3 things to know if you missed Barack Obama’s speech in Boston about courage
Former President Barack Obama swung into Boston Sunday night to accept the John F. Kennedy Library’s Profile in Courage Award and to deliver his most high-profile post-presidency speech to date.
Speaking in front of a crowd of national and Massachusetts officials, Kennedy family members, and his wife, Michelle, Obama began his address with humor, thanking the JFK Library for “unlike the Nobel Prize committee, waiting until [he] was out of office.”
But the former president seized the opportunity of the award’s inspiration — political courage — to touch on the continuing health care debate, the Kennedy family legacy, and how individual Americans can effect lasting change.
‘Courage means not simply doing what is politically expedient’
In a message to Republicans on Capitol Hill, Obama recalled many of the former Congress members elected with him in 2008, who went on to face a series a politically difficult votes.
“We were in crisis,” Obama said Sunday, recalling the financial crisis his administration faced in its infancy. From the stimulus bill to the auto industry bailout to Wall Street reform, lawmakers — mostly Democrats — faced potential backlash for their votes. But no more so than on health care, Obama said.
“There was a reason why health care reform had not been accomplished before,” he said. “It was hard. It involved a sixth of the economy and all manners of stakeholders and interests. It was easily subject to misinformation and fear mongering.”
When the Affordable Care Act at last came for a vote, Obama said many of these freshman congressmen faced a choice.
“They had a chance to insure millions and prevent untold worry and suffering and bankruptcy and even death,” he said. “But that this same vote would likely cost them their new seats, perhaps end their political careers.
Indeed, it did. But Obama said they did “the right thing, the hard thing.”
“Theirs was a profile in courage,” said Obama, plugging the increases in health care coverage the law achieved and noting that those same ousted lawmakers have told him they would do it all over again.
“They thought — and still think — it was worth it,” he said.
Riffing off that lesson, Obama turned to the continuing health care debate, wherein the Republican-controlled House recently passed a bill that would repeal many aspects of his landmark health care act. Popularly known as Obamacare, the law’s future lies in the hands of President Donald Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate.
Obama said he hoped the same courage those former House members showed would resonate with those involved in the current debate.
“That today’s members of Congress, regardless of party, are willing to look at the facts and speak the truth, even when it contradicts party positions,” he said. “I hope the current members of Congress recall that it actually doesn’t take a lot of courage to aid those who are already powerful, already comfortable, already influential.”
However, Obama said it does require some courage “to champion the vulnerable and the sick.”
“Courage means not simply doing what is politically expedient, but doing what they believe deep in their hearts is right,” he said.
‘This kind of courage is required from all of us.’
After calling on elected officials to show courage, Obama also made a plea to regular American people to step up.
“This kind of courage is required from all of us,” he said, adding that that just as well applied to Democrats and progressives, who have “our own soul searching” and “dogmas” to examine.
“We’re prone to bestow the mantle too easily on the prominent and the powerful, and then too eager to wrap ourselves in cynicism when they let us down because they weren’t perfect,” he said.
Obama spoke of “quiet acts of courage” by ordinary Americans “not for personal gain, but for the enduring benefit of another.” He spoke about recognizing selfless acts by single mothers and small business owners, which he said can perpetuate greater civic engagement, and repeated his belief that the arch of the moral universe bends toward justice — but not by itself.
“It bends because we bend it,” he said later in the speech.
Obama did not exempt himself from his call to action.
“I take his honor that you have bestowed on me here tonight as a reminder that, even out of office, I must do all that I can to advance the spirit of service that John F. Kennedy represents,” he said.
Not just JFK—but Ted Kennedy’s legacy too
As an example of these quiet acts of courage and how they can affect all citizens, Obama recalled a story the late Sen. Ted Kennedy told him.
The former Massachusetts senator’s son Ted Kennedy Jr., now a state senator in Connecticut, had been diagnosed with a form of bone cancer at the age of 12. And as the younger Kennedy slept at the hospital where he underwent treatment, his father roamed the hallways to talk to other parents “keeping vigil over their own children … some calculating what they might have to borrow or sell” to pay for the next treatment.
“Right there, in the quiet of night, working people of modest means and one of the most powerful men in America shared the same intimate and immediate sense of helplessness,” Obama said, reemphasizing the common challenges of health care, an issue that became Kennedy’s passion.
While Kennedy could afford his son’s treatment, Obama said it was the “quiet, dignified courage of others” to support their loved ones that “compelled Teddy to make those parents his cause.”
“That’s what the ordinary courage of everyday people can inspire when you’re paying attention,” Obama said, going on to cite selfless plights of his grandmother, father-in-law, troops, first responders, business owners, workers, Peace Corps volunteers, immigrants, and activists of all stripes.
“The quiet sturdy courage of ordinary people doing the right thing day-in and day-out,” he said. “They don’t get attention for it. They don’t seek it. They don’t get awards for it. But that’s what’s defined America.”
