The Arc of History Inside Obama's White House

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

You and I, we're going to change this country,

and we will change the world.

For millions, the election of Barack Obama to the Oval Office

marked a new era of hope.

The President turned around with this great smile on his face.

He said, "Well, then, of course I'm feeling lucky."

All right, let's go.

Let's go get 'em, it's game time.

By the end of his first term,

Obama had realised change was harder than he had predicted.

He said, "I am President of The United States,

"the leader of the free world, and I can't make anything happen."

He said, "You know, I don't sleep at night very much."

It's not a straight line. Sometimes the stone rolls back,

er, and you have to start over.

With unique access to the President and his inner circle,

tonight's programme tells how Obama won re-election...

Four more years! Four more years!

..and tried to tackle America's most intractable social problems -

race...

Don't shoot!

..immigration...

Stop illegal immigration!

..and guns...

The President walked in and his first words were,

"Friday was the toughest day of my entire time in the presidency."

..and how Obama embraced changes that showed power was in new hands.

I'm sort of looking at the person, like, you want to tell me

how to hug the President?

And the President was very cool about it

and he just said, "I think we've got this!"

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

So, ladies and gentlemen,

join me in welcoming my friend,

our President, Barack Obama.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In 2012, President Obama was running for re-election.

He had a good story to tell.

He had brought universal health care to the American people.

He had rescued the country from the worst financial crisis

in living memory.

Home values are rising. The stock market has rebounded.

Our assembly lines are hummin' again. We are moving forward.

And he had avenged the deadliest attack on mainland America

in two centuries.

Since 9/11, the CIA had been looking for the man responsible.

In September 2010, CIA director Leon Panetta came to brief

the President about a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Mr President, I don't want to raise your hopes

because, you know, we don't know for certain whether Bin Laden is located

here, but we think we have located a compound that is unique enough

that it raises the possibility that he could be there.

Leon - I think properly - was cautious in saying that they could

say definitively this was where Bin Laden was.

Despite the wealth of the neighbourhood, the house had

no phone service, no internet service. Er, there were multiple

children in the compound, and none of them went to school. So there was

all this strange behaviour, right,

to go with this very strange facility.

There was an eight-foot wall on the third floor. And, normally,

if you're on the third floor of a house, er,

you like the view, so why was there an eight-foot wall?

My feeling at the time was... interested, but cautious.

Leon suggested that, er, we redouble our efforts in focusing

on this compound that had been identified and...

and for the next several months we, er, developed more and more data.

The President called a meeting to decide whether to give the go-ahead.

The leading option on the table was to send in helicopters with

Special Forces, but Defense Secretary Gates

warned the President, the military had got it wrong before.

He reminded him that President Carter attempted to rescue

American hostages from the embassy in Tehran.

That raid ended in disaster.

I had been in the White House the night of the...of the raid in Iran

to try and liberate our hostages at...er,

through the Desert One operation.

And I had sat there through a number of these that had been...

well-planned, well-executed, and failed.

As I sat there, I thought to myself, er, if we go ahead with this

and it fails and books are written that Bob Gates recommended

we not do this, we will really look like fools.

It was a very mixed room. Er, Vice President Biden

argued against acting without certainty that Bin Laden was there

because he was worried about the impact

on the Pakistani relationship - that if we went in and

Bin Laden wasn't there, you could have a conflict with Pakistan.

The problem that the President faced was that we didn't have a

single piece of hard evidence that Bin Laden was in,

er, the compound at Abbottabad - it was all a circumstantial case,

er, assembled by analysts at CIA.

Even though I thought it was only 50-50 that Bin Laden was there,

I thought it was worth us taking a shot.

On May 1st, 2011, The President was in the Situation Room

with his advisors, listening to the voice of Admiral McRaven,

who was commanding the operation from his base in Afghanistan.

I heard Admiral McRaven narrating, saying, um, "Well, OK,

"so now, you know, you see that there's a helicopter down."

And, er... And it was so matter-of-fact that

it didn't strike me for a second, and then I thought, "Down?"

"Does he... Does he mean DOWN down?"

The first thing I thought of was, you know, Bob Gates was right.

I asked, er, Bill McRaven - I said, "What the hell's going on, Bill?"

And he didn't miss a beat - he said, "Don't worry, we've got the...

"the backup helicopters coming in,

"they're going to proceed with the mission."

The men in the crashed helicopter were not injured.

They forced their way into the house,

even before the backup arrived.

I heard Admiral McRaven say, um, "We have a Geronimo."

