When President Obama entered the White House the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America's bravest our men and women in uniform were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.

I think it was my study of history that convinced me that the Democratic Party was more on the side of the average American.

Let me tell you never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

We have our own history our own language our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.

September 11 was terrible but if one goes back over the history of the IRA what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.

Nixon in 1968 unlike Obama 2008 was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet in 1972 he won what in some measures was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.

Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington's reach of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders particularly the president.

What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that he is a centrist just like I try to be. He's been bridging divisions his whole life.

So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history.