Have faith in democracy. Look, I know it’s not always pretty. Really, I know. I’ve been living it. But it’s how, bit by bit, generation by generation, we have made progress in this nation. That’s how we banned child labor. That’s how we cleaned up our air and our water. That’s how we passed programs like Social Security and Medicare that lifted millions of seniors out of poverty. 

None of these changes happened overnight. They didn’t happen because some charismatic leader got everybody suddenly to agree on everything. It didn’t happen because some massive political revolution occurred. It actually happened over the course of years of advocacy, and organizing, and alliance-building, and deal-making, and the changing of public opinion. It happened because ordinary Americans who cared participated in the political process.

…And, yes, big money in politics is a huge problem. We’ve got to reduce its influence. Yes, special interests and lobbyists have disproportionate access to the corridors of power. But, contrary to what we hear sometimes from both the left as well as the right, the system isn’t as rigged as you think, and it certainly is not as hopeless as you think. Politicians care about being elected, and they especially care about being reelected. And if you vote and you elect a majority that represents your views, you will get what you want. And if you opt out, or stop paying attention, you won’t. It’s that simple. It’s not that complicated.

Now, one of the reasons that people don’t vote is because they don’t see the changes they were looking for right away. Well, guess what—none of the great strides in our history happened right away. It took Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP decades to win Brown v. Board of Education; and then another decade after that to secure the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. And it took more time after that for it to start working. It took a proud daughter of New Jersey, Alice Paul, years of organizing marches and hunger strikes and protests, and drafting hundreds of pieces of legislation, and writing letters and giving speeches, and working with congressional leaders before she and other suffragettes finally helped win women the right to vote. 

Each stage along the way required compromise. Sometimes you took half a loaf. You forged allies. Sometimes you lost on an issue, and then you came back to fight another day. That’s how democracy works. So you’ve got to be committed to participating not just if you get immediate gratification, but you got to be a citizen full-time, all the time.

And if participation means voting, and it means compromise, and organizing and advocacy, it also means listening to those who don’t agree with you.

…You won’t always get everything you want—at least not as fast as you want it.  So you have to stick with it. You have to be persistent. And success, however small, however incomplete, success is still success.  I always tell my daughters, you know, better is good.  It may not be perfect, it may not be great, but it’s good. That’s how progress happens—in societies and in our own lives.

Full Transcript: President Obama’s Rutgers University Commencement Speech [VIDEO]

Not often I’m totally on board with the POTUS’s viewpoint but that is spot on.