And there was sort of, you know, a reaction.

And I didn't know what... I didn't know what "Geronimo" meant, so I

turned to the guy next to me and I said "What is... What is Geronimo?"

And he said, "It's Bin Laden."

I said, "We got him."

Erm...

But there was no whooping, there was no hollering,

er, there was no high-fiving.

Good evening.

Tonight, I can report to the American people

and to the world that the United States has conducted

an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda.

-CHANTING:

-USA! USA! USA!

USA! USA! USA!

Obama's success gave his re-election campaign a rallying cry.

I've got a little bumper sticker for you.

Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!

Vice President Biden was leading the charge for the President...

but Obama needed to go beyond the blue-collar workers

and traditional ethnic groups cheering for him here in Detroit.

-CHANTING:

-O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!

He had won the presidency by harnessing the energy

of first-time voters, women, and non-whites.

Obama!

Keeping their support was a top priority.

-CHANTING:

-O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!

Early in the campaign, the President faced a tough choice -

between maximising the women's vote

and a smooth roll-out of his greatest achievement - Obamacare.

-CHANTING:

-O-ba-ma!

If you had told us,

you're going to have, like, two months where contraception

consumes your administration, you would have said "no way".

The Catholic Church wanted its hospitals

and universities to be exempt from the rule that they must

provide contraceptive coverage for their employees and students.

Archbishop Dolan, head of the American Catholic Church,

tried hard to persuade Obama.

After a private meeting with the President,

Dolan hinted to his fellow bishops that Obama would grant

the exemption the church wanted.

He was very ardent in his desire to assure me that this is something

he will look long and hard at,

and I left there feeling a bit more at peace.

The Archbishop's statement alarmed Obama's Health Secretary.

I said to the President, "Eliminating this coverage from,

"women who attended Catholic colleges,

"er, employees of Catholic hospitals..." -

literally millions of women were potentially affected -

that would be a terrible decision and, in fact,

that would be a setback.

I explained to him that it was unlikely

that there'd be a compromise

and that he was probably going to have to

make a choice.

The President said to me,

"Kathleen, I shouldn't be fighting your battles."

And I reminded him that, at this point, this was HIS battle.

APPLAUSE

This battle was for those crucial women's votes.

Obama had to give his biggest ally in the Catholic Church bad news.

I got a call from the President, who told me that...

he was not going to give us an exemption.

Um... And, you know, I... I expressed to the President

what a significant problem this was going to be -

not only for us, but for him.

The President walked into the West Wing Press Room

and made a statement he knew would cause controversy.

'He wasn't really making a lot of eye contact. He clearly, I think,

'wanted to be anywhere other than this room.'

He had hoped that there would be

a resolution that could have been a little less contentious.

We decided to follow the judgment of the nation's leading medical

experts and make sure that free preventive care includes

access to free contraceptive care.

Thank you very much, everybody.

What did Archbishop Dolan say, sir?

PRESS CLAMOURING

It's not about church teaching - it's about the Federal government

butting in to an area where they

have absolutely no competence and right -

into the internal affairs of the Church.

One thing's for certain -

this attack on religious freedom cannot and will not stand.

What happened next was an extraordinary own goal

by the Republicans.

It began when a university student spoke out in support of Obama.

I attended Jesuit Law School that does not provide contraceptive

coverage in its student health plan.

Without insurance coverage,

contraception can cost as much as 3,000 during law school.

That's an entire summer's salary for a law student.

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh took aim at Sandra Fluke.

Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it's too expensive

to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage.

It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.

She wants to be paid to have sex.

She's having so much sex, she can't afford

her birth control pills any more.

-CHEERING

-Mitt Romney!

The Republican candidate had to choose -

would he condemn what many were

calling the conservative war on women?

Governor, anything on Rush?

We knew that if the President called Sandra Fluke

and stood up for her, that it would force the Republicans to demonstrate

whether they would stand with, er, young women or with Rush Limbaugh.

Someone reached a friend of mine and, er, said,

"You know, someone in the White House

"would like to speak with Sandra - do you have her number?"

And at this time I'm really under an onslaught from the press,

so we're not giving out my cellphone number.

And the White House staff person said,

"No, I really want to be able to have this individual reach out

"to Sandra directly."

And it just sort of went back and forth for a number of minutes

and the staffer was trying very much to just say

"a senior White House Official"

and eventually had to say "it's the President".

I wanted Sandra to know that...

er...

..that I thought her parents should be proud of her.

And women are going to make up their own mind in this election

about who is advancing...

