- Every president since george washington
Has had to define what we mean by the words, "we the people"
And "a more perfect union."
In moments of harmony and conflict,
Of growth and severe distress,
In times of triumph and tragedy,
Each of our presidents has had to make a choice
To take us forward or backward,
To unite us or divide us,
To greet the future with open arms or a clenched fist.
The choices they made and how they acted on them
Is the story of the american presidency.
(soft music)
Our constitution lists the basic powers and responsibilities
Of the presidency,
But there's a lot it doesn't say about the job.
Every president, including me,
Has had to figure out some things on his own.
One of the most important is how to be the voice
Of the people and to give purpose and vision
To our national life.
Our best presidents have had the ability
To look around corners and peer into the future
And inspire us to get there through their rhetoric,
Their leadership, or their sheer force of personality.
These presidents have issued a call to action,
Daring us to join them in their vision for a better future.
I'll never forget the feelings that stirred in me
As a 14-year-old when president kennedy challenged us
To ask not what our country could do for us,
But what we could do for our country.
And I'll certainly never forget shaking his hand
Just two years later in the rose garden,
When I was lucky enough to represent arkansas
At boys nation.
I came away from that experience
Really considering a life in public service
For the first time
And with a new appreciation for the ability
Of our elected leaders to unite us in common cause.
(ominous music)
- [yohuru] in 1961, john f. Kennedy really
Is a breath of fresh air on the american landscape.
He's 42 years old. He's a war hero.
He has a beautiful young wife and he represents the hopes
For the future of the united states.
- Now the trumpet summons us again.
- Early 1960s, when president kennedy
Comes into office, it's a really dynamic and tense time
In international relations because it's the cold war
And nobody wants to make it a hot war.
- [announcer] 1961 was a year of international tensions.
- You have the soviet union in control of poland
And various other parts of eastern europe.
There's a new wall dividing berlin and then the bay of pigs.
Kennedy's failed effort that he inherited from eisenhower
To overthrow fidel castro.
So there really is a sense that kennedy needs to show
That there's something he can achieve.
- One of the greatest challenges for kennedy in this moment
Is the battle for space.
(rocket engine revving)
- [man] the russians have successfully launched
The first satellite ever to cirlce the earth.
- During the eisenhower administration,
On October 4th 1957,
The soviet union launched the first satellite, sputnik.
- [announcer] the dawn of a new era.
- Just a month later,
The soviets launch another satellite into space
And it's got a live dog onboard.
- All over the world, people are ooh-ing and ahh-ing
About soviet space prowess.
- And america seems woefully behind.
Their efforts at space exploration had resulted
In numerous mishaps.
- At cape canaveral,
The navy rockets known as vanguards were disintegrating.
- [kennedy] there is no area where the united states
Received a greater setback
Then our being second in the field of space in the 1950s.
- It was very serious at the time.
Lyndon johnson said the romans ruled the world
Because they controlled the roads.
The british ruled the world because they controlled the sea.
And whoever controls space will rule the world.
- By the time kennedy becomes president,
The space race is really shaping up to be
Like a giant interstellar chess match
Between the soviet union and the united states.
On April 12th, 1961, the soviets launched the first person
Into outer space with yuri gagarin
Who makes a full orbit of the earth.
Just a couple of weeks later,
The us tests it's mercury atlas rocket,
But it blows up 43 seconds after liftoff.
And then in August,
Soviet astronaut, gherman titov
Makes 17 orbits around the earth,
Stays in space for more than 25 hours.
- Kennedy's got this public relations disaster
Really on his hands, so what are we gonna do?
We need to find something we can beat the russians in.
- [kennedy] this nation should commit itself
To achieving the goal
Before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon
And returning him safely to the earth.
- There are those who are incredibly excited
About the exploration of this new frontier.
At the same time, there are others who are deeply concerned
About how much money is being spent on the space race.
- The amount of money that kennedy was asking for
Was phenomenal at the time for a government project.
The manhattan project,
The biggest, most expensive science and engineering project
That had been done up to that point was close,
But it's still less than the $25 billion
It was gonna take to get america to the moon
In 1960s dollars.
- So kennedy has the unenviable task of somehow trying
To inspire the american people to move aggressively
On this space initiative.
And he's able to do that in a speech that he delivers
At rice university in September of 1962.
- This generation does not intend
To flounder in the backwash
Of the coming age of space.
