- 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".
(pensive violin music)
When I was running for president in 1992,
One of my chief strategists, james carville,
Hung a sign in our war room in little rock
That said, "the economy, stupid".
He did it to remind our campaign staff
To stay focused on the economic issues
That were so important for the voters.
It was good advice,
But it wasn't only true in 1992.
It's been the case for generations.
Of all the forces and trends at play
In the nation at any given time,
Fewer felt as widely or as personally
As the state of the economy.
Whether or not someone has a good job
And feels like they have the opportunity to rise
And give their kids a better life,
Plays a big part in how they view
The direction of our country.
And while many factors that influence the economy
Are beyond the president's control,
Not all of them are.
There's plenty the president can do
To spur the economy on, shore it up,
Create guard rails,
Make sure its opportunities are more fairly shared
And to plant seeds for future growth.
That's part of what thomas jefferson had in mind
When he made one of the most audacious purchases
In our nation's history
And one that would change america forever.
(intense music)
(rhythmic music)
- Thomas jefferson,
First and foremost was a naturalist and explorer
And somebody who's thought in terms of an empire.
He was the visionary who saw
From atlantic to pacific.
And he started finding ways to implement that.
- The united states, in 1803,
Is comprised mostly of a thin sliver of population
Right along the eastern seaboard.
And they're moving out to the west, slowly.
Less than 10% of the country lives in a city.
And the majority of people are farmers.
It's overwhelmingly rural.
And the western part of the united states
Out in the territories
Is entirely dependent on the mississippi river.
- And at the bottom of the river
Was the great port city of new orleans
And jefferson wanted it.
(intense music)
(pensive music)
- But the french controlled the port
And there are rampant rumors,
They're going to shut down the access
Of the mississippi river for americans
And presumably start charging them high tariffs
And pinching them in, squeezing them like an anaconda.
- Jefferson was obsessed with the future of the country,
Thinking that the country would not be safe
As long as there was territory that european powers were on.
There would always be potential trouble for americans.
- It's the biggest issue of the day.
If they're not gonna let us
Send our stuff through that port,
That's going to devastate our livelihood.
And so everyone is absolutely up in arms.
And now, tensions start to rise.
(curious music)
Thomas jefferson doesn't want to go to war with France.
He's a francophile.
He was the ambassador to France.
He likes the french.
So jefferson, trying not to go to war, has an idea.
He's going to send his friend, james monroe,
The guy who will be president, eventually.
And he says,
"I want you to go to France
"and I'm going to authorize you $10 million
"to buy the port of new orleans.
"you go over there and you see if they'll sell it to us".
(pensive music)
- Now, napoleon, having been defeated in haiti
Wants to get rid of his new world holdings.
He wants to focus on europe.
- He needed money to fund his perpetual war
With great britain.
And this was a way for him to get money, to do that.
(suspenseful music)
- [austan] napoleon decides
To get as much money as he can
And just sell the whole thing to the united states.
So monroe shows up
And lo and behold to his utter surprise,
Napoleon was willing to sell the whole kit and caboodle,
Not just new orleans, but the entire louisiana territory
For a cheap price of $15 million.
- Napoleon's brothers are shocked
And they get into an argument.
"how could you do this?
"this doesn't make any sense."
His brothers must have thought of this
As sort of a twilight of their empire.
And he is, of course, napoleon.
And this is his choice to make.
(curious music)
- Napoleon says,
"you give us 15 million
"and we'll give you the entire parcel",
Doubling the united states.
Okay, the entire land mass of the united states
At that time
Is basically equal in area
To what's in the louisiana purchase.
But it's touchy because thomas jefferson
Has run for president on a platform.
The federal government should not do one iota of a thing
Beyond what is specifically written down
In the constitution.
There's nothing in there
About take $10 million and go buy the port of new orleans.
- Mr. Small government, thomas jefferson,
Was undertaking the doubling of the country,
Shifting the destiny of the country,
Changing it forever.
So if you're looking for irony in american life,
You don't have to look very hard.
(reflective music)
- But it ends up being totally worth it.
In today's dollars, that'd be $348 million
For a thing that's now worth about $1.7 trillion.
And just to put some context,
The harris casino that is in new orleans,
They paid $350 million just to renovate the casino.
So they bought the entirety
Of what are all or part of 15 different states
Of the united states.
- There is no united states as we envision it today,
Without mr. Jefferson's incredible purchase.
(midtempo music)
- Basically, what jefferson bought was the middle part,
What we call the heartland of the united states of america.