..the issues that they care most deeply about.

One of the things I've learned being married to Michelle is,

I don't need to tell her what it is that she thinks is important.

CHEERING

Mr Romney could only say

that those weren't the words he would have chosen.

LAUGHTER

Well, Mr Romney, you're not going to be the candidate we choose!

CHEERING

Please welcome the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

CHEERING

-CHANTING:

-Four more years! Four more years!

Obama's coalition of women, gays, African-Americans

and first-time voters was coming together.

CHEERING

Thank you.

Although the Democrats failed to win back

control of Congress, the President won re-election convincingly.

Five weeks later, the nation was struck by a tragedy

that went to the heart of the struggle to define America.

'I think there's somebody who's shooting in here -

'in Sandy Hook school.

'OK, what makes you think that?

'Because somebody said,

"God, I caught a glimpse of somebody - they're running down the hallway."

A mentally disturbed young man walked into Sandy Hook

primary school in Newtown, Connecticut,

armed with two hand guns and an assault rifle.

'There's still shooting going on, please...'

BANGING

In less than five minutes, he shot dead 20 children,

six members of staff,

and then killed himself.

Nicole Hockley had two sons at the school.

I found Jake's classroom, er, and I found Jake, which was great.

He really didn't have any idea what was going on, er, but it was very

good to see him. Um, but I couldn't find any of Dylan's class anywhere.

I got there just in time to hear our Governor go in and tell the

parents that...

there were 20 kids who were dead, and if their kids had not

returned yet, that they were likely amongst those who were killed.

Um, there are a lot of days when I wish that I wasn't there.

There are a lot of days when I wish I didn't see that, and I didn't

witness the absolute terror and horror on the face of those parents.

There were some parents screaming. Er, there were some crying,

some people fell to the floor, um...

and I just shut down. Um...

I just completely shut down.

The majority of those who died today were children.

Beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old.

CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING

They had their entire lives ahead of them -

birthdays, graduations,

weddings.

The President decided, er,

to go up to Sandy Hook two days after this, er, massacre happened.

And we get in the limousine and the President looks through

his remarks that had been prepared for him and...

I remember he just kind of handed them to me

and he took out a yellow pad and he started to write.

And he wrote for an hour and ten minutes.

And I can remember thinking,

"I certainly am not going to talk,"

but I was even conscious of breathing!

APPLAUSE

And when we walked in to the centre, he handed his yellow pad

to one of the staff and he said, "This is what I'm going to say."

This is our first task.

Caring for our children.

It's our first job.

If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right.

That's how, as a society, we will be judged.

My dad is a very quiet man,

and, um... And I was amazed when he actually spoke and said, you know,

"Mr President, you have the power,

"you have to do something about this."

And, er... And the President said, "I am going to do something."

BELL TOLLS

The gun lobby was formidably successful at blocking

gun control legislation.

The right to bear arms - the Second Amendment of the American

Constitution - was hard-wired into the psyche of many American voters.

Obama's views on gun control made them fearful.

They confiscated their guns,

then they banned the importation of guns and ammo...

'People began to take a closer look at his record,

'his views on the Second Amendment,'

and a lot of people didn't like what they saw

and as a result, sales in gun stores surged.

And I myself have seen pictures of the President in gun stores in

different parts of the country, with the caption "Salesman of the Year".

Nine acres of guns and gear. Check this out!

Just a great, high-class group of people with the right intentions

doing good things.

We've seen a lot of husbands and wives coming over,

buyers wanting to know about our products...

The most powerful gun lobby group was the National Rifle Association -

the NRA - a major funder of the Republican Party.

Everyone waited for their spokesman's comment on Sandy Hook.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe.

It is now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun

is a good guy with a gun.

The NRA has blood on its hands!

The NRA has blood on its hands!

During his first term, Obama had not taken on the gun lobby.

Now, a huge majority of the public wanted new gun controls.

I've never seen the nation's conscience so shaken

by what happened at Sandy Hook.

The world has changed, and it's demanding action.

APPLAUSE

As soon as he could, the President went into action.

To strengthen existing gun laws, Obama signed 23 executive orders.

But these presidential decrees could be more easily overturned

than Acts of Congress.

Four months later, the President and Nicole Hockley addressed a rally in

the state capital of Connecticut to press for more permanent gun reform.

The task before us this week is to convince the Senate

to come together and pass common-sense gun responsibility

legislation that will make our community safer.

