This is President Obama at his campaign best, attacking idiots like Ginrich and Frothy Mix for their failure to look to the future.
Prepared speech below
Lately, we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians talking down these new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power and solar power. They make jokes about biofuels and electric cars. They were against raising fuel standards because apparently they like gas guzzling cars better. We’re trying to move towards the future, and they want to keep us stuck in the past.
Of course, we’ve heard this kind of thinking before. If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they probably would have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society. Maybe they would have agreed with one of the pioneers of the radio who apparently said, “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” Or one of Henry Ford’s advisors who was quoted saying, “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only…a fad.” I can’t prove this, but I do not think that man got the promotion he was looking for. They might have even sided with one of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, who reportedly said this about the telephone: “It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?” I hear that quote kept him off Mt. Rushmore.
The point is, there are always cynics and naysayers who want to do things the same way we’ve always done them. To double down on the same ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. But the only reason we’ve come this far as a nation is because we refuse to stand still. Because we put our faith in the future. Because we are inventors and builders and makers of things. We’re Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. That’s who we are. That’s who we need to be right now.
Compare and contrast