We mean to be a part of it, we mean to lead it.
- Kennedy's real challenge in the moon race
Was sticking to this idea that this ultimately
Was a worthy measure of american ingenuity.
- The eyes of the world now look into space,
To the moon, and to the planets beyond.
And we have vowed that we shall not see it governed
By a hostile flag of conquest,
But by a banner of freedom and peace.
- And it's a beautiful and hopeful message
About the tremendous opportunity before americans.
- That goal will serve to organize and measure the best
Of our energies and skills,
Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept,
One we are unwilling to postpone,
And one we intend to win and the others too.
- The way that john f. Kennedy frames this,
Is that if the united states can put a man on the moon,
Then we can do anything,
Then we can solve inequality,
That we can solve economic disparity.
And so this idea of space is intimately connected
To this idea of the united states being innovative,
Being first-world super power.
- We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade
And do the other thing,
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
- Unfortunately john kennedy is assassinated in 1963,
So he'll never see the culmination of his bold vision
To land a man on the moon.
But ultimately his vision helped to shape decades to come.
- The apollo launching in July of 1969,
It's basically almost six years
Since john f kennedy's assassination,
But it's linked to jfk indelibly because he called for it,
And he gave the most eloquent words for it.
- [kennedy] even though I realized
That this is in some measure,
An act of faith and vision
For we do not now know what benefits await us.
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens,
That we shall send to the moon, a giant rocket,
More than 300 feet tall made of new metal alloys,
Some of which have not yet been invented,
Fitted together with a precision
Better than the finest watch,
And do all this and do it right and do it first,
Before this decade is out, then we must be bold.
(rocket engine roaring) (triumphant music)
- Soaring through the vastness, blackness, the cold of space
Will carry the pledge made eight years ago
By president kennedy, put a man on the moon,
Bring him back safely in this decade.
(triumphant music)
- By establishing this idea of the new frontier,
And by establishing that space is part of this vision
That he has of the nation of america, of citizenship,
Of democracy,
It becomes inextricably linked with kennedy's identity
And who he is.
- What we celebrate in john f. Kennedy is the vision,
The boldness to articulate something
That allowed americans to think about challenging themselves
Beyond what they were in aspiring to what they could be.
- [clinton] to get us to the moon in the 1960s,
President kennedy boldly asked us to look upward,
To reach for the stars,
To imagine that our future belonged among them.
But in the 1860s,
With the civil war raging,
President abraham lincoln asked us not to look up, but back,
Back to our founding vision of liberty and justice for all.
After the horrors of the battle of gettysburg,
Lincoln must persuade a war weary public
To continue fighting for that vision.
- The gettysburg campaign was the bloodiest in the war.
I think the single day for casualties,
There were over 50,000.
- Lincoln sees the civil war, possibly, as divine judgment
On the country for the evil of slavery.
He says that, that it may be the will of god,
That every drop of blood has to be shed,
To pay for every drop of blood that was shed by the whip.
- The battle of gettysburg show northerners
That defeating the south was going
To be a long bloody enterprise.
(upbeat string music)
- At the same time,
Photo journalists like alexander gardner and matthew brady
Using the emerging technology of photography,
Have brought the horrors of war home
To americans in a way that they've never before seen.
- They were portrait photographers.
And when the war came along,
They packed up vast amounts of camera gear
And headed to the front.
And you have to understand the exposures,
It had to be three or four or five seconds,
So there were no action shots from the civil war.
Mainly bodies laying in trenches or on the battlefield.
The aftermath is what they photographed.
That was a real revelation.
People were horrified by the images.
- There was a faction of the nation that looked at the death
And destruction and said, this is why we need to stop this.
It was time to just compromise with the south.
- So at this point,
Public support for the war is definitely questionable.
Americans are starting to see the magnitude of the sacrifice
That they're being asked to bear
And not everyone is willing to do that.
- And the president is weighed down,
Not only by the enormous numbers of war dead,
But how to continue to inspire the american people,
Particularly the army and soldiers
To continue to support the union cause.
- At the same time, a new national cemetery
Was being opened in gettysburg
And there was going to be a dedication in November of '63.
- Lincoln has been asked to speak at the dedication
And he needs to give america a reason to pursue
This bloody war.
This war that has cost so much.
- Lincoln was a questing questioning, thoughtful man.