CHEERING

'He had a very quick, er, jaunty sort of walk'

and just kind of hopped out, ran up,

gave myself and my husband a big hug and thanked us.

CHEERING

I've heard Nicole talk about what her life has been like...

since Dylan was taken from her in December.

And one thing she said struck me.

She said, "Every night, I beg for him to come to me in my dreams

"so that I can see him again.

"And during the day, I just focus on what I need to do to honour him

"and make change."

Now, if Nicole can summon the courage to do that,

how can the rest of us do any less?

How can we do any less?

The Sandy Hook families joined the President on Air Force One

to travel to Washington.

Very well-meaning people - friends, family members - have said to me,

"Oh, wow," you know, "You're... You've spent a lot of time.

"You've met the President on a number of occasions,

"you've flown on Air Force One," you know, "You're so lucky."

And they don't even realise, um, there's nothing lucky about this.

I don't want any of this - I want my boy back.

In 2012, the NRA spent 32 million on pro-gun lobbying.

Senators supporting the families had to warn them that

ambitious gun control legislation wouldn't pass in Congress.

It was hard to explain to the families that we weren't

going to have the votes to reinstitute the assault-weapons ban

or to get rid of these high-capacity magazines.

It was really hard for them to stomach that the best

they were going to get was just an extension of background checks.

The hopes of the families for any change depended on an

NRA-approved Senator, Joe Manchin.

It really got to me.

These are babies - five- and six-year-old children.

Who would have ever... It's just beyond my imagination -

most Americans' -

to conceive anything this horrific could happen in America.

CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING

Manchin was drafting a bill that would close a few

loopholes in background checks, to ensure no-one with a criminal

record, or a history of mental illness, could buy a gun.

As the Senator discussed his legislation with the NRA,

an even more extreme gun group -

Gun Owners of America - attacked them both.

We were hearing from people on the hill that the NRA was er...

..going from office to office in support of the expanded

background check, the Toomey-Manchin bill.

The background check is not keeping criminals from getting guns,

but it does put information

about who the gun owners are into the Government's hands.

That's a registry.

So we put out an alert and said,

"Look, if you are an NRA member, please call."

We gave a number and a person to talk to,

and urged that they, er, publicly come out

and oppose the Toomey-Manchin expansion of the background check.

The NRA caved in to this pressure.

Now they turned on the senator they had been working with

and released a series of attack ads.

As your Senator, I'll protect our Second Amendment rights.

That was Joe Manchin's commitment.

But now Manchin is working with President Obama

and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Concerned? You should be.

Tell Senator Manchin to honour

his commitment to the Second Amendment...

I knew they were not going to be supportive - I was fine with that.

I didn't know that they would be in opposition as strong as

they would and come out as strong as they did.

-Mr Manchin, aye.

-Mr Rubio, no.

Watching from the gallery,

Nicole Hockley knew they needed 60 votes to pass the Amendment.

Mr Durbin, aye.

I'm trying to think, OK, you know, we're at... We're at ten now,

we're at 11 against,

we're about 14 for, and then just can't keep track of it at all.

'And then realising it was going to be tight.'

On this vote, the yeas are 54, the nays are 46.

The amendment is not agreed to.

There will be order in the Senate.

The families immediately left

for the White House to meet the President.

He was angry.

He was incredibly, incredibly angry at what had just happened.

Um, he really couldn't believe it.

I've heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby

for this legislation was somehow misplaced.

"A prop," somebody called them.

"Emotional blackmail," some outlet said.

Are they serious?!

Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been

shattered by gun violence don't have a right to weigh in on this issue?

So, all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington.

CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING

-CHANTING:

-Can you hear us now? Can you hear us now?

From the moment he was elected, Obama had inspired euphoria

and hatred in almost equal measures.

For every change he proposed,

he faced unprecedented opposition from Republicans in Congress.

Gay rights was an area where Obama had to tread especially carefully.

One change the President was trying to make was the repeal of

Don't Ask, Don't Tell - the law that forced gay members

of the US Armed Forces to keep their sexuality secret.

When a California judge ruled the law unconstitutional,

Obama saw his chance.

He summoned his defense secretary and told him to

stop prosecuting gay servicemen and women.

We had a...a very candid, er, tough conversation in the Oval Office,

er, in which he pushed me very hard to, um,

do as he had wanted in terms of suspending the law,

and I basically told him I could not do that.

He became quite angry and he went on about,

"I am President of The United States,

"the leader of the free world, and I can't make anything happen,

"I can't get anything done."

