So in talking about the NSA, “he’s just one man”? Yet, when it comes to things he wants to do, like immigration or Obamacare, “I have a pen, I have a phone, I don’t need Congress”.
He says here at :53, “we do not listen to people’s phone calls or read their emails” unless there is a national security interest involved. So where was that interest in spying on the personal phone of an ally, Angela Merkl? And notice what a clever little turn of phrase that was on his part. We “don’t listen to people’s phone calls”. No, you just track who and when they call so you can establish patterns.
Starting at 12:00 the interviewer asks essentially why has the world’s opinion of him slipped, why are they disappointed? He says the following:
Via Weekly Standard:
And I have a clear vision, which I described in Berlin that day and which I described in speeches that I made when I was running for office in 2008, of where I think we need to go, of how we uphold dignity and freedom of all individuals, of how countries should relate to each other, of how we should promote economic growth that is good for all people and not just those at the very top. And those values continue to drive what I do every day. Where disappointment typically comes in, and this is natural, is that people think I am driving a speed boat and that I can quickly move in that direction and I get there and by this time, four years after the fact, I would have ended all wars and I would have brought the world together and the economy would be humming along. And, unfortunately, although I would love to be in that position, the president of the United States is not emperor of the world. I am one figure, one man in this broader process and what I try to do, then, is to, every single day, move us a little bit closer to that vision I set. And my hope is that at the end of my presidency, over the course of eight years, there will be a body of work where people will say: He ended the war in Iraq responsi- bly. He ended the war in Afghanistan responsibly. He was able to move our war footing after 9/11 into a greater focus on diplomacy and building multi-lateral agreements and institutions, that he advanced the cause of dealing with climate change, even if it is not completely solved. If I can show that, as a consequence to the work that I did, we are closer to that vi- sion that I described in Berlin, then it will have been time well spent.