Obama recalls his first lessons in politics and humility

President Barack Obama receives a standing ovation after addressing the Illinois General Assembly, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016, at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

He preached that sunny optimism before Congress in January and the latter portion of that speech paralleled the one he delivered in IL on Wednesday.

“We’ve got to build a better politics, one that’s less of a spectacle and more of a battle of ideas, one that’s less of a business and more of a mission”, Obama said, admitted later that “the tone of our politics hasn’t gotten better since I was inaugurated”.

“I don’t believe that money is speech or that political spending should have no limits”, Obama said, in contrast to the Citizens United decision. In what one should assume will be many speeches in the coming months reflecting on his legacy as President, Obama said he cared about repairing things for the future.

“There’s still a yawning gap in the magnitude of our challenges we face and the smallness of our politics”, Obama said. But after Obama was finished, about the only thing Republicans and Democrats agreed on is that the speech wouldn’t change things.

The president told lawmakers that the founding fathers left the keys to the system to lawmakers in order to make the system work, not stay in gridlock. And unlike Taft, Hoover, and Carter – who all gave their speeches before running for a second term, Obama has no campaign ahead.

“Today, that kind of citizenship is threatened by a poisonous political climate that pushes people away from participating in our public life”, Obama said.

Restricting money’s influence on politics, changing the congressional redistricting process and removing barriers to register and vote were several solutions Obama suggested to cultivate bipartisanship.

Despite his lamentations, though, Obama is the president who famously rode into Washington showing the opposition party he had little interest in working with them, directly telling them, “I won”.

“I’m saying they shouldn’t drown out everybody else’s”, Obama said. Two Illinois governors have been convicted of corruption and sent to prison — including Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is serving time for trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat Obama vacated when he became president.

President Barack Obama said the problem of partisan politics is not insurmountable, but it will take efforts from lawmakers and voters.

The Illinois legislature has been bitterly divided over how to proceed economically as the state is now in its eighth month without a budget. This was one of those moments, he said. And his final State of the Union felt like a long rebuttal to numerous remarks at the Republican presidential debates.

Obama pointed out that former President Bill Clinton and then-first lady Hillary Clinton didn’t have to contend with race in trying to pass a healthcare law in the 1990s. They did it, he said, without calling each other names like “idiots” or “fascists” because they’d have to in turn explain why they were “playing poker with idiots and fascists”.

“Over these nine years, I want you to know my faith in the generosity and the fundamental goodness of the American people has been rewarded and affirmed, over and over and over again”, Obama said.