We the PEOPLE

I recently read Bill Simmon's Interview with President Obama from GQ Magazine. 

The article was full of insight on leadership and reform during the 44th's presidency. Below I selected a few valuable quotes from the interview.

Barack Obama:
"You can’t separate good policy from the need to bring the American people along and make sure that they know why you’re doing what you’re doing."

"A lot of the work is not just identifying the right policy but now constantly building these ever shifting coalitions to be able to actually implement and execute and get it done."

"You can’t do this by yourself."

"we had to be careful about crowing success when people weren’t feeling it.""

"in order to actually get something done, you have to build consensus. Expressing simple outrage without follow-up is often counterproductive."

"If I chime in with a strong opinion about what’s happened, not only do I stand to potentially damage subsequent law-enforcement cases, but immediately you get blowback and backlash that may make people less open to listening."

"you’re not always going to perform flawlessly and you have to be able to put that out of your mind and then look at the next problem coming down the pipe."

"what you aspire to as president or any of these positions of leadership—is to try to figure out how to be in the moment, make the best decision you can, know that you’re going to get a bunch of them right, but a bunch of times you’re also not going to get it exactly the way you want it."

Also check out Obama's 11 most blackest moments in his presidency
 

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