And then of course,
Jefferson sends lewis and clark
Out on an expedition
To see what's out there.
- It's a tremendous bounty for the united states,
The oil, the timber,
The farm land that proves to be
Perhaps the most productive farm land
Anywhere on the planet.
Plus the resources, the wildlife, everything,
All of that moves us from tangential player
In the world economy
To something that even the historic powers of europe
Are looking over going, "whoa, wait a second.
"what just happened?"
(water gushing) (curious music)
But it also comes
With a kind of a curse, on the other side.
(somber music)
- There are two original sins in american life,
The removal of native american people
And african-american slavery.
The louisiana purchase was a critical part of that.
It expanded the agricultural markets,
Which expanded the demand
And the plausibility of slave labor.
It helped lead to this division of the country
Into north and south and slave and free,
Which created what william seward called
The irrepressible conflict.
(somber music)
- It was an amazing deal.
But in the end,
The price of the louisiana purchase
Is not paid in dollars to the french.
It's paid in blood in the civil war.
(somber music)
- [bill] the louisiana purchase spurs westward expansion,
But the nation's rudimentary banks
Aren't equipped to handle such rapid growth.
(intense music)
There is no central banking authority.
Each state prints its own currency,
Leaving most americans skeptical of anything
That isn't gold or silver.
When a us central bank is established
To print a national currency and to pay off our debts,
It's met with deep suspicion.
One of the loudest voices railing against it
Comes from a presidential candidate
Who's running against the establishment.
War hero, andrew jackson,
Will end up winning an economic fight,
But losing the economic war.
(intense music)
(pensive music)
- From the moment andrew jackson led american forces
To victory in the battle of new orleans,
He was marked as a leader that americans could admire.
But jackson was a polarizing figure.
He was kind of a lightning rod.
(pensive music)
- Andrew jackson represents the worst of america,
But he also hints at the best of america.
He was the first great populous president.
He was the first president
Who came from the lowest rungs of white society.
And in many ways,
Jackson embodied this capacity of white people
To rise to the top of american life.
He also represented the worst of us.
The removal of native americans,
The defense of african-american slavery
And he was driven by a belief
That power was not equally distributed.
- Andrew jackson was the first western president,
The first president to be elected
From west of the appalachian allegheny chain.
And not surprisingly, jackson has western interests in mind.
(pensive music)
- White americans were pushing west
And there is a proliferation of state banks
To create the credits that these individuals would use
To buy land.
- But jackson is against banking
Because he was burned as a young man.
He had been a speculator in land
And he had been paid in bank notes
That were not as valuable as he thought they were.
Eventually, he had to make the debts right.
And so he resented the idea
That he was taken by a bank.
(reflective music)
- Private banks provided the money
That most people used during the jacksonian era,
But there was one big exception to this.
This was a bank called the bank of the united states
And it was the only federally chartered bank.
It imposed some order
On the money system of the united states
And also helped the growth of the economy as a whole.
But jackson wanted none of it.
He wanted a banking system of state banks
Instead of a central bank.
- Jackson saw the bank of the united states as a monopoly
And a corrupt monopoly, as well.
- He was on record as saying
That the bank of the united states was unconstitutional.
This is an institution.
This should not have that much power or money.
This is all the more reason
To kill the bank of the united states.
But andrew jackson knew nothing about economics, really.
It was sort of a matter of political principle for jackson.
- Jackson also had another particularly thorny problem
With the bank and that was in its leadership.
(curious music)
- If ever there was a perfect moment
Of central casting of adversaries,
Nicholas biddle, the governor
Of the second bank of the united states
Against andrew jackson,
The self-defined son of the frontier was perfect theater
And perfect drama even at the time.
- Nicholas biddle was descended
From a very prominent philadelphia family,
Born into wealth,
Well-educated,
Well-traveled.
- He perceived himself as a guardian of the system
Against the masses,
Against the kind of animal spirits of jacksonian american.
- So here you have two men,
Nicholas biddle and andrew jackson,
Who are vindictive, arrogant, who think they're right,
And who think that they can have their way
No matter what the situation looks like.
And the two men are clashing.
(dramatic music)
- So prior to the election of 1832,
Jackson takes it upon himself
As one of his primary goals
To end the life of the second bank of the united states,
Whose charter will expire in 1836.
So he can't end it before then,
But he can prevent it from being re-upped
For another 20 year term.
- And in 1832, this becomes known as the bank war.
- Now biddle realizes that the bank is in jeopardy.