I noticed he had a raspy voice,

and on the way out of the Oval Office,

I said, er, "Are you catching cold?"

And he basically gave me a dismissive wave, like,

"Don't even try and make friends with me

"or talk to me right now - I'm really angry."

-CHANTING:

-Don't go home! Don't go home!

Repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell

could now only be achieved by an Act of Congress.

Eight weeks later, gay activists gathered on Capitol Hill

waiting for the vote.

-CHANTING:

-Don't go home! Don't go home!

The same day, the Senate was voting

on another big plank of Obama's platform -

a Bill to give legal status to the so-called Dreamers -

the children of illegal immigrants who had grown up in the USA.

It's a Bill that I feel very strongly about.

The President, er, co-sponsored it when he was a senator

and so I knew that he supported the concept.

The Dreamers were young people who had basically been

instructed by their parents to hide -

"Don't ever come out publicly and tell the world your status."

Well, like most young people, they ignored their parents

and wanted to show their bravery, so they just stood up

and said, "I'm a Dreamer, I'm undocumented."

My office was on the second floor of the West Wing,

so we decided to gather the Dream Act team as well as the team

that was working on Don't Ask, Don't Tell to watch the votes together.

The Don't Ask, Don't Tell vote comes up first...

er, and it passes - we repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

So there's, you know, great cheering and joy,

um, and then the next vote up is the Dream Act and we lost by five votes.

Half of our team was devastated and in tears because of defeat

and the other half was euphoric and in tears because of victory and, er,

I went down to talk to the President

and I explained to him what was happening up in Cecilia's

office. And so he stopped what he was doing and he came upstairs.

He gave us a pep talk.

He basically said, "Look at the Don't Ask, Don't Tell vote - that

"was 17 years in the making and they had lots of defeats along the way.

"This is one of those.

"But understand that the arc of history

"is long and this is going to happen and what you did today is part of

"the journey that's going to get us there."

Moving that arc of the universe in a better direction

is a collective effort, and your job is to, as part of that team,

lead,

set a direction, er,

keep people's spirits up when, er,

progress, er, seems...lacking.

Er, but you don't do this alone.

Obama didn't give up on trying to fix the immigration system.

He knew business needed both cheap foreign workers,

and highly educated ones...

..and the Latino community wanted to

be free from the fear of deportation.

I promised you I would work tirelessly to fix

our broken immigration system and make the Dream Act a reality.

Two months ago, I went down to the border of El Paso to reiterate

my vision for an immigration system that holds true

to our values and our heritage.

Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress

and change the laws on my own.

Believe me...

APPLAUSE

And...

They were yelling at him, "Mr President, we need you to act!"

And the President says, "I can't, I know you want me to, but I can't!"

And people were answering with his campaign slogan.

-CHANTING:

-Yes, you can! Yes, you can!

Yes, you can! Yes, you can!

But... But... But believe me,

the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

But that's not how... That's not how our system works.

For two years, Congress did nothing.

Then Democratic and Republican senators did a deal on a Bill

which would address the needs of business, help illegal immigrants

become citizens, but also tighten up the borders.

Here, in America,

generations of unfulfilled dreams will finally come to pass.

And that's why I support this reform.

Not just because I believe in immigrants,

but because I believe in America even more.

The yeas on this Bill are 68, the nays are 32.

The Bill, as amended, is passed.

For the Bill to become law,

it also had to be passed by the House of Representatives.

The man with the power was Republican Speaker John Boehner,

who told the President he would introduce an Immigration Bill.

The Republican leadership backed reform,

including Boehner's number two.

It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship

for those who were brought to this

country as children and who know no other home.

But for six months,

the House Republicans did nothing about the Bill...

Everybody in?

..so Obama invited the cameras inside a cabinet meeting

and threatened Speaker Boehner.

We know that we need to get immigration reform done -

a major piece of unfinished business

from last year - so I've got a pen, and I've got a phone.

And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take

executive action and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

Now, he is running around the country telling everyone

he's going to keep acting on his own.

He keeps talking about his phone and his pen.

And he's feeding more distrust about whether he is committed

to the rule of law.

Listen, there's widespread doubt about

whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws.

The difficulties of trying to get Republican support now gave

Obama problems with his political base -

especially advocates of immigration reform led by the unions.

The Republicans baited the President.

They said, "Oh, we can't do comprehensive immigration reform

"because we can't trust you to enforce the laws."

So the President showed them that he could be trusted,

and he deported twice as many people as George Bush did - their champion.

Inside the immigrant community anger at the President built up.

