Now my job is a is a very difficult one.
How do you introduce a person that
everyone already knows but nonetheless, I
want to put the president's introduction
into context because I found myself the
last few weeks studying his syllabi from
his classes and looking at grading
mechanisms that he had in place and
looking at a number of things that he's
written and it's a fantastic story. So, it
is my honor and my privilege to
introduce to you and I'm going to walk
through this, our president, let me begin
with the following.
Let me walk through why the
president's visit here is so important
for this institution, for this state and
for our country.
Barack Obama is a man of intellect
devoted to the common good which is a
rare thing, a rare thing.
Barack Obama is a man who's journey from
boyhood teaches us all about the power
of a single life with purpose and each
of our graduates should remember this. Barack
Obama is a man who's understanding of
the dream of and for America knows no
limit. That dream often about a limitless
America however comes from a different
point of view often, it comes from those
that have benefited from economic
success of their parents or the social
status of their family and sometimes
those that view the limitless dream of
the United States, have a fanciful view
of our history. A view that's often
inaccurate. Sometimes, and this is rare,
this understanding of America's true
greatness and our potential comes from a
deep understanding of the need to drive
change and that fact is in fact America
as the statement of change itself. The
fact that America represents what the
change has been that we have moved from
around the world, that's the central
theme I want to focus on. Martin Luther
King once said that change does not roll
in on the wheels of inevitability but
comes through continuous struggle. Barack
Obama understands from the experiences
of his family both in America and Africa
his work in organizing communities in
Chicago, his deep understanding of the U.S.
constitution and his raw and powerful
intellect, that continuous struggle is to
move us even closer to the ideal America.
In this ideal America the yolks that
hold us back must be taken off to
create opportunity for success. One of
those yolks has been the struggle
to educate every child, to allow everyone
equal chance. Here, our history as a
country has been long and difficult and
while progress has been made since the
1950s we remained far from the ideal. 25%
of our children, more than a million
children per year don't graduate from
high school and for those that do that
come from the lowest socio-economic
grouping only 15 percent of them will
have an opportunity to graduate from a
university. Mr. president no national
leader before you has fully understood
the role of education, learning and
knowledge in fulfilling the American
ideal, in advancing the continuous
struggle for change, in studying your
life and your achievements as a
community organizer, constitutional law
professor and a statesman, I can see your
fantastic awareness of the enigma of our
present America. How is it that we have
changed so much and yet have so much
further to go? You realize that our
constitution and thus our civil rights,
our voting rights and our right to be
educated is not a static thing but in
fact is a constantly evolutionary ideal.
It is this evolutionary process that you
see change as essential to our life, to
our future as Americans. You see an
America where all children graduate from
high school and most go on to 
college at some level.
In this change process you see an
America where every talent can be tapped
and every dream has real potential. Mr.
president you have already taken many
bold steps to improve our nation and to
move us forward. You have changed, I
believe already, how we conceive
education. Education is now a national
civic duty. It is not a privilege it is a
civic duty.
You have given hope to all who dream
about what they can be and as I'm
increasingly beginning to see as a
common activity you've lit a fire under
all of us to move America forward
using our ideas and our creativity. Mr.
president we feel that fire, we share
your drive for change, we've heard your
speech before Congress, saw you driving
us closer to the ideal, the better
America, your expansion of Pell grants, your goals to educate all of America,
your drive to have a great college
education not just a college education
but a great college education to all who
work hard we hear you we join you in
fact we join you by today committing to
you and to the people of Arizona that we
will continue building ASU as an
egalitarian center for advanced teaching
and learning and we commit to you also
that no Arizona student will be left out
of this institution and what we have to
offer because of his or her family's income.
Mr. president we're pleased to announce
the establishment of the Barack Obama
Scholars Program and pledge to you to 
work and fight to make
accessible education the change that
takes America to the next level. It's an
honor to have you here with us this
evening, ladies and gentlemen, the
President of the United States.
thank you
thank you
Thank You ASU! Thank you very much! 
Thank you very much! Thank you so much!
Thank you! Please, thank you very much!
Well, thank you! Thank you President Crow
for that extremely generous introduction,
for your inspired leadership as well
here at ASU. I want to thank the entire
ASU community for the honor of attaching
my name to a scholarship program that
will help open the doors of higher
education to students from every
background. What a wonderful gift,
thank you. That notion of opening doors
of opportunity to everybody, that is the
core mission of this school. It's the
core mission of my presidency and I hope
this program will serve as a model for
universities across this country so
thank you so much.
