Gary Gallagher: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, sometimes I think about, I’m sorry to romanticize it, but because I do think that Barack Obama was one of the great speech makers of my lifetime. And I, I sometimes imagine what Lincoln would have thought if he could attend an Obama speech. If he saw that Obama became president, that an African American became President of the United States of America. It’s, it seems like such a trivial thing to say, but I think it’s not trivial at all. It’s one of the great accomplishments of our country. I think one of Lincoln’s great attributes was his humanity comes through so many things that he wrote. His real appreciation for people who faced long odds, worked against the odds, didn’t begin with advantages in their favor, and so forth. I think he and his ability to grow, I think he would have handled that actually pretty well. Much better than many other people I can think of from the mid-19th century. I think he had genuine humanity. I think, I don’t think you can read all the things he wrote and not come to that conclusion. He also… But, so does, does he check all our boxes now? Of course he doesn’t. Was he prejudiced by our standards in some ways? Of course he was. But I think that he, I think he would have handled that pretty well, and he would have been, still been really tall. Even in our time- … he’d be way taller than most people. Yeah. What you know, 250th birthday what gives you hope about the future of America?…

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