More and more illegal immigrants were being deported.

The leader of the largest Latino civil rights organisation

attacked Obama.

For us, this President has been the deporter in chief.

Any day now - any day now -

this administration will reach the two-million mark for deportations.

The President knew immigration reform could not succeed

in the House of Representatives without Republican support.

Speaker Boehner had given the President every

indication that he supported immigration reform

and that he would move forward and the Speaker said,

"As soon as the primaries are over, I will move forward."

A truly startling development in the world of American politics.

At this hour, we can report that Republican Congressman Eric Cantor

of Virginia, the number two Republican

in the House of Representatives, has lost his seat in Congress,

Eric Cantor's Tea Party challenger Dave Brat

waged, essentially, a one-issue campaign against Eric Cantor,

and his one issue was immigration.

-CHANTING:

-USA! USA!

The Tea Party seemed able to unseat any Republican who dared to

support immigration reform.

-CHANTING:

-USA!

Stop illegal immigration!

When the Speaker called and told him -

after Eric Cantor lost - that he was no longer able to get his party

together enough to move forward, and the President realised,

well, if he couldn't do it then,

then the chances are he wasn't going to do it.

Speaker Boehner now took a more intransigent line.

Senate Democrats are talking up some nutso scheme to jam through

the Senate Immigration Bill,

even though they know it will never happen.

And I'll say it one more time - the House will not take up the Senate

Immigration Reform Bill or accept it back from the Senate in any fashion.

Obama stopped waiting for the Republicans.

He decided to take executive action.

The immigration activists would finally get what they wanted.

But there was a new crisis.

Just since October, the US has picked up 52,000 unaccompanied

children crossing into the United States from Mexico.

Most are from Central America.

They were coming up through Mexico

and would come up to the, er, to the border

and the ports of entry and would turn themselves in,

hoping they could get asylum because they were fleeing the violence

and the drug wars in their countries,

and there were thousands of them.

Our message absolutely is, don't send your children

unaccompanied on trains or through a bunch of smugglers.

We don't even know how many of these kids don't make it,

and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed

because they fell off a train - we have no way of tracking that.

Obama invited immigration activists to the White House

to talk about the executive actions he was about to take.

But instead of thanking him, they brought new demands.

We were arguing that, er, what we needed to do was to provide

shelter and to provide, er, refuge for these young kids.

They weren't a menace -

they were just coming in and turning themselves in.

We were absolutely at cross purposes

and the fact of the matter is that the solution

to violence in Central America is never

going to be that everyone gets to come to the United States.

I said, you know, "I'm really concerned about these young kids

"being deported and sent home to a place where

"they could be killed. How is that humane?"

The President was having a policy conversation and the advocates

were having an emotional conversation and someone made a

reference to, "Oh, you know, we don't know

"how you can sleep at night."

And he said, "You know I don't sleep at night very much.

"It's always going to be unfair that the life of a child in El Salvador

"is different from the life of a child in Texas, um, but we have

"to apply the law.

"And we have to do it with humanity, but that's my job."

It was a very emotional meeting and at the end of that meeting,

the groups followed him to the Rose Garden, where he announced

that he was directing his team to do executive actions.

The failure of House Republicans to pass a darn bill is bad for our

security, it's bad for our economy, and it's bad for our future.

And that's why, today, I'm beginning a new effort to fix as much

of our immigration system as I can on my own...

without Congress.

'Am I frustrated that we have not had a rationalised immigration

'system, and do I occasionally despair at the xenophobia?'

Yeah, it frustrates me. But it's going to happen.

I view myself as part of a relay race -

I take the baton and I run.

And I run my leg, and then I hand it off to the next runner

and...you know, if... If I've gained some ground during the course

of my leg, er, I've done my job.

On immigration reform, there are children right now -

young people right now - who are in college, who otherwise might

have been subject to deportation because of our executive actions.

In his final years in office, the issue that had first marked Obama

as a different sort of politician began to surface in his presidency.

Race.

Raised by white grandparents in Hawaii, the background of the first

black president was different from most African-Americans.

My father was a black African and my mother was a white American,

and much of my life was spent trying to reconcile

the terms of my birth,

that divided heritage.

Obama's campaign to become the Democratic

candidate for president came close to destruction

when videos emerged showing Obama's own pastor preaching

anti-American sermons about the nation's treatment of black people.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons,

passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America?

No, no, no! Not God BLESS America, God DAMN America!

That's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America...

Obama decided he would confront the issue of race head-on.