And so he decides that he's going
To try to recharter the bank four years early.
- This of course, enraged jackson,
Who saw this as a personal affront to him
And to his ambition
To serve a second term.
And once jackson personalizes this,
We enter the second phase of the bank war,
Where we go from appeasement and negotiation
To a fight to the death.
Jackson tells his future vice president,
"sir, the bank of the united states is trying to kill me,
"but I will kill it."
And he makes good on that promise.
(intense music)
- Jackson kills the bank of the united states.
He vetoed it.
And he rode that veto to victory in the 1832 election.
So the people had spoken.
And in the contest between nicholas biddle
And andrew jackson, they said,
"we like jackson".
But wait a minute.
Biddle was convinced
That he knew better than andrew jackson did
What the american economy required.
And in response,
What biddle did was to engineer a financial panic.
The bank was so powerful that it could call in its loans
And all of a sudden,
People couldn't pay back their creditors.
(suspenseful music)
- It played right into jackson's hands.
And by doing this,
Biddle made the bank into the very monster
That jackson had always claimed it was.
- So as a result of the death
Of the bank of the united states,
For the next almost 80 years,
There is no central banking authority in the united states.
And every 20 years,
You have some sort of financial crisis.
And year by year by year,
There was a growing consensus
That there needed to be
Some sort of central governing authority.
And that's what leads
To the creation of the federal reserve.
- So when jackson killed the bank of the united states,
It was a triumph for american democracy,
Turned out to be a disaster for the american economy though.
Because biddle actually did know more about economics
And what the economy required than jackson did.
So this is one of those cases
And it's by no means the last case,
Where what democracy produces
Is not the best result for the economy.
- As continental expansion took off
With more and more settlers
Making the long, difficult trek west,
The need for a faster,
Safer mode of transportation was obvious.
The locomotive appeared to be the answer.
But as abraham lincoln entered office,
There was still no track connecting east coast to west.
With the civil war consuming the nation,
President lincoln still managed
To envision a transcontinental railroad,
One that would lay the economic groundwork
For a post-war future,
Though at the time, that future was far from certain.
(dramatic music)
(canon bangs)
- In 1862, while north is fighting south,
Abraham lincoln envisions the east
Being connected to the west.
Having that very clear vision
And then getting the ball rolling on it
In the middle of the civil war
Tells you how much faith lincoln had
In the future of our country.
(pensive music)
- Lincoln never lost sight
Of the need for the country
To be connected physically, as well as politically.
His vision is a place
Where there's freedom for everyone,
But it's also a vision
Of a nation that's growing, economically.
- Abraham lincoln was setting up a future
For the country he was trying to save.
And great presidents do that.
- Abraham lincoln, himself, came of age
And grew up with the railroads
And he becomes a railroad lawyer,
One of the top railroad lawyers
In the entire state of illinois.
(train wheels whirring)
- Lincoln was very much in favor
Of ensuring that there was a transcontinental railroad
And before he becomes president,
A major factor was
Certainly, his visit to council bluffs, iowa.
(dramatic music)
- Abraham lincoln is in iowa.
He's asking about the railroad.
And somebody says,
"you should talk to grenville dodge,
"the engineer who knows a lot about railroads".
And lincoln asked him,
"if there were gonna be a transcontinental railroad,
"where would it go?
"what would be the best route?"
Grenville dodge says, "it'd go right here.
"council bluffs, iowa.
"you'd want it to go right here.
"nice and flat.
"this is a great spot."
And that meeting plants an idea
In lincoln's head.
(pensive music)
In many ways,
Lincoln is the champion of a transcontinental railroad,
But it's the widespread dream of america.
And it's been explored many times.
(reflective music)
But it's always bogged down in congress
For the simple reason that nobody can agree
Where the tracks should go.
- A lot of the divisions
Before the war over the railroad
Had to do with whether or not the route
Was going to be a northern route or a southern route.
- Everyone's arguing.
So they can't agree.
So there is no transcontinental railroad.
The reason it happens in the civil war
Is precisely because the south has succeeded.
(dramatic music)
- And this is where lincoln comes in.
Lincoln understood, when the country is at war,
Congress is willing to give you
Pretty much whatever you want.
So figure out a way to connect it to the war effort
And you're gonna get it.
And so lincoln told congress,
"this railroad is necessary to keep california in the union,
"and help us win the war."
Then opposition just disappears.
And this is what ultimately leads
To the pacific railway act of 1862.
