PRESIDENT BARAK OBAMA: ‘BETTER THAN OTHER NATIONS’

[Excerpt from a conversation between President Obama and the novelist Marilynne Robinson conducted in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 14, 2015. An audio recording of the conversation can be heard at itunes.com/nybooks. The first part appeared in the November 5, 2015, issue of The New York Review.]

PRESIDENT BARAK OBAMA: “ . . . it is interesting watching the current political season for me because I’m not on the ballot, so although obviously I still have a huge stake in the outcome as a citizen, in addition to soon being an ex-president—and there are times where I’m listening to folks make these wild claims about how terrible America is doing, and I want to just press the pause button here for a second and remind them that by almost every economic criterion we are hugely better off than we were just seven years ago; that we have done far better than almost every advanced country, and certainly every large advanced country on earth, in terms of growing the economy, driving down unemployment, managing our budgets.

“And the only thing that right now is holding us back is Washington dysfunction. We could knock off another percentage point on the unemployment rate if we started rebuilding roads and bridges and airports.”

Editors of the New York Review, “President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa,” New York Review, November 19, 2015, pp: 6-8.