woman well I mean are we dating or married [Applause] I'd have to think about that Michael Jackson or Prince prints last one Shakespeare or Tupac Shakespeare uh you know no I I love hip-hop but but his Shakespeare come on that one was a little too easy so the other sort of mundane thing I want to ask about just because we don't quite understand what it's like to live in the White House so for us like our table never works for some reason our TVs never work in Chicago or San Francisco well is there some kind of mundane thing in the White House that just like bug to you there oh absolutely quiet well first of all one thing that people I think are not aware of is it's wonderful that you get free housing it's nice although keep in mind I maintain my residence here so we're still you know paying our mortgage here in Chicago and property taxes but but everything else you pay for you know milk in the fridge the toilet paper and and and the staff if they stay over let's say you're having a dinner party you know you're paying them overtime and and and they became like family the point is it's not as cheap as you think living in line are you are not running a deficit I just I just want to point out so that's something that's something that people don't know it is an old house and and there's a there's engineers there too if anything needs to be fixed but things have to be fixed so for example there was one this probably the first time I ever told this story publicly Sunday morning and I'm trying to sleep in because you know we were sleep deprived in this job and Sasha comes in she must have been 12 at the time and she says daddy it's it's raining in the dining room and I said well you know I'm kind of groggy and I'm thinking oh no it's raining outside I don't know exactly it's a metaphor for something I don't know no daddy it's raining we go into the dining room and it is raining in the dining room and a old water main had burst on the third floor and it was coming through the light fixtures in in sort of a gusher and there was about two inches of water on the on the floor and stuff like that would happen on a fairly regular basis and it would get fixed but it's an old house you know it's yeah so when you think about the world and where we are today and what you left behind I heard that you just went around the world literally literally you just went from Washington to China and India and all these Paris etc how do you see the world now from the perspective of being a citizen as opposed to a perspective of being a president and I'm gonna give a caveat to that I told Bill Daley I was going to invoke his name here Bill Daley once told me that we our politics really do reflect our time and we have to accept that and we get the politics that we want to deserve so as you go out you look in the world you're traveling you're a rock star wherever you go but you're a regular citizen how do you see this versus being inside of that White House even with it's leaking you know pipes well when you're in the job then every day when you pick up the newspaper or watch the news whatever is on there is your problem literally and so you're training your mind to think all right is this something that we can do about something about immediately what levers of power can you pull or push in order to have an impact and and you just have it you have to have a very disciplined practical approach to problems and and you have to to some degree to compartmentalize your emotions around issues in order to just get through the day because you're dealing with five crises at any given moment literally moment not exact no no every moment there's there's four or five things that are going kablooey and and you've got to you got to do something about it you have the luxury as a private citizen to step back and reflect more I think on that the details and the meaning of what's happening because it's not your responsibility necessarily to solve it the other thing that it doesn't change though I feel it is acutely now as I felt when I was president is when people often ask me what surprised me most about being president and the truth is the fact that there was hard work didn't surprise me the fact that basically decisions wouldn't reach my desk unless nobody else could solve them if they could be solved somebody else would have solved it already and so there's you were always dealing with problems that didn't lend themselves to a simple solution and you were working with probabilities and you had to make your best judgment knowing that not everything was gonna work out exactly as you had wanted all that stuff it didn't surprise me that much the thing that that did strike me is how much America and the American government underwrite the world order I think we underestimate this things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder behind the wheel if you go to a g20 meeting which is the gathering of the top economies in the world if you go to an environmental meeting if there is a special committee on refugees in the United Nations the Ebola crisis does a typhoon in the Philippines well whatever it is no other country has the combination of bandwidth and experience and ideals that permit it to mobilize the world to solve a problem and so what happens then just to finish up is if if the US isn't doing it it's not happening and Ebola is probably the best example of this we didn't just make a contribution to solve a bola we had to organize the entire world community we had to build a tarmac to for the planes to land we had to send in our entire CDC and medical teams we had to guarantee the medevacking out of European doctors and healthcare workers for them to be willing to participate China couldn't deliver whatever it was going to deliver without us being able to provide the logistics for it and we probably saved a million lives by doing that but but I think that's how much our our government and our democracy holds things together and sometimes we take that for granted in and understandably sometimes we're frustrated because it feels