Barack Obama

As long as they're not actively hurting you, you've got to put up with them.

And you can battle them and ultimately it gets sorted out in politics and the winners get to

move their agenda forward and the losers lick their wounds and come back later.

But there's always that sense of, yeah, but we're not going to call each other vermin.

And we're not going to try to crush you if you lose.

We're not going to target you.

Well, and look, that's the thing that –

I spend a lot of time talking to younger leaders about this.

There's no simple solution to it, but I will say that part of what a liberal democracy requires is an acceptance of partial victory and not perfection.

When I was in the White House, I'd sit around

on any issue with my cabinet or my staff, senior staff, and we'd go around analyzing everything.

And at some point, I'd say, all right, I think I've got all the information.

If we do X, is this going to make things better?

Because, and I'd tell them, better is good.

We're not going to get to perfect.

If you're telling me that the Affordable Care Act is gonna insure 50 million people, do I think that's better than if we had a,

if we were starting from scratch and I can get a single payer plan instituted and, and, and get that through Congress and suddenly we had universal healthcare and we had taken the profit motive out of, do I think that would probably be a smarter way to, absolutely.

Right.

But since I can't do that.

Yeah.