I want to obviously congratulate the
class of 2009 for your unbelievable
achievement. I want to thank the parents,
the uncles, the grandpas, the grandmas
cousins, calabash cousins, everybody who
was involved in helping these
extraordinary young people arrive at
this moment. I also want to apologize to
the entire state of Arizona for stealing
away your wonderful former governor
Janet Napolitano.
But you've got a fine governor here and
I also know that Janet is now applying
her extraordinary talents to serve our
entire country as the secretary of
homeland security keeping America safe
and she's doing a great job.
Now before I begin I'd just like to clear the 
air about that little controversy everybody
was talking about a few weeks back. I
have to tell you I really thought this
was much ado about nothing but I do
think we all learned an important lesson
I learned never again to pick another
team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets.
it won't happen again. President Crow and
the Board of Regents will soon learn
about being audited by the IRS.
Now in all seriousness, I come here not
to dispute the suggestion that I haven't
yet achieved enough in my life.
First of all Michelle concurs with that
assessment. She has a long list of things
that I have not yet done waiting for me
when I get home but more than that I
come to embrace the notion that I
haven't done enough in my life.
I heartily concur. I come to affirm that
one's title, even a title like President
of the United States, says very little
about how well one's life has been led.
That no matter how much you've done or
how successful you've been there's
always more to do, always more to learn
and always more to achieve
and I want to say to you today, graduates
class of 2009, that despite having
achieved a remarkable milestone in your
life, despite the fact that you and your
families are so rightfully proud, you too
cannot rest on your laurels, not even
some of those remarkable young people
who were introduced earlier, not even
that young lady whose got 4 degrees she's
getting today, you can't rest. Your own
body of work is also yet to come. Now
some graduating classes have marched
into this stadium in easy times, times of
peace and stability. When we call on our
graduates simply to keep things going
and don't screw it up. Other classes have
received their diplomas in times of
trial and upheaval, when the very
foundations of our lives,
the old order has been shaken, the old
ideas and institutions have crumbled and
a new generation is called upon to
remake the world. It should be clear to
you by now the category into which all
of you fall. For we gather here tonight
in times of extraordinary difficulty for
the nation and for the world. The economy
remains in the midst of a historic
recession, the worst we've seen since the
Great Depression, the result in part of
greed and irresponsibility that rippled
out from Wall Street and Washington,
as we spent beyond our means and failed
to make hard choices.
We're engaged in two wars and a struggle
against terrorism, the threats of climate
change, nuclear proliferation and
pandemic define national boundaries and
easy solutions. For many of you, these
challenges are also felt in more
personal terms. Perhaps you're still
looking for a job or struggling to
figure out what career path makes sense
in this disrupted economy. Maybe you've
got student loans, now you definitely
have student loans or credit card debts
and you're wondering how you'll ever pay
them off. Maybe you've got a family to
raise and you're wondering how you'll
ensure that your children have the same
opportunities you've had to get an
education and pursue their dreams. Now in
the face of these challenges it may be
tempting to fall back on the formulas
for success that have been peddled so
frequently in recent years. It goes
something like this, you're taught to
chase after all the usual brass rings,
you try to be on this who's who's list
or that top 100 list you chase after
the big money and you figure out how big
your corner office is. You worry about
whether you have a fancy enough title or
a fancy enough car. That's the message
that's sent each and every day or has
been in our culture for far too long.
That through material possessions,
through a ruthless competition pursued
only on your own behalf, that's how you
will measure success.
Now you can take that road and it may
work for some but at this critical
juncture in our nation's history, at this
difficult time, let me suggest that such
an approach won't get you where you want
to go. It displays a poverty of ambition
that in fact the elevation of appearance
over substance of celebrity over
character of short-term gains over
lasting achievement is precisely what
your generation needs to help end.
ASU I want to highlight -- I want to
highlight two main problems with that
old, tired, me first approach to life.
First of all it distracts you from
what's truly important and it may lead
you to compromise your values and your
principles and your commitments. Think
about it, it's in chasing titles and
status in worrying about the next
election rather than the national
interest and the interests of those who
you're supposed to represent that
politicians so often lose their ways in
Washington. They spend time thinking
about polls but not about principle. It
was in pursuit of gaudy
short-term profits and the bonuses that
came with them that so many folks lost
their way on Wall Street. Engaging in
extraordinary risks with other people's
money. In contrast, the leaders we revere,
the businesses and institutions that last,
they are not generally the result of a
narrow pursuit of popularity or personal
advancement but of devotion to some
bigger purpose, the preservation of the
Union or the determination to lift a
country out of a depression, the creation
of a quality product, a commitment to
your customers, your workers, your
shareholders and your community.
