A Promised Land

by Barack Obama

In years to come, those who’d been in the room would sometimes make reference to that meeting, understanding that my answer to Michelle’s question had been an impromptu articulation of a shared faith, the thing that had launched us all on what would be a long, rough, and improbable journey. They would remember it when they saw a little boy touch my hair in the Oval Office, or when a teacher reported that the kids in her inner-city class had started studying harder after I was elected.

“If you pick me,” Joe said, “I want to be able to give you my best judgment and frank advice. You’ll be the president, and I’ll defend whatever you decide. But I want to be the last guy in the room on every major decision.”

During the 1970s and early 1980s, this patchwork system functioned well enough, with roughly 80 percent of Americans covered through either their jobs or one of these two programs. Meanwhile, defenders of the status quo could point to the many innovations brought to market by the for-profit medical industry, from MRIs to lifesaving drugs.

If I sometimes grew despondent, even angry, over the amount of misinformation that had flooded the airwaves, I was grateful for my team’s willingness to push harder and not give up, even when the battle got ugly and the odds remained long. Such tenacity drove the entire White House staff. Denis McDonough at one point distributed stickers to everyone, emblazoned with the words FIGHT CYNICISM. This became a useful slogan, an article of our faith.

So I ended my speech that night by quoting from Teddy’s letter, hoping that his words would bolster the nation just as they had bolstered me. “What we face,” he’d written, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”