As the war unfolds, he's thinking more and more,
Not simply about how, but why,
And gettysburg was about why,
Why are 750,000 people having to die?
- But in that moment,
In the months leading up to the gettysburg address,
He's struggling with that.
And so he draws inspiration from a variety of sources,
The founders, the works of antiquity, the bible.
- Abraham lincoln mastered the english language
As no other president has.
And what's so extraordinary is lincoln
Had almost no schooling,
But he used words in simple, concise ways to move people
As almost no one else has.
- On November 19th, 1863, lincoln arrived in gettysburg
Where the graveyard was created on still not fully finished.
- We have to imagine masses of people gathered there,
Lincoln gets up, he's got 272 words.
It takes only a few minutes.
And yet in those 272 words,
He redefines the civil war and he redefines america.
- Four score and seven years ago,
Our fathers brought forth on this continent,
A new nation conceived in liberty
And dedicated to the proposition
That all men are created equal.
- What he saw as america's future was a place
Where there was equality of opportunity
As espoused in the declaration of independence.
That was his vision for america.
- From these honored dead,
We take increased devotion to that cause
For which they gave the last full measure of devotion
That we here highly resolve that these dead
Shall not have died in vain,
That this nation under god shall have a new birth
Of freedom,
And that government of the people by the people
For the people shall not perish from the earth.
- The real-time reviews of gettysburg were mixed.
Lincoln worried that he hadn't really done much,
Accomplished much.
- But the power of the speech was that,
Because it was brief,
It was reprinted in its entirety in most newspapers
And almost immediately as a pamphlet
And it bolstered morale in the north,
It made it clear to people what the war was about,
And it also made him appear to be more of a leader
In control.
- What no one could have imagined in that moment
Is how significant this speech would become
In the aftermath of gettysburg.
This line of demarcation at 1863 really represents
The old america that's left behind
By virtue of the civil war
And this rededication to the principles of liberty
And justice that lincoln articulates
At the gettysburg address
Become the foundation for the new america,
The america that will witness the passage
Of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment,
The america that will witness in 1920,
The passage of the 19th amendment,
The america of the civil rights act of 1964
And the voting rights act of 1965,
The america of lincoln's vision of hope and promise.
- Kennedy looked at the heavens and saw possibility.
Lincoln looked at a divided nation
And saw the promise of freedom.
Theodore roosevelt looked at the natural wonders of america
And saw a sacred trust.
For our 26th president,
The beauty of america's vast unspoiled landscape
Formed an essential part of our national identity.
His passion for conservation helped change the very idea
Of america from a collection of rugged individuals,
To a people united by a shared responsibility
To preserve the gift of america's natural heritage.
Like lincoln and kennedy,
His vision of what america could be
Stretched far beyond the moment.
- Teddy roosevelt was one of the most powerful personalities
We've ever had in the american presidency,
But his childhood was pretty difficult,
He was sick very often and that childhood sickness
Really drove a lot of what came next.
He built himself up as this kind of grand, physical specimen
Who liked boxing and hunting and adventuring.
- In 1884, he goes out to the badlands to become a rancher.
And it's in nature in that harsh environment
That he becomes the strong, dynamic figure that he is,
In his later life.
- Theodore roosevelt believed that you had
An outdoor bill of rights
And that that's what made the united states special,
That you might live in new york city or philadelphia
Or denver,
But at any time you could get lost in the wild,
And go fishing, hunting, camping, sleep under the stars.
- So in 1903, roosevelt went on what is known as,
The first whistle stop campaign.
He was campaigning for reelection.
And the climax of the trip was in yosemite
Where he met john muir.
- John muir was one of the most famous naturalists
In the country in the late 19th and early 20th century.
- Roosevelt had written to muir and asked him
To travel alone with him into yosemite,
Which was muir's beloved landscape.
So muir and roosevelt went into the sequoia woods
Where he marveled at the cathedral like trees.
- He felt that america's natural wonders
Are sort of the counterparts of the cathedrals of europe.
They're a sacred space where people become closer
To the spirit of america and the sense of america
As a shared identity.
- From that point on,
Roosevelt started to think in more religious terms
About wilderness.
Roosevelt later wrote,
"it was like lying in a great solemn cathedral,
Far vaster and more beautiful
Than any built by the hand of man."