(upbeat music) (train horn whistling)
(rhythmic music)
They authorize up to $48,000 a mile
Of laying the track.
They have two big railroad companies,
The central pacific, the union pacific,
That they're gonna start building one from the east
And one from the west.
(rhythmic music)
They finally meet in utah
And that's it, the thing is done.
(dramatic music)
(curious music)
1,776 miles, not a coincidence.
They wanted it to be 1,776 miles.
- The railroad turns us truly into a continental nation
And in an era where we worry about infrastructure,
It's important to remember
That our wealth was in many ways generated
By the capacity to communicate
And link this vast country.
- And the united states economy went from being, in 1800,
Nothing, in world economic considerations
To being, by 1900,
The biggest, most powerful richest economy in the world.
- And we immediately go from
The trip to california
Being a two month dangerous trek across land
Or a six month outrageous boat trip around the country
To, you can get to california in five days on the train
In a sleeper car, with a mattress.
(dramatic music)
(pensive music)
- Of course, the railroad doesn't get built
Completely until after lincoln has gone,
But he is leading the way.
- After lincoln's assassination,
His funeral procession takes place on a train
And it drives across the country for him to be buried.
(reflective music)
And lincoln, the champion of a transcontinental railroad,
Did stitch together the economy
And the nation to be one entity.
- Now, we really did have the sea to shining sea
That thomas jefferson had envisioned
With the louisiana purchase.
(reflective music)
- [bill] by 1869, abraham lincoln's dream
Of uniting the country through the transcontinental railroad
Becomes a reality.
The unbroken rail speeds western expansion
And spurs commerce,
Turbocharging the nation's economic growth
And ushering in america's gilded age.
The emerging titans of capitalism
Acquire unimaginable wealth and power.
But on the other end of the spectrum,
The growing masses of industrial workers
Began to flex their own muscle,
Leaving a president in the middle,
Unsure which track to head down.
(dramatic music)
- Grover cleveland had originally
Been elected president in 1884.
He served one term.
And then he was thrown out of office.
He was the only president
Who then came back four years later
And was again, elected.
Grover cleveland really subscribed to the laissez-faire
View of what government should do about the economy,
Which was really to do nothing.
(dramatic music)
- That view is, in some sense,
The embodiment of the gilded age
And the railroads are really at the core.
(curious music)
- The railroads were the country's biggest employer,
The largest private land owner
And revenues for the industry, overall,
Were probably something like three times
As much as the federal government's.
- Just a month into cleveland's presidency, however,
The panic of 1893 strikes.
- It began with a single railroad that went bankrupt
And led to this kind of cascade of misery.
As the economy contracted,
It would naturally affect the pullman palace car company
In chicago. (dramatic music)
- [austan] the pullman palace car
Was the gulf stream jet of the day.
(pensive music)
So if you were rich,
You had your own private car
And you could have it attached to a train.
- They were extremely luxurious.
A lot of carved wood, beveled mirrors.
Very, very elaborate.
George pullman, who began the pullman company,
Looked at workers as simply
A commodity that cost him money.
He never looked at them as human beings
And that was the prevailing view
Of a businessmen in that gilded age.
- So in the midst of the worst economic depression
In history,
Pullman cuts employees wages by 25%.
That's starvation wages.
- As a result of this,
The pullman workers went out on strike
And sympathy strikes were called
By other rail worker unions.
(pensive music)
- After a couple of months,
Rather than just 4,000 or so workers on strike,
There are more than a hundred thousand
Stopping the railroad system.
(pensive music)
- Now presidents of the united states
Did not typically get involved in labor disputes,
But in this case,
The american economy was in serious danger
Of simply stopping.
(brooding music)
- This was something that no president could ignore.
- The conundrum for cleveland is a legal question.
Does the president have the authority to intervene?
Cleveland makes the case
That the governor of illinois has lost control.
So the president needs to act.
Cleveland, himself, is insisting.
He's sending in the troops,
But in a series of telegrams,
The governor is saying to the president,
"chicago doesn't need federal intervention here.
"we don't need troops".
(dramatic music)
- [jon] the governor is very sympathetic to workers
And had the gall to confront
The president of the united states
And lecture him on what the constitution said
On what he thought was the violation of state's rights.
- [susan] and cleveland is astonished.
(dramatic music)
- Cleveland is really at a crossroads.
How can he deal with this strike?
- Well, president cleveland took the responsibility
That the federal government had
For delivering the mail very seriously.
And cleveland said that, you know,
If it takes the army and the navy
To deliver a single postcard to chicago,
Then that's how it's gonna be delivered.
