It’s not often that Tampa gets mentioned in the State of the Union Speech. But it happened recently as President Barack Obama was underscoring points about infrastructure and jobs and where he was heading the following day to make a ($1.25-billion) down payment on high-speed (Orlando-to-Tampa) rail. In the aftermath of his UT visit, these Obama outtakes:
· “I’m excited. I’m going to come back down here and ride it.”
· “It’s fast, smooth and you don’t have to take off your shoes.”
· “Nobody should go broke because they chose to go to college.”
· “I won’t walk away from you (on health-care reform).”
· “I’ll be honest with you. Joe (Biden) and I are pretty smart politicians. We’ve been at this a while. The easiest way to keep your poll numbers high is to say nothin’ and do nothin’ that offends anybody. That’s true. That’s how you do it.”
· “Change never comes without a fight.”
· “We didn’t seek this office to push our problems off or take the easy road to the next election. We ran to solve problems. Problems that have been nagging at America for decades. We want to solve them for the next generation. To get tough stuff done.”
· “‘If Obama loses, we win.’ That can’t be a platform. That’s not a mindset equal to these times. All of us should be rooting for each other.”