- And it was on this trip that roosevelt and muir
Really talked about how they were gonna preserve
Our natural resources.
- There's a lot of anxiety at this moment
About what industrial capitalism is starting to do
To the landscape.
What pollution is beginning to do
To the rivers, to the mountains.
- You have technology and railroads
And all of these innovations that are happening
At a breakneck pace.
And so we have this tension between industrialization
And the desire to protect these places
That are seen as pristine and wild,
Because what is going to stop the devastation?
- Though past presidents had created parks,
What roosevelt did was a radical departure.
The grand canyon was one of the central fights
Of the roosevelt presidency.
The great fear of roosevelt in his people
Was that it would become another niagara falls.
Niagara falls proved to them
What happened when commercialism took over
And they saw that happening to the grand canyon.
As roosevelt said,
When he stood on the edge of the grand canyon,
"I hope you will not have a building of any kind,
Not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else
To mar the wonderful granduer, the sublimity,
The great loneliness and beauty of the canyon.
Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it.
The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."
- Theodore roosevelt's, leave it as it is speech
At the grand canyon is almost like lincoln's gettysburg
Address in terms of changing the idea
Of america from a fundamentally
Sort of individualist everyone's out for himself ethos,
To a much more collective attitude
Where we have a shared responsibility
To make things better
For other people, including future generations.
- But there was a real reluctance on congress's part
To go along with roosevelt's vision.
They'd watched him, essentially in their eyes, gone wild
For scenery.
And joseph cannon, who was the speaker of the house
For most of roosevelt's presidency said,
"not one cent for scenery."
So they dragged their feet on the grand canyon
And decided not to make it a national park.
And roosevelt became increasingly frustrated,
Angrier and angrier about this,
Which is what led him to finally declare
The grand canyon a national monument.
National monuments, as opposed to national parks,
Don't have to go through congress.
They can be saved solely by the president
And that blindsided congress, they were furious.
- Theodore roosevelt was not shy
About using his presidential powers,
Especially when he thought that they were in a good
And noble cause, as he saw his own conservation efforts.
And so he really used them on a grand scale.
- And the grand canyon eventually becomes
A national park as we know it today.
- And if he hadn't done it, we would be looking at condos,
Not wilderness.
- All told, theodore roosevelt saved 234 million acres
Of wild america in forms of national forests and parks
And wildlife sanctuaries.
- But he didn't just save that land,
He started a precedent of presidents saving land.
Roosevelt would say,
There are parts of our world that we have to leave
As they are, beyond the human.
And to me, that's the most exciting and inspiring part
Of his vision.
- President theodore roosevelt
Wanted to preserve america's natural wonders.
President franklin roosevelt needs to preserve
What's left of america's economy
Before it disappears completely
In the ravages of the great depression.
Like tr, fdr has great faith in the power of government
To act as a force for good,
To better the lives of this generation and the next.
But after enduring years of misery,
Will the people share his vision and his faith?
- [announcer] he was a young state senator,
Then assistant secretary of the navy.
- So the thing about franklin roosevelt,
Is he's a quintessential rich kid.
He is a somewhat distant cousin of teddy roosevelt
And he's good looking,
The world is his oyster.
- [announcer] next, we see him swimming
With small infantile paralysis patients.
He himself stricken by that malady.
- But his experience with disability
Informs his perspective
On what the federal government has a responsibility
To do for its citizens, when those citizens are suffering.
- I think roosevelt's vision was that government exists
For the benefit of the people.
He promised the new deal for the american people.
He talked about the need to put government to work
For the people.
- He sees himself as a healer for the country
And a healer for the world.
It's a time of terrible economic difficulties,
The great depression.
- The worst year of the great depression is 1932.
We've got mass unemployment, people starving to death.
- And in the weeks before the inauguration,
And there's a new crisis, the banking crisis.
Bank after bank closed its doors
Because it had insufficient funds.
People desperately ran to the banks,
Called bank runs to try to pull out their savings,
Which only made the problem worse.
- All of the depositors are trying to get their money back.
The bank of course has lent out a lot of that money,
So it doesn't have all the money,
And the banks fail.
- People who deposited money in banks, lose everything.
- Finally, by the morning of March 4th, 1933
Inauguration morning,
Three quarters of the banks in the united states
Were closed.
- It's not like anything that we've experienced before.
It seems like the wheels have come off
And we're still going over a cliff, you know,
With no wheels and no wings.
