The following is a podcast recording of a speech given by Barack Obama in the St. John Basketball Arena on the campus of Ohio State University at 11:30 am on February 27, 2008. It begins at the moment Senator Obama enters the arena to the soundtrack of U2, and ends as I walk out of the arena after the speech with the sound of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” playing in the background.

The following is a text transcript of the portion of Barack Obama’s speech following his many obligatory introductory thanks:

Well, we have had a wonderful few days campaigning all across Ohio. We had a terrific debate last night in Cleveland. We’ve got a couple of good strong Democrats on stage; looking forward, one of us, to a general election. It made me think about the work that has gone into this campaign. It’s now over a year old. It’s been more than a year since I stood on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the city where Abraham Lincoln served for many years before he went to Washington, where I served before I became a United States Senator. I stood on the steps of this old state capitol and I announced this unlikely journey to change America.

And I have to say that at the time there were a lot of people who said, “Why are you running this time? You’re a relatively young man. Why are you running so soon? You can afford to wait.” That’s what they said. And I had to explain to them that I’m not running because of some long-held ambition. I know that people were looking through my Kindergarten papers, but that’s not why I decided to run. I’m not running because I think it’s somehow owed to me. I am running because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now,” because