like other countries aren't doing carrying their weight or their Free Riders or what-have-you but it's pretty important and and and and that I continued experience as I travel around the world so does it worry you when you think about the populist rhetoric the nationalism that is taking hold or taking off in lots of different parts of the world yes it worries me and why do you think that is happening well I'm not the first one to observe that we've had this combination of globalization and rapid technological change that's accelerating and it has just disrupted economies and disrupted cultures at a pace that's probably the fastest in human history I mean the transition from the agricultural era to the Industrial Age was pretty tumultuous it was a big transition but it took place over the course of a hundred two hundred and fifty years we're going through similar kinds of changes in the span of 20 or maybe shorter when you start thinking about what's going to be happening with artificial intelligence and driverless cars and you name it so you have that and then you have this this technological revolution around information and and if you look at somebody had an interesting observation every time there's been a revolutionary new information technology whether it was the printing presses or radio or television it takes a while to absorb that into a culture and people react to it and because it's powerful it's it's a powerful way of transmitting stories and narratives and and right now we're seeing a collision of cultures that were not accustomed to it used to be the if you weren't if you were very conservative Muslim or a Christian or Jew or Hindu you could live in your community and people didn't question your assumptions now over the Internet you're you're seeing your kid watch a little Uzi rapping that's a rapper by the way if you if you had a 16 year old you would know who a little Lucy was and the lyrics are astonishing and there's just a whole bunch of stuff going on there and you're thinking what is the world coming to and and so the combination of economic disruption cultural disruption nothing feels solid to people that's a recipe for people wanting to find security somewhere and and sadly there is something I think in in all of us that looks for simple answers when were agitated and insecure and and far too often what we look for is some way of reasserting our superiority over somebody else so we resort to tribes or sectarianism or nationalism whatever ism makes us feel like we're more important we have a better grasp of what's true than that person who's not like us and and that I think is a lot of what you're seeing around the world the good news is is that you know right now we have competing narratives the narrative that America as a at its best has stood for the narrative of pluralism and tolerance and democracy and rule of law and human rights and freedom of the press and freedom of religion that narrative I think is actually the more powerful narrative and the majority of people around the world aspire to that narrative which is the reason why people still want to come here but we have to fight for it it doesn't it doesn't happen automatically and and so when people think about our own institutions and our own culture and our own politics that the one thing that I always want to emphasize to people is not to take for granted the institutions and norms and values that we've built because it's not so much that they're fragile but they are reversible I'll leave it at that that was a long that was a long answer we should go back to the we should go back to the lightning around that perhaps some do take for granted maybe not because these institutions today that are the pillars of the American system and vary in every way are being challenged very vocally very loudly even though they are still revered around the world some what's say in our own inside of our own country they are being second-guessed do you think that those institutions have a real risk today going away is there a real threat to these core values and and what do you do about it today what concrete thing instead of you know we all are talking so much about what we're saying what is to be done well look it's important not to over romanticize things so when I talk about the values ideals institutions that I revere that that the things that make me most proud to be an American it's important to understand that those have always been contested and there's always been competing narratives in in our country just like there around the world it wasn't that long ago that you and I would not be sitting here in front of the economic club but because in many ways romanticizes all of this well but but but the point is is that the progress that we make in strengthening of these institutions is real but episodically that junctures in our history whether because we're afraid or because of external threats or what-have-you they bathe start teetering a little bit look FDR is one of my political heroes in my mind second greatest president after after Lincoln I'm an Illinois guy what can I tell but he he interned a bunch of loyal japanese-americans during World War two that that was a threat to our institutions there have been periods in our history where censorship was considered okay we have the McCarthy era you know he had a president who had to resign prior to impeachment because he was undermining rule of law that at every juncture we've had to wrestle with big problems dating back to the Constitution a founding document that was revolutionary and declared all men were created equal the Declaration of Independence that the the Charter documents but also contained the three-fifths clause so we've always had some contradictions that's part of human life that the question then is at any given time what are we doing to defend our best cells and our and those timeless values that should transcend party so I would argue for example that freedom of the press is such an ideal during my presidency the press often drove me nuts it wasn't just