Obama: “Change from the Outside”

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President Obama on Univision

New Orleans  What goes around comes around, and President Obama, the Community Organizer-in-Chief (which is way different than the Chief Organizer!), said it during his Univision interview in Miami about the failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.

The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside.  You can only change it from the outside.

If that’s what he really learned, then there’s huge weight that all of us need to pick up and carry.  And, yes, certainly he is correct, and, yes, he, of all people, should have known this before he was elected as President.

I can’t even speak about the painful paradox that this was his answer to a question about the failure to win immigration reform, when I can remember clearly and was right there in the rooms as the decisions were made to essentially reject pushing from the outside at the behest of funders, policy makers, and inside-the-beltway organizations, in the wrong headed belief that change might come “from the inside.”

There are a huge number of people that I wish would start carrying around a note card reminder that says, “You can only change it from the outside,” Barack Obama, Miami, September 20, 2012.

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