A commitment to make sure that an
institution like ASU is inclusive and
diverse and giving opportunity to all.
That's the hallmark of real success.
That other stuff -- that other stuff, the
trappings of success, may be a byproduct
of this larger mission but it can't be
the central thing. Just ask Bernie Madoff
that's the first problem with the old
attitude. The second problem with the old
approach to success is that a relentless
focus on the outward markers of success
can lead to complacency. It can make you
lazy. We too often let the external, the
material thing serve as indicators that
we're doing well even though something
inside us tells us that we're not doing
our best, that we're avoiding that which
is hard but also necessary, that
we're shrinking from rather than rising
to the challenges of the age and the
thing is in this new hyper competitive
age none of us -- none of us can afford to
be complacent. That's true. Whatever
profession you choose. Professors might
earn the distinction of tenure but that
doesn't guarantee that they'll keep
putting in the long hours and late
nights and have the passion and the
drive to be great educators. The same
principle is true in your personal life.
Being a parent is not just a matter of
paying the bills, doing the bare minimum,
it's not just bringing a child into the
world that matters but the acts of love
and sacrifice it takes to raise and
educate that child and give them
opportunity.
It can happen to presidents as well, if
you think about Abraham Lincoln and
Millard Fillmore had the very same title.
They're both presidents of the United
States but their tenure in office and
their legacy could not be more different
and this is not just true for
individuals, it's also true for this
nation. In recent years, in many ways,
we've become enamored with our own past
success, lulled into complacency by the
glitter of our own achievements. We've
become accustomed to the title of
military superpower, forgetting the
qualities that got us there, not just the
power of our weapons but the discipline
and valor and the code of conduct of our
men and women in uniform.
The Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps
and all those initiatives that show our
commitment to working with other nations
to pursue the ideals of opportunity and
equality and freedom that have made us
who we are. That's what made us a
superpower. We become accustomed to our
economic dominance in the world
forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals
and get-rich-quick schemes that got us
where we are but hard work and smart
ideas, quality products and wise
investments. We started taking shortcuts,
we started living on credit instead of
building up savings, we saw businesses
focused more on rebranding and
repackaging than innovating and
developing new ideas that improve our
lives. All the while the rest of the
world has grown hungry, more restless in
constant motion to build and to discover,
not content with where they are right
now, determined to strive for more.
They're coming so graduates it's now
abundantly clear that we need to start
doing things a little bit different.
In your own lives you'll need to
continuously adapt to a continuously
changing economy. You'll end up having
more than one job and more than one
career over the course of your life.
You'll have to keep on gaining new
skills, possibly even new degrees and
you'll have to keep on taking risks as
new opportunities arise and as a nation
we'll need a fundamental change of
perspective and attitude. It's clear that
we need to build a new foundation, a
stronger foundation for our economy and
our prosperity. Rethinking how we grow
our economy, how we use energy, how we
educate our children, how we care for our
sick, how we treat our environment.
Many of our current challenges are
unprecedented. There are no standard
remedies, no go to fixes this time around.
And class of 2009, that's why we're going
to need your help. We need young people
like you to step up,
we need your daring, we need your
enthusiasm, we need your energy, we need
your imagination and let me be clear
when I say young I'm not just referring
to the date of your birth certificate.
I'm talking about an approach to life, a
quality of mind and a quality of heart, a
willingness to follow your passions
regardless of whether they lead to
fortune and fame, a willingness to
question conventional wisdom and rethink
old dogmas. A lack of regard for all the
traditional markers of status and
prestige and in a commitment instead to
doing what's meaningful to you, what helps others, 
what makes a difference in this world.
That's the spirit that led a band of
patriots, not much older than most of you,
to take on an empire, to start this
experiment in democracy we call America.
It's what drove young pioneers west to
Arizona and beyond, it's what drove young
women to reach for the ballot, what
inspired a 30 year old escaped slave to
run an underground railroad to freedom,
what inspired a young man named cezzah
to go out and help farmworkers, what
inspired a 26 year old preacher to lead
a bus boycott for justice, it's what led
firefighters and police officers in the
prime of their lives up the stairs of
those burning towers and young people
across this country to drop what they
were doing and come to the aid of a
flooded New Orleans to what led two guys
in the garage named Hewlett and Packard
to form a company that would change the
way we live and work, what led scientists
in laboratories and novelists in
coffee shops to labor in obscurity until
they finally succeeded in changing the
way we see the world. That's the great
American story. Young people just like
you following their passions, determined
to meet the times on their own terms.