the conservative press that drove me nuts sometimes the liberal quote/unquote press drove me nuts there were times where I thought reporters were ill-informed there were times where they didn't actually get the story right but what I understood was that principle of the the free press was vital and that as president part of my job was to make sure that that was maintained and and so you know we don't have time to go into detail about everything people should do but I wouldn't underestimate the very simple act of being engaged paying attention and speaking out I mean typically that's what it comes down to in a democracy and and and I do think because we've been so wealthy and so successful that we get complacent and assume that things continue the way they have been just automatically and they don't you have to tend to this garden of democracy otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly and and and and we've seen societies where that happens all right yeah presumably there was a ballroom here in you know Vienna in the late 1920s or 30s that looked pretty sophisticated and seemed as if you know with the music and the art and literature and the science that was emerging it would continue into perpetuity and then 60 million people died and an entire world was plunged into chaos so it's got to pay attention and vote I think a lot of people in this room are incredibly successful they work extraordinarily hard they leave nothing on the field every day and yet we cannot understand five crises a second we just every moment we cannot understand that so can you help us understand one how did you maintain calm and peace because the one thing that I find whenever I have observed you is that you never seem frazzled you never seem out of sorts we don't see you angry and I'm sure there are those moments so I know you're a human being but you wear and you wore the troubles very lightly and there were a lot of troubles how do you do that or how did you do that well it helps to be born in Hawaii because it's like the weather is really nice and you're sitting there on the beach you soaked all that stuff in and it makes you very chill III do think some of it is temperament and it's interesting those of you who are parents know this experience yeah you watch Michelle and I watch our daughters and Michelle and I have very different temperaments and we watch our daughters and they have inherited different temperaments from each of us and and so some of it I think is just hardwired the most important thing for me I don't think this is unique to the presidency I suspect people in whatever their endeavors probably adapt similar tricks for me what I always found helpful and was I was able to sustain throughout my presidency was a focus on the long view because it strikes me that what frazzles people or leads them to snap judgments or anger is is an obsession on the short-term and in the same way that a CEO I think makes a better decision if they have a long term strategy which isn't to say that they don't have to sweat the details of execution but they understand that they're gonna be ups and downs and certain blind alleys you go down and setbacks but you're maintaining focus on whatever that North Star is I I found that was useful for me to do and I think it is most important in this era where you are where our society is constructed to entice you to be addicted to instant feedback right I mean that that's that that's been nature of the Information Age you've got a phone somebody's giving you something is it are you liked or you disliked it a mic you'd am I not right and and I think that that mentality seeps into everything we do I and I found it really useful for example I I never watched I never watched television news programs for eight years never I mean I was first of all most of what I saw or most of what was reported I knew a long time ago and so it wasn't news to me but also what was being you know by its nature what you're being fed is something that's gonna get a rise out of you I mean that otherwise you're not you had to make a conscious decision I remember you told me that but in a gym you never have a CNN Sports Center nothing on television you've made a conscious decision though I'm not starting my day that way yeah but it wasn't a hard decision for me to make because and again remember I was defending freedom of the press so this isn't a knock on the press it's just that it was not helpful in me making decisions and so that was one the only other thing that I'll mentioned because I know we're running short on time I found myself for whatever whatever reason and again some of this is just my sensibility comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and I think that's hard for some folks but let's take the economic crisis that I walked into and and in fact I was already having to function a little bit in an executive capacity towards the end of my race in 2008 because crisis was happening we were trying to get a rescue package in place President Bush was very weakened I was talking to Hank Paulson the Treasury secretary and Bernanke almost on a daily basis as well as congressional leaders the decisions that we made in that crisis and people sometimes forget how bad it was but the economy contracted faster than it did during the Great Depression the financial system if you look at various indicators was imploding more severely than it did in 1929 and the world was more interconnected than it was then and more of on a hair-trigger because of technology and capital moving across borders rapidly in those situations I remember sitting with Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and others Austan Goolsbee here is here he was part of our team somewhere around here Austin helped save the economy take about Austin but he'll recall as I do we'd be in meetings with the some of the smartest people on earth and had the best data possible and yet most of the time the decisions I was making were 5545 decisions if we were lucky it be a 60/40 decision but oftentimes it was a 51/49 decision