- And so roosevelt comes into office.
And the first thing he does, well, first thing he says is-
- [roosevelt] the only thing we have to fear is,
Fear itself.
- He's trying to restore confidence
Because the country is in a panic.
There's a widespread fear that the failures of the market
Are going to lead to the end of capitalism.
- So on March 6th,
He announced what he called a banking holiday.
- For four days, all banking transactions are suspended.
- During that four days,
Economists worked furiously to come up with a plan
To reopen the banks.
- By Thursday, congress passes the emergency banking act.
It basically takes the weakest banks
And folds them into the stronger banks.
It provides federal funds to prop up those stronger banks.
It reorganized the banking system.
- The thing is they didn't know if it would work
And they were afraid that it wouldn't work.
There's deep concern that the end of the holiday
Would lead to catastrophe.
And this is a make or break moment for the country,
For the economy for millions of people,
And everybody knows that.
- And so roosevelt decides to speak directly
To the american people.
And what he comes up with is a series of radio addresses
As quote unquote, "fireside chats".
- [announcer] ladies and gentlemen,
The president of the united states.
- [roosevelt] my friends, I wanna talk for a few minutes
With the people of the united states about banking.
- People remember this voice as the voice
Of a favorite uncle or a voice of their grandfather,
Who basically was telling them everything's gonna be okay
As he tucked them into bed at night.
- [roosevelt] I can assure you my friend,
That it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank
Than it is to keep it under the mattress.
- The fireside chat, this was Sunday night.
The next day, when the first of the banks were gonna reopen,
Lines began to form outside the banks,
And a lot of people thought,
Oh no, this is what caused the banking crisis
In the first place.
People going into withdraw their money.
But this time people were putting their money back
Into the banks.
- Americans don't just walk, they run to deposit money.
- And within the month, two thirds of the money
That had been pulled out of the banking system
Had been redeposited and that saves the day.
That is the start of the great depression ending.
- Fear is vanishing and confidence is growing.
- It stops the bleeding and it stabilized the system
Temporarily so that the more ambitious restructuring
Could come in.
- [reporter] we have a new deal,
Their purpose: To fight the depression.
- One of the abiding beliefs of roosevelt
Is that the american people are owed something
By the federal government.
So in times of crisis,
The federal government has a responsibility
To meet the needs of the american people.
- Great presidents invest, often at personal
And political costs, in the moment
So that there is a longterm dividend and benefit.
And the presidents we judge most favorably
Are the ones who govern for 50 years out,
Not necessarily for five days out.
- [clinton] the strong vision is a necessary part of the job
Of being a successful president.
But there are times when even the most audacious
And transformative vision,
An idea that could radically alter the lives of millions,
Fails to take hold.
Through no fault of his own,
That's exactly what president dwight eisenhower experiences
When he tries to rally the world behind his vision
Of nuclear disarmament.
- Dwight eisenhower was the hero of world war ii.
He was the man who planned and orchestrated
The normandy invasion.
He entered politics, not with a strong ideology,
But as someone who knew how to get things done
And manage a complex world.
- When eisenhower comes into office in 1953,
It's a very dangerous time in world affairs.
- Many of the global tensions that people had hoped
Would go away with the end of the second world war
Now seemed to be escalating.
- What's happening in 1953,
Is both the united states and the soviet union
Begin developing thermo nuclear weapons,
The hydrogen bomb.
And it's really a matter of life and death.
That's how eisenhower views the stakes of the cold war.
- Freedom is pitted against slavery,
Lightness against the dark.
- And then suddenly during the first year
Of eisenhower's presidency, stalin died.
Stalin was really seen as a hard liner.
He conducted purges that led to mass death
In the soviet union,
And he was considered a vicious, ideological foe
Of the american project.
- The death of stalin is an amazing moment
Because it's unexpected, and really nobody knows exactly
What to do.
Nobody could imagine a world without stalin,
He'd been in power since the middle of the 1920s.
Eisenhower gathers his cabinet and he says,
All right, my goodness, we didn't see this coming.
What's the plan?
And there is no plan.
Most of the president's advisors say,
Well, look, stalin is dead,
But the soviet system still exists.
He'll be replaced by somebody else.
And really this doesn't change anything.
And eisenhower said, I think that's a terrible attitude.