They weren't doing it for the money,
their titles weren't fancy, ex-slave,
minister, student, citizen, a whole bunch
of them didn't get honorary degrees
but they changed the course of history
and so can you ASU.
So can you class of 2009!
So can you.
With a degree from this
outstanding institution you have
everything you need to get started
you've got no excuses, you have no
excuses not to change the world.
Did you study business? Go start a
company or why not help a struggling
not-for-profit find better more
effective ways to serve folks in need.
You study nursing?
Under staffed clinics and hospitals across this 
country are desperate for your help.
You study education?
Teach in a high needs school where the
kids really need you, give a chance to
kids who can't get everything
they need maybe in their neighborhood,
maybe not even their home, but we can't
afford to give up on them. Prepare them
to compete for any job 
anywhere in the world.
You study engineering?
Help us lead a green revolution,
developing new sources of clean energy.
It will power our economy and preserve
our planet but you can also make your
mark in smaller more individual ways.
That's what so many of you have already
done during your time here at ASU
tutoring children, registering voters,
doing your own small part to fight
hunger and homelessness, AIDS and cancer.
One student said it best when she spoke
about her senior engineering project
building medical devices for people with
disabilities in a village in Africa. Her
professor showed a video of the folks
they'd been helping and she said when we
saw the people on the videos we began to
feel a connection to them. It made us
want to be successful for them. Think
about that. It made us want to be
successful for them. That's a great model
for all of us.
Find somebody to be successful for. Raise
their hopes, rise to their needs as you
think about your life after graduation.
As you look into the mirror tonight,
after the partying is done,
that shouldn't get such a big cheer. You
may look in the mirror tonight, you may
see somebody who's not really sure what
to do with their lives. That's what you
may see, but a troubled child might look
at you and see a mentor, a homebound
senior citizen might see a lifeline, the
folks at your local homeless shelter
might see a friend, none of them care how
much money is in your bank account or
whether you're important at work or
whether you're famous around town, they
just know that you're somebody who cares,
somebody who makes a difference in their lives.
So class of 2009 that's what building a
body of work is all about. It's about the
daily labor, the many individual acts, the
choices large and small that add up over
time, over a lifetime to a lasting legacy.
That's what you want on your tombstone.
It's about not being satisfied with the
latest achievement, the latest gold star,
because the one thing I know about a
body of work is that it's never finished.
It's cumulative, it deepens and expands
with each day that you give your best,
each day that you give back and
contribute to the life of your community
and your nation. You may have setbacks
and you may have failures but you're not
done. You're not even getting started, not
by a long shot and if you ever forget
that just look to history. Thomas Paine
was a failed corset maker, a failed
teacher and a failed tax collector
before he made his mark on history with
a little book called common sense that
helped ignite a revolution.
Julia Child didn't publish her first
cookbook until she was almost 50. Colonel
Sanders didn't open up his first
Kentucky Fried Chicken til he was in the
60s. Winston Churchill was dismissed as
little more than a has-been who enjoyed
scotch a little bit too much before he
took over as prime minister and saw
Great Britain through its finest hour. No
one thought a former football player
stocking shelves at the local
supermarket would return to the game he
loved, become a Super Bowl MVP, and then
come here to Arizona and lead your
Cardinals to their first Super Bowl. Your
body of work is never done.
Each of them at one point in their life
didn't have any title or much status to
speak of but they had passion, a
commitment to following that passion
wherever it would lead and to working hard
every step along the way and that's not
just how you'll ensure that your own
life is well lived,
it's how you'll make a difference in the
life of our nation. I talked earlier
about the selfishness, selfishness and
irresponsibility on Wall Street in
Washington that rippled out and led to
so many of the problems that we face
today. I talked about the focus on
outward markers of success that can help
lead us astray but here's the thing
class of 2009, it works the other way too.
Acts of sacrifice and decency without
regard to what's in it for you, that also
creates ripple effects. Ones that lift up
families and communities, that spread
opportunity and boost our economy, that
reach folks in the forgotten corners of
the world, who committed young people
like you see the true face of America,
our strength, our goodness, our diversity,
our enduring power, our ideals.
I know starting your careers in troubled
times is a challenge but it is also a
privilege,
because it's moments like these that
force us to try harder and dig deeper
and to discover gifts we never knew we had.
To find the greatness that lies
within each of us. So don't ever shy away
from that endeavor,
don't stop adding to your body of work.
I can promise that you will be the better
for that continued effort as will this
nation that we all love.
Congratulations class of 2009 on your graduation!
God bless you and God bless the United
States of America.