Are you as happy as I am to be here tonight

-to welcome Senator Barack Obama?

-APPLAUSE

I was backstage with the President before he was going to give

the speech in Philadelphia, and, er,

I was nervous.

He was at ease in a way that almost alarmed me a little bit.

He was talking about basketball,

he was talking about the colour of his suit and how it might

look on camera and things like that - all of which, again...

given the magnitude of the situation,

struck me as...

"Focus, man! Focus!"

As imperfect as Reverend Wright may be, he has been like family to me.

He strengthened my faith,

officiated my wedding,

and baptised my children.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.

I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother -

a woman who helped raise me,

a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world,

but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men

who passed by her on the street.

And who, on more than one occasion,

has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are part of me.

And they are part of America - this country that I love.

APPLAUSE

In his first term, Obama had tried to be just President,

rather than the first African-American President.

However, in his second term,

the nation began to talk about race more openly.

The emotional case of a 17-year-old African-American

shot to death by a white neighbourhood watch captain.

Trayvon Martin was walking to his dad's home in a gated

community around sunset last month.

The President was deeply, deeply hurt by Trayvon Martin's death

and when you heard the facts of the case,

you just seem to wonder how this kid, who's just

walking down the street eating Skittles,

could suddenly find himself in a situation that led to his death.

And I remember being in the Oval Office with him

and he said, "I need to talk about this."

I almost fell out of my chair because I felt that that was

the worst idea I'd ever heard in my life.

He said, "Well, look, I'm not wedded to the briefing room,

"but let me tell you what I would say if I went."

And then he just spoke for about seven minutes, er, almost verbatim

to what he ended up saying in the briefing room that day.

'So we did it as a surprise and he gets there

'and, like, there's a lot of empty seats and there's, like, murmuring

'and now all of a sudden the cameramen

'in the back are waking up.'

Sorry about that.

You know...

When Trayvon Martin was first shot,

I said that this could have been my son.

Another way of saying that is,

Trayvon Martin could have been me...35 years ago.

And I think it's important to recognise that

the African American community is looking at this issue through

a set of experiences and a history that...

..that doesn't go away.

The history that didn't go away included how black Americans

experienced the law - not as a protector, but as a threat.

Out of this history came a rite of passage known as The Talk,

when African-American parents

warned their children about the dangers they might face.

America's first black Attorney General

had The Talk with his father.

There was always a question of,

how do you conduct yourself when you're stopped by the police?

Er, you don't...

HE SIGHS

..do anything that might be perceived as, er, aggressive.

That you don't, you know, get into arguments with, er,

the officer who's there, on the scene.

In Ferguson, Missouri, one of these encounters would lead to

violent conflict between police and African-Americans.

It began when 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by a policeman.

People were trying to figure out how this possibly could have happened.

And then some young people actually started to sit in the street

and say, "We're not going to move until we actually get some answers".

CAR HORNS BEEPING

Ferguson was a mainly black suburb of St Louis...

..with a mainly white police department.

-CHANTING:

-We're young, we're strong, we're marching all night long.

As the protests grew, the police arrived in military vehicles.

You are in violation of the state...

The person atop the armoured vehicle would say, you know, er,

"This is no long a lawful assembly - you're ordered to disperse."

But about two seconds after the order would come,

the tear gas would come.

You must continue to disperse peacefully,

or you will be subject to arrest, and/or other actions.

As Ferguson exploded, the President was holidaying

in Martha's Vineyard.

Obama seemed out of touch.

He's reaching! He's reaching!

More videos of shocking deaths swept across social media.

No, you're not - don't ... move!

Don't you...

Don't you ... move!

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

The succession of black deaths was top of the agenda

when the President met black congressmen and senators.

Inside the meeting in the White House, there was a sense

of urgency about the recent tragedies, the senseless loss

of life of African-Americans

who encounter local law enforcement and wound up dead.

I specifically asked, er, for the intervention of

the Federal Government...

..because, um, we know that...

that, er, through some of the local prosecutions in the state,

um, justice, er, is not equal.

CHANTING

In Ferguson, the local prosecutor announced that the grand jury

would not indict the white policeman who shot Mike Brown.

That decision ignited the city - once again.

SIRENS WAILING

Obama decided he had to address the anger of Black America.

A grand jury made a decision yesterday

that upset a lot of people.

I've never seen a civil rights law, or a health care bill,

or an immigration bill result because a car got burned.

It happened because people vote.

It happened because people mobilise.

It happened because people organise.