I want on my desk some proposals for how to take advantage
Of stalin's death.
- As a military man,
He understood at a very nuanced level,
Escalation dynamics, aggression, mistrust,
And he saw an opening with the death of stalin
To try to reset the relationship.
- So he gives a great speech in April of 1953,
Called the chance for peace speech.
It's really directed at the new soviet leadership.
And eisenhower says the cold war and the arms race
Is a terrible tragedy.
It's not something that we want,
But if you can assure us that you too want peace,
We can work out something.
And he recounts what exactly the costs of these weapons
That america is building really are.
- The cost of one, modern heavy bomber is this,
A modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants
Each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine fully equipped hospitals.
- The picture that he paints of a world in an arms race,
He says very memorably, is not a real way of life.
- This is not a way of life at all.
In any two cents, under the cloud of threatening war,
It is humanity hanging from across a fire.
- What he's saying is the arms race
Is akin to the crucifixion of humanity.
- He's trying to make the case that fewer countries
With weapons and fewer weapons are a good thing.
And the way to stop an arms race is to limit the building
Of new weapons.
- He was trying to talk about this opportunity that we had
As an international community to reset on some common values
Around trust and cooperation.
- There is an eruption of positive feedback.
America was tired of war, and to hear eisenhower
Offer the hand of peace was an emotional moment
And the public responded with rejoicing,
But also they wanted to know what the next step was.
Was he really willing to put real skin in the game
And begin to dismantle america's own nuclear deterrent?
- [clinton] just three months into his presidency,
President eisenhower surprises the world by calling
For a radical rethinking of the cold war,
But how will the soviet leadership respond
To the bold initiative?
Are they ready to rethink they arms race?
- The soviets are quite cool to eisenhower's overture.
They weren't sure what eisenhower really meant.
Was he really suggesting the cold war was over?
What did that mean in practice?
Did it mean leaving germany?
Did it mean getting out of europe altogether?
So nobody quite understood how you would get
To a peaceful agreement with the soviet union
And the united states, and eisenhower
Wasn't able to clinch the deal in 1953.
- His chance for peace speech fell on deaf ears.
- [announcer] ladies and gentlemen,
The president of the united states.
- Good evening, my fellow americans.
- When he's leaving office in 1961,
He really sees that as a moment to issue a warning
To the country and to the world
About this growing danger that even he, as president
Had been unable to contain.
- I confess that I laid down my official responsibilities
In this field with a definite sense of disappointment.
As one who has witnessed the horror
And the lingering sadness of war,
As one who knows that another war could utterly destroy
This civilization,
I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
- One of the puzzles of eisenhower
Is how a military figure
Becomes one of the world's great advocates,
Perhaps the greatest advocate we've ever had
In the presidency for disarmament.
But I think that that comes out of his own experiences
That he knew, first of all,
The direct costs and human experience of war,
How devastating it could be.
- Thank you and good night.
- Eisenhower had a vision.
And I think it's unfair to call that vision a failure
Because it never rested just on his shoulders.
- He does create the foundations
For some of the first arms control agreements.
That doesn't make eisenhower's efforts successful,
But they do leave some important legacies
That can be turned into successes by kennedy and others.
- And so this idea of vision is a central component
Of how we understand the presidency
To do what it takes to go against the grain,
Perhaps to do what is necessary
And what is necessarily unpopular in particular moments.
So they have vision of what is possible
When we don't necessarily have that vision for ourselves.
- Eisenhower's vision of mutual disarmament failed
In his time,
But he highlighted a challenge that we'd have to face
Sooner or later, and he imagined how it could be met.
It is the perpetual job of the president
To strive for a more perfect union to look around the corner
And down the road and try to keep us growing together
And going forward.
But as we found out,
It can be easier to put a man on the moon
Than to form a more perfect union.
In recent decades, the ability of any president
To unite to country in common cause has been hampered
By increasing polarization,
A well-organized effort from within and without
To erode faith in our institutions
And the lack of an information system rooted in agreement,
Even on basic facts.
It's a new and serious threat to our democracy,
But we shouldn't despair that all is lost.
After all, we've allowed ourselves to walk up
From the edge of destruction before in our history.
And when it mattered most we've pulled back
Led by our finest presidents
Who called on the better angels of our nature
And helped us to chart a new way forward.
We can, and we will do it again.
(soft music)
(gunfire)