President Obama’s town hall discussion took on the economy and Ted Brassfield’s loaded question.
“What I found was I simply–there weren’t jobs out there right now. I took advantage of the loans you were just speaking about, but I can’t make the interest payments on those loans today let alone think about getting a mortgage, having a family having a marriage–it’s awfully expensive,” Brassfield, the 30-year old “recent” law school graduate, said.
“Let me just say, whatever the expense, it’s worth it,” Obama said.
But the ultimate question–“Is the American Dream dead for me?”–prompted this response, via the CNBC live blog, from the President:
“The American dream is not dead. I think there’s no country in the world that would trade places with us. The single most important thing we can do is to grow our economy.”
Like that, the hour long discussion featured a suited Obama taking on questions about the economy, his stimulus plan and how the last few months have brought us to a point where we are seeing a turn-around. But he acknowledges that people will continue to be angry:
“I know how frustrated people are. I know in some cases how desperate people are,” he said, later adding, “I am confident that if we stay on a course that gets us back to old-fashioned values of hard work and responsibility and looking out for one another, that America will thrive.”
Video from the event can be found here.