It happens because people look at, what are the best policies to

solve the problem?

That's how you actually move something forward.

A week later, Obama invited activists to the White House.

I told the President that the first time I was tear gassed,

I was standing next to an 8th grader who was peacefully

exercising his right to protest and being the kind of American

that I think we all would want our young people to be.

The fact that there's been attention on, er,

how the criminal justice system treats African-Americans

may seem to people as if race relations are in a bad place.

Well, in fact...

those problems with the criminal justice system

and African-Americans date back to slavery,

and if you think that they're worse now

than they were in the 1950s or '60s or '70s, then you probably

didn't live as an African-American in the '50s, '60s or '70s.

Obama showed them a programme from the 1963 March on Washington,

when Martin Luther King made his greatest speech.

'..colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.

'I have a dream today...'

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We walked over to the carpet with him, and he showed us where,

embroidered in the carpet, is Doctor King's quote

about the arc of the universe being long, but bending toward justice.

And he reminded us that the arc is long,

that we have to be in the work for a long time,

but that arc will bend toward justice, if we bend it.

Look at the work that Martin Luther King did, and we all stand

on his shoulders, and these young people will stand on the President's

shoulders and he encouraged them to think very strategically

about the purpose of the demonstrations, that it shouldn't

just be about expressing outrage - it should be a force for change.

When I meet young activists, I want them to feel impatient,

I want them to feel outrage, er, I want them to feel

that...there's a fundamental injustice that has to be solved -

that's what's going to give them the courage and the energy

to move this society forward, but I also want to remind them

that, in fact, progress is possible.

In Charleston, South Carolina, race and guns came together

when a white man walked into a black church and shot nine people dead.

SIRENS WAIL

HELICOPTER WHIRS

The court ordered the shooter to be brought face-to-face

with the families of those he had murdered, via a video link.

We were on a helicopter in California

when he heard about the families, and he said,

"That's true grace - that in the face of devastating personal loss,

"your belief and your faith are strong enough that you could

"say something that kind."

And he spoke with us about

the importance of the black church -

the black church has always remained open -

and that, on that day, a perfect stranger was welcome.

Obama gave the funeral oration for the murdered preacher,

the Reverend Clem Pinckney.

Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition...

..of ourselves in each other.

That my liberty depends on you being free, too.

MURMERS OF APPROVAL, APPLAUSE

That history can't be a sword

to justify injustice...

or a shield against progress.

He knew that the path of grace involves...

..an open mind...

..but, more importantly, an open heart.

Amazing grace.

APPLAUSE

-# Amazing grace... #

-APPLAUSE

# How sweet the sound... #

-CONGREGATION JOINS IN

-# That saved a wretch like me... #

Obama's presidency had been through an extraordinary

series of triumphs and disappointments.

The threat of a second Great Depression overshadowed

the start of his first term.

I said, "Mr President-elect, this is your 'holy shit' moment."

His success at carrying health care, after seven presidents had failed,

protected the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

The day that it passed was, er,

as happy and as proud a moment as I've had in this White House.

In Syria, Obama's cautious approach to the use of force

frustrated many who wanted him to intervene.

But his secret negotiations paid off in Iran.

This is a good day, because, once again,

we're seeing what's possible with strong American diplomacy.

Mr Speaker, the President of the United States!

Obama came to power promising he would bring the country together,

but he was blocked by Republicans in Congress for most of his presidency.

After the mid-term elections, my advisors asked me,

"Mr President, do you have a bucket list?"

I said, "Well, I have something that rhymes with 'bucket list'."

LAUGHTER

Take executive action on immigration?

Bucket! It's the right thing to do.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Obama led the walk across the bridge at Selma, Alabama,

to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights March.

His speech brought together the words

of Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King and his own campaign slogan.

Because Selma shows us that America is not

the project of any one person.

Because the single most powerful word in our democracy

is the word "we".

"WE the people."

"WE shall overcome."

"Yes, WE can."

That word is owned by no-one. It belongs to everyone.

APPLAUSE

Oh, what a... What a glorious task WE are given...

to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.

'My view of human progress has stayed surprisingly constant

'throughout my presidency.'

The world today, with all its pain

and all its sorrow, is more just,

more democratic, more free,

more tolerant, healthier, wealthier,

er, better educated,

more connected, more empathetic...

than ever before.

If you didn't know ahead of time...

..what your social status would be,

what your race was, what your gender was,

or sexual orientation was,

what country you were living in

and you asked, "What moment in human history would you like to be born?",

you'd choose right now.