America always pivots between collective responsibility and the idea that the individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?
Let's just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politics and government know that our responsibility is to the American people, that we have a responsibility to find our common ground, to seek it and to find it.
Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.
Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.
In the first rule of politics, you know, Harry Truman, the buck stops here. Take responsibility. What I've learned over the years is that people will give people in politics a lot of rope if they just take responsibility.
America's leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
Some of us are better at owning the responsibility of our actions than others.
American society loves to prop people up and then take them down.
If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.