- So brilliantly, the pullman company
Couples the pullman cars to the federal mail cars.
So when american railway union workers
Refuse to move those pullman cars,
By extension, they're refusing to move those mail cars
And they're violating federal law.
And that invites the government to intervene
Because they're interfering with the delivery
Of the us mail.
- [jon] cleveland gets an injunction
To make the strike illegal
With the contention that the mail had been disruptive.
(dramatic music)
- So for the first time,
The injunction becomes a tool
Which capital used to break labor strikes in the future.
And cleveland sends in troops,
Much to the chagrin of the governor of illinois.
(dramatic music)
- By July 4th of 1894,
Some 12,000 troops are in the chicago area.
(dramatic music)
The stakes have all of a sudden been raised.
(intense discorded music)
- [yohuru] clashes between troops
And workers hamper the city.
(guns banging) (people moaning)
You see untold property damages.
(dramatic music)
When all is said and done,
It was about 80 million dollars of damage.
$2.2 billion worth today.
That really becomes the legacy of this railway strike.
- The pullman strike ends
Largely on the terms of the railroads.
The trains get moving again.
The railroad workers union survives,
But it doesn't have the strength that it had before.
Cleveland has taken the position
That the interests of the country
Are more closely aligned
With the interest of business
Than with the interests of workers.
It would take another 40 years
Until the great depression
Before government would sincerely come around
To take the side of workers and support labor unions.
(ambient music)
- [bill] a strong economy is the foundation
Of a strong nation.
As a nation grows,
So does the economic role of the president.
From an uncritical cheerleader
To the guardian of a level playing field
To the lead investor in america's future.
By the 1950s,
America is the largest economy on earth,
But you wouldn't know it by looking at our roads.
The poor state of our nation's vital arteries
Is something present eisenhower learned about first hand
And vowed to do something about it.
(pensive music)
(dramatic music)
(upbeat music)
- Dwight d. Eisenhower was 28 years old
And a graduate of west point
When he gets assigned
To the trans-continental transport mission
By the us army.
(drums beating)
- The transcontinental motor convoy
Is created in 1919
To test the highway system of the united states.
If there was some reason
Why you had to evacuate
Or you had to move lots of people,
How long would it take
To drive across the country?
So they start the world's worst road trip.
(upbeat music)
- So this convoy have to go 3000 miles from washington, dc,
All the way to san francisco
In vintage world war I era vehicles.
And they figure it's going to take them a few weeks.
Eisenhower sees firsthand
That the united states does not have a highway system.
It doesn't even have a road system.
Between illinois and nevada,
There were no roads that were paved.
And so it takes them two months.
(dramatic music)
- When eisenhower became president in 1953,
High on his list was this idea
Of creating a national highway system.
- Dwight eisenhower recognizes,
This is the centerpiece
To what the us economy is becoming.
(rock and roll music)
We've come back from world war ii and we're booming.
The babies are booming.
The economy is booming.
And it's totally obvious
That one of the main constraints
Is traffic,
Congestion,
Driving.
- Eisenhower had seen the roads in germany,
Which were famously well-built.
And he took note of that,
That having highways is actually a strategic advantage.
Not only is it, he believed, probably good for the economy,
But it may have a national defense element, too.
- [narrator] today, many of our highways
Are already obsolete.
What would happen on them during a national emergency?
The entire population
Under panicked conditions, trying to escape.
(troops stomping)
- The creation of the
Intercontinental ballistic missiles
Are on the horizon in the prospects
That we could go to war
With the soviet union,
And they could fire a missile.
(fire blazing)
And we will have 45 minutes
To get everyone out of a major city in the united states
Or else everyone will die.
(suspenseful music)
- Now whether he really believed
That this would happen or not,
It was very like eisenhower to plan for disaster,
To plan ahead
And to think about what a calamity it would be,
If heaven forbid,
Something like that should happen
And americans couldn't get out of their own cities.
(intense music)
So part of his explanation to the country
And to the congress was,
There are defense reasons why we need
An interstate highway system.
(pensive music)
- Eisenhower says,
"we ought to spend a hundred billion dollars on highways".
- By far the largest public works project
America had ever undertaken.
- There's grousing in congress and people say,
"well, how would we pay for that?"
And they reject the idea.
But eisenhower clearly won't give up.
So congress says,
"okay, well, let's have the states pay for it".
They're like, "wait a minute!"
"we wanted you to pay for it."
- And so eisenhower built a coalition.