one specific issue that Austin will remember because he was deeply involved with was for example in terms of saving the auto industry we had no doubt that we had two that was worthwhile there was there was no doubt that we had to intervene heavily we were going to have to help the auto industry restructure there was a significant question as to whether Chrysler could be salvaged or whether GM and Ford who were in a much healthier position had to be our primary focus and we had to play triage and I remember us having several days of debate around this and ultimately you you didn't know for sure and being comfortable with the notion that you're never going to be sure the same was true with the bin Laden raid a 51/49 decision you're never going to be sure but what you can be sure about is you have you've taken the time to get the best information possible you've surrounded yourself with the best people possible who are willing to challenge each other and challenge you so that you're leaving no stone unturned and if you've done that well having confidence that the decision you make will be the best possible one that could be made in that circumstance then you can sleep at night also presuming that you're guided by a set of principles or values that are important and and and in the case of the president the the the guiding value had to be what's good for the country as opposed to what was good for my poll numbers or what was good for you know how much flak I was gonna be getting as a consequence of the decision or what it might do to my quote-unquote legacy somewhere off in the distance I that had a soothing effect on me because then my my general attitude was all right if I've if I've checked all those boxes then there's nobody that could be making a better decision than me it may turn out that I'm wrong but I'm doing what was supposed to be done we'll stop here can I just remark though these chairs are a little too comfortable so we'll jet like so I'm worried if I start sinking back I don't think we think you're gonna fall asleep so one question that I wanted to ask you about which was a follow-up to what you just said about that you could sleep at night when didn't you sleep at night I was pretty good about sleeping we were talking earlier about uh whether I was a morning person or a night owl so I'm I'm a night owl meaning I don't usually go to bed until like 1:30 and and in the morning I'm sorry incoherent so typically my day I would start in the White House gym and I'd work out then I'd have breakfast I would read what was called the presidential daily briefing which Michelle called my death book because basically it was it's a national security document that's prepared that includes anything that happened around the world overnight or any trends that would pose a significant threat to US national security rough way to wake up and start yeah and so you're reading of man really that's happening and then I go to the office meetings work at 6:30 I was pretty disciplined about coming home and having dinner with the girls and which was a very important break for about an hour hour and a half and then I'd do my reading and we're writing in the evening or telephone calls and I'd go to about 1:30 the point being by the time I hit my head hit the pillow I was out it very rarely would it take me more than 10 minutes to get to sleep the the issues that not on me the the ones that I had had to wrestle with and and what internally at least become most emotional about typically had to do with sending young men and women in the war when I came into office we had two active Wars Afghanistan was actually in a more perilous situation at that point in 2008 and based on the recommendations of our generals and then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates I found it necessary to have to deploy actually more troops in Afghanistan and I remember I made this announcement at West Point before a graduating class there and as I was speaking to these young people I knew that as a consequence the decision I was making some of them might not come back or if they came back they might not be the same and those decisions weighed on me and don't go away because we also made it a practice of visiting Walter Reed and happily by the end of my presidency when I visited Walter Reed typically there'd be only a handful of folks but at the beginning I might spend three hours going from room to room to room to room and you'd see 21 year olds who had been shot and were paralyzed or young men who'd lost not just one limb but many in fact at Walter Reed the the folks who had just quote/unquote lost a leg or an arm or considered more fortunate and there was no self-pity in them and there was extraordinary pride in their in their service and their families could not have been prouder of them and more committed to their recovery and and there would be these happy stories of seeing folks who I first met just completely torn up and then two or three years later they'd come walking on prosthetics into the White House for some sort of event and it was a great joy there but there was also just an extraordinary amount of hardship and the sense that you have to get these decisions right for them that you have to do everything you can so that their sacrifices are in service of policies worthy of them that would weigh on you and and there were times where I would do some tossing and turning around that so I've read and heard you say that the hardest day was the Sandy Hook day and it's five years exactly to Sandy Hook on December 11th so we're just a few days away and that was a stunning moment for the world because you wept I still remember what you said when you talked about the children not graduating or parenting them get married etc that was one of those things you couldn't get to go your way in terms of how do you look at it five years later what do you say to yourself especially given the number of mass shootings that we're still seeing in America well I'll talk about the specifics of gun laws and gun safety laws and then I'll talk broader emotions around not having things go your way look this is a big diverse complicated country which means that democracy can be frustrated and the way the gun issue has evolved in this country reflects deeper and more complicated schisms in our society guns have become symbolic of a whole host of other issues and how those who live in the city of Chicago think about guns ends up being just very different than those who are living in rural Iowa and some of that's justified right Michelle and I remember I remember campaigning with her in Iowa and we went into somebody's farm and as we were driving out during Twilight she said you know if I was living out on this farm I'd have a shotgun yes because I don't know when the sheriff's gonna respond if some crazy person pulls off the highway into my house that's legitimate that there's genuine cultural affinities that are built around you know a dad taking their kid out to go hunting for the first son and and and that's real and that's legitimate and important but what has gotten tangled up and it is a combination of the economic interests of gun manufacturers partisan politics the the underlying wars that you know we've been seeing around folks in certain parts of the country feeling as if they're ignored or elites are looking down on them or what have you and so it becomes this big cultural signifier and and that combination has been toxic in getting just common sense stuff through and and and I actually believed that Sandy Hook was one of those moments of clarity when we might cut through all that nonsense and all that extra stuff because here were six-year-olds I mean I'm you you've got a young daughter and and and the brutality that was visited on them was such where I remember going up to because I was there only two days after it happened the the State Police who were called in and had to deal with the site they were all experiencing trauma and had to and these are some hard tough guys and they had get counseling and take time off it was heartbreaking and and so the assumption was and and and I will be even more and I don't mean this to be controversial but just to be honest these were mostly middle-class white kids and frankly we have a tendency to expect somehow if it's you know some team black kids getting killed and shot and so all these things I thought would lead to not a great awakening not a transformation not some radical legislation although that's what happened in Australia about 30 years ago was there was one serial killing and the whole country just this isn't worth it so that's what happened and they and and just they do they just pass sweeping gun laws far more restrictive than anything we would even consider here all we were talking about was some modest gun safety measures that would not have stopped the majority of gun related deaths but would have saved some people would have stopped some potential killing spree and the failure of Congress to act was I think the angriest and most disappointing that I've ever been and probably the most surprised that failure told me something's broken in our politics that we could not respond I mean not one whit not not it wasn't like a watered-down bill it wasn't a compromise bill it was nothing and we just assumed that this is the price of doing business that occasionally we'll have twenty six year olds killed and so now how did I deal with it well you stay at it you try something else and and we revisited what we could do from a regulatory perspective and we continue to advocate and make some modest difference where we could but it wasn't satisfying and and and one of the things that you have to reconcile yourself with in the presidency but really any job of public responsibilities or for that matter as a citizen that just wants to do right and participate in making the country better in the world better is you're gonna fall short of what would be optimal I mean the formal Care Act's was not my grand design for healthcare reform but 20 million people got health insurance that didn't have it before now 10 million you know 10 million people still don't have it in part because there were states where the governor's just for ideological reasons would not take free money to expand Medicaid inexcusable and then we couldn't break through that although we tried and we picked off a couple over time but but you have to you have to feel I won't say content but you have to you have to be at peace with the notion that you you work and your work and your work and then you you get something done not everything done and I and I always used to tell my team and I tell my team to this day if we're making something better than it was before that's good better is good and and and and that seems obvious but oftentimes in politics we don't think that way we think well if we're not getting everything we wanted if we had to make some compromises if we fell short on this or that issue that somehow we should be disappointed or give up and and I said no you the the sweep of history is is that groups of people get an idea and they move it and they move it and they push the boulder up the hill and then you get to a little plateau and the boulder rests there for a second and you're the world's better than it was and then you somebody else or you start pushing the boulder back up and and and that's that's how you end up with a civil rights act that's how you end up with you know the amendment allowing women to vote that's how that's how you end up with you know that all the benefits and freedoms that a lot of people have fought for for years I think it's interesting that I think it would be hard for us to imagine considering the grandness and the global nests and the historic nature of your presidency that the pragmatism is so clear you know it's just moving the ball down the field yeah so when you think about that and we pivot to the presidential center that will be on the south side of Chicago help us understand what that is well it's gonna be really cool and thank you for bringing it let me start and and I have to say melody has been one of the leaders that really has helped to move this thing and make it working and so I could not be more grateful [Applause] and there are a number of people in this room so I'm not gonna start naming them because I'll forget but but it actually connects to what I've been saying earlier one lesson that I learned as president is that most of the big challenges we face climate change or economic inequality or an in inadequate education system whatever your issue is most of the time what's preventing the problem from getting solved is not technical it's typically not that we don't know what to do or we don't have tools available to us that would move the ball down the field usually the reason change doesn't happen is because of people and politics and they are failure to organize ourselves to be able to act in concert to get something done and and so when I was about to leave the White House and I had to ask myself all right I'm a pretty young guy knock on wood you know I got some years left to to make a contribution well what is the thing that Michelle and I could it could it could do that would have the biggest impact and there will be issues that we care deeply about and I just mentioned some of them climate change or how do we make sure that there are enough well-paying jobs for the next generation and how do we address the criminal justice system so that it is more Justin and I'll be working on all those things individually but the thing that I I believed would have the biggest impact is what if I could train the next generation of leadership to take the baton what if I could make sure that it wasn't just training the people who got to go to the fanciest schools or were fast-tracked to corner offices or you know to work at Treasury but people in local communities as well as those young people what if we could make sure that it wasn't just restricted to one city or the country but the world because as I've traveled around the world I'd make a point of always meeting with young people from the host countries and we'd have a town hall and I'd have a discussion and you would see these amazing young people who were doing incredible things in their local communities but we're disconnected from each other often under resource didn't know how to scale up didn't know what path they might take in order to accelerate the work they were doing and so the presidential center that were gonna be building in Jackson Park alongside the University of Chicago the museum Science and Industry will be a transformative tourist attraction an economic engine for the city of Chicago it has the potential I think to transform this southern lakefront in a way that stitches together what's Millennium Park has become Museum campus has become and what Lincoln Park has been for quite some time so that the city is no longer divided [Applause] it promises to bring opportunity to communities that too often have been neglected and the city of Chicago has never looked better it has never been more spectacular but if you ask people outside of Chicago what about Chicago the only thing they think about is crime rates and kids being shot and that's a failure of our collective imaginations because we know what a extraordinary City this is but it tells us that you can't just have half a city where 3/4 of a city doing well if you want to be a true global city I read three to four billion back three three to four billion dollars thousands of initial jobs and construction several thousand permanent jobs generated as a consequence so but but more concretely there will be a campus it will have a museum so you can come see Michele's dresses and our campaign buttons and all kinds of cool stuff but what I'm really it most excited about is is that it will house programming and the goal of the programming will be to Train Connect resource can convene this extraordinary generation of leadership that across sectors that when they get together and are thinking about problems come up with remarkable solutions and are already doing amazing work so we just had some viewer where we just had sort of a launching summit we brought 500 of these young leaders together half from the United States half from overseas and you would sit in a room and you'd watch some young woman in Tanzania who had started you know health clinics for rural women sitting next to a gentleman from Appalachia who had started a STEM program for towns that you know had seen a decline in mining and they're having a conversation and starting to trade ideas and figuring out how can they work together and frating you know they're doing all that stuff with their phones that I can't do because it goes really fast and and and so what we're gonna have is tiers of programming we'll have a tier of young leaders who are already doing amazing things but essentially just need more support they need financing they need technical training they need help with their media profiles etc they might be you know combating aids they might be doing work with respect to human trafficking they might be a young entrepreneur who's come up with a great idea for getting low-cost solar energy into rural areas they might be somebody who's figured out how to train ex-offenders to connect with jobs and so we'll work with them intensively almost like a VC might work with not an early-stage startup as somebody who's who's about to break through a bigger category of young people that we want to work where the people like me when I first came into Chicago idealistic half potential but don't know what the heck they're doing or how they might have an impact on the world and whether we do this in college campuses whether we bring them on-site for trainings the idea here would be to to give them a sense of how they can act on the issues they care about some of them may want to go into politics some of them may be in the nonprofit sector some of them may want to go back and get their MBA but want to be responsible in business for creating a work environment and a community that is reflective