He was able to get republicans
And democrats working together
Who saw this as an advantage to the country, as a whole.
Finally, the breakthrough comes in late 1955
When the law is passed in 1956.
And the way to pay for it
Is to create a highway trust fund.
(ethereal music)
(land exploding)
- [eisenhower voiceover] highways mean
Progress for our country.
It means greater convenience for greater numbers of people,
Greater happiness,
Greater standards of living.
- The first few miles were laid down in kansas,
Which is eisenhower's home state.
They build out 40,000 miles
Of highway in the united states
With good, beautiful blue signs.
And that highway system,
A, does unite the country.
B, does facilitate the economic growth
And the population growth that is happening,
Starts spreading it out over places where it wasn't before.
It also really ignites
What is to become a dominant industry
In the us economy, which is tourism.
(traffic humming)
But like every other major decision that presidents make...
(reflective music)
It also comes with its own
Controversy and down side.
- The people that built the big super highways
Had no interest in saving
On what we might call mom and pop neighborhoods,
Ones that have real culture in them.
They would build these interstates smack in to cities
That would destroy historic neighborhoods.
And so there was something lost
With the interstate highway system,
A lot gained, but something lost.
- [bill] the nations interstate highway system
Was utterly transformative.
It created new industries and new ways of life.
But like so many developments,
Its changes were not all positives,
Which is the story of progress, really.
We plan for it, hope for the best and work for it.
But unless we deal with the negative consequences,
We must live with the verdict of history.
(pensive music)
- Eisenhower's interstate highway system
Was good for the economy
And it creates things like the trucking industry.
The automobile becomes ubiquitous.
All americans want one.
There are more cars that people in the united states.
- The expansion of urban sprawl
Is facilitated, in large part,
By big free highways
That make it possible for you to live far out
And buy a big house for not as much money
And just drive in each morning to work.
(pensive music)
- All of that poured concrete is a marvel of engineering.
But when it got near big cities,
It actually ruined neighborhoods.
It would cut right through and destroy where people lived,
Move people out, bullied people.
(machinery clanking)
- Highways had a way of changing the urban landscape
In ways that were not always conducive
To fairness and economic equality.
They often divided certain cities
Into a poor side and a wealthy side,
Or a black side and a white side.
- We see oftentimes,
That there is a decision made about these communities
And saying well,
In the interest of a national highway system,
In the interest of democracy,
In the interest of the united states,
We are going to destroy this community.
And it disproportionately, I think,
Harms underrepresented communities.
(ominous music)
- So there were some really negative consequences
For our cities, but nonetheless,
This was a moment where eisenhower used
All of his tools, his experience, his knowledge,
And he plays a huge role in linking the country together,
In reshaping america's own identity about themselves.
(pensive music)
Americans had known nothing but depression,
Economic crisis and war from about 1930
Until about 1953, when eisenhower became president.
So now for the first time,
Americans felt a little bit of economic security.
And eisenhower rightly got the credit for that.
(pensive music)
- What you've seen again and again
With these major presidential decisions,
Is that by identifying and tapping in
To the concerns that america has,
Presidents have been able to use federal action
To stitch the country together,
Make it really one nation
In a way that disparate countries of europe
Or around the world never were.
And to facilitate
The kind of the bounty that is
The american experience,
Our land, our resources,
Our ingenuity
To enable the westward expansion,
The tying together of north and south
And the growth of our economy.
(reflective music)
And really only the president can do that.
(reflective music)
- As we've seen,
The economic decisions that presidents make
Can affect the lives of americans for
Generations to come.
Throughout our history,
There's always been a tension
Between spending on the present
And investing in the future.
Now, we all have a natural tendency
To spend what we have on the present.
But america has always been most successful
When we are also in the future business,
When we make some investments today
That will produce great rewards, tomorrow.
For example, I made two decisions
That didn't register much at the time,
But that I thought would be important
Long after I left office.
First, providing the investment necessary
To finish sequencing the human genome.
And second,
Putting our defense department's gps technology
Into the public domain,
Both of which produced outsized returns to our economy
And to our quality of life.
Without a continued effort to innovate
And expand opportunity,
We run the risk of falling behind,
Especially in an increasingly complex and competitive world.
Still for all our challenges,
America is well positioned for success in the 21st century.
And I remain optimistic, but only,
If we keep focusing on the future.
(violin music)
(cannons banging)
(violin music)
(bomb exploding)
(violin music)
(loud pounding) (clock ticking)
(violin music)