of their values and will teach them how to do that and then a third level will be a digital platform that we're going to build out that has the capacity to reach millions where we want to teach young people as early as in elementary school or high school basic civics how they can get involved out they can get engaged how their government works how their voice matters experimenting with ways to create a better information environment so young people don't grow up thinking that the news is just insulting people or or having glib one-liners but rather you know how do what you evaluate your world and and what's your place in it I know we're running short I want to make sure we understand in this room because there's so much power and influence here what is it that we can do to move this along well I make very specific thank you clean this up I did not expect this question but I will helping to have a handy answer but you're bringing something very important to our city but more importantly to the world in terms of the change that could be affected and it's one thing for us to all admire the problems that exist today it's another to actually do something about it I'm sure we'll all visit but I think there is probably more well right now there's nothing to visit cuz I wanna tell which was right I would I wouldn't assume hope more of us yeah would you want let me let me say this Michelle and I have decided this had to be here because this city has given us so much it gave me Michelle yeah she grew up in South Shore my daughters were born at the University of Chicago hospital that's where they went to school I got my start in public life in the same community where we're building this Center so so we owe so much to the city and you know this is a big project so when all is said and done you know I will be bringing close to a billion dollars to the city both in the bricks and mortar and to the program but this isn't ultimately for me right that this is for Malia and Sasha it is for your kids the the notion is this becomes a university for social change this becomes a university a hub for leadership and this becomes a beacon for the kinds of values that I was talking about earlier that have made America to this point the envy of the world and by locating it here in Chicago we find a great experiment or a great laboratory for that work because Chicago is as representative I believe of America as any city on in country its north-south-east-west there's every kind of person there is every element of our economy is represented here but it's also gonna be a global focal point look I was just in China in India we have about a million young people around the world who are already part of their by Obama Global alumni network I hear the Indians love them so much they do I will say so so it gives us it it becomes yet another anchor for viewing Chicago as a global city but because ultimately this is not for me and Michelle because we purposely weren't interested in just building a mausoleum or you know a you know a place to come idolize the Obamas but rather than living breathing thing we need Chicago in baldon and there are a couple of ways that you can get involved I mean number one we've got to raise money and the bulk of the dollars for this project will come from outside Chicago but frankly in terms of bricks and mortar and the economic development benefits that will accrue to Chicago and the ability to show that to use this as a bridge between the two Chicago's so that they feel connected you know it's harder to persuade folks in San Francisco to do bricks and mortar as approach to programming here and so we're gonna need help and the Civic committee has been active and involved in there are been already companies like exelon who've shown extraordinary leadership and and we're grateful for that but but I'm hopeful that all of you think about this the same way that you've thought about Millennium Park the same way that you thought about the amazing additions to the Art Institute or museum campus that this is part of your legacy as Chicagoans and I want us to do this jointly in partnership the second thing is that we are going to want your expertise and involvement in training the young people because although I mentioned amazing young leaders who are already doing great stuff part of what we're also going to be doing is a continuation of the my brother's keeper program that mentors disadvantaged young men of color who are too often heading towards jail we want to intervene and make sure they're going to college instead through mentorship programs and providing resources so that they can aspire Michelle is going to continue her work with let girls learn which involves for example ensuring there's sufficient stem education resources so we got women as engineers and scientists and breaking down barriers there and so many of you have connections and contacts and within your companies you occupy worlds that kids can't imagine and it's not that hard for you to open your doors and just show them what's possible and and the impacts that arise out of that or the ways in which you can partner with us in that kind of work is going to be extraordinary so that's the second thing so the Obama foundation is open for business they can pick up the phone and call we are ready to go in the other room David Simas is our extraordinary executive director he was one of my top advisors at the White House he's now moved to Chicago in part four mission in part because his wife loved Chicago and and so does his younger daughter who's now going to lab and so David is based out of Hyde Park we've got offices there and we want all of you to to reach out to us but if not we're going to reach out to you we know we know where you live as they say so we will find you but but but you know just a closing point on this melody that this is going to work and the reason I know it's going to work is because I travel around the world and for those who are right now feeling kind of discouraged and depressed and think the world is kind of spinning off its axis a little bit you you talked to gathering a couple hundred young people and I just did it in New Delhi but I've done in Johannesburg I've done it and Italy I've done it all across the United States they will make you feel good about the future that the challenge they have is not that they aren't instilled with the values that we discussed earlier it's not that they don't want to make a difference it's not that they're well not willing to work hard the problem is is that the institutions that used to get young people involved in our public and our civic lives those things have broken down you know the the neighborhood organizations and the churches and the local businesses etc it means we're all atomized and split apart and so these young people have all this amazing talent and idealism but they don't know how to link up except on the internet and through hashtags and and and all that energy gets dissipated and this is a way for us to to harness that and I and and when you're with them and you see what their account and what how excited and energized and focused and productive they end up being when they're together you will feel inspired you will feel good about it the world at a time when sometimes that's that's hard to do all right so I'm we were so over time but I'm gonna end with to really quit that clock was not correct I'm sure it was not okay I'm gonna ask you two really quick things so the first one is just curious when you sit around with the living presidents and you're chit-chatting about your lives what do you all say you most miss about being president mm-hmm you know I I'll be honest we we don't sit around chit-chatting that much but we had a good time down in Houston when we were doing fundraising there for for hurricane relief I I think I think I speak for the ex-presidents when I say they don't spend a lot of time reminiscing I think there's a there's a sense of that was an extraordinary adventure I think everybody gets a sense of pride in work they did some regrets and things that were left undone but that you have to look forward I can say personally the things I miss and it's actually surprisingly short list I don't miss the pomp and circumstance of the presidency I didn't expect to I don't miss you know having you know 500 cars surrounding me when I get off a plane and saluting and you know having you know to sit down at some dinner with all kinds of silverware and stuff you know I bet like like I don't miss all that stuff I missed the Truman balcony which is a great view especially during the summer you look out and there's the Washington Monument and behind that is the Jefferson Memorial and on it on a on a clear summer night and stars are twinkling and the monuments are lit up it's inspiring and gives you a sense of perspective I miss that I miss Air Force One when I'm flying around the world I don't miss it day-to-day but like on the trip I just took literally around the world in five days like this my cabin with the bed and all that there's a shower that was really helpful so I miss that but I miss marine one more because they'll frankly I know a number of people with planes but not that many people have helicopters and and you can really cut down on traffic so so I miss that I confess and the third thing I miss is you know we had these wonderful music series some of them were broadcast some of them we just decided to have a party and like for example the last time I saw Prince was a couple months before he died he actually performed at a party for us melody was there he was really good but you know I I remember this is probably a good place to end unless you have some burning question but I remember there's something called the Gershwin Awards that we didn't even know about but it turns out there's this thing called the Gershwin Awards and it goes to sort of the Hall of Fame for songwriters and the honoree I think it was the first year but it might have been the second was Paul McCartney and I've gotten to know Paul McCartney and he's a wonderful guy and amazing stories that he can tell about the Beatles getting started and so forth but that first time we met the way it's organized is a bunch of musicians come and do tributes and obviously McCartney's got a lot of songs so it was easy to select all these amazing artists to do these numbers and then at the end McCartney came out and he performed and and this is all in the East Room which is a very small room for those of you that relative to something a ballroom like this I mean it price seats maybe 200 people and Michelle and I are sitting in the front row and McCartney starts playing some songs and then at some point he says I'd like to dedicate this to the first lady and he starts singing Mia Michel my down these words and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking so what are the odds that this little black girl from the South Side of Chicago you know in 1968 or 69 you know right before the Beatles broke up when they were already according to John Legend bigger than Jesus that you fast-forward 40 years later and Paul McCartney's singing to that little girl and what does that say about what's possible and and what does that say about the little girls right now who are on the southside of Chicago and and and and what kinds of chances are we giving them what kinds of talents are we missing if if we're not providing them with the kind of opportunities and pathways that I had and Michelle had and that you had so I remember that I miss that that particular kind of moment that you can get in the White House it's it's not the glitz of it but it's a reminder of the possibilities of human life so [Applause] we miss you thank you everybody Merry Christmas Happy New Year bye

Channel: The Economic Club of Chicago

Views: 386,877

Keywords: Barack Obama, The Economic Club of Chicago, Mellody Hobson, Obama, President Obama, 44, EconClubChi, Economic Club of Chicago, Econ Club Chicago, US Presidents

Id: D2XAo0hNk1Y

Length: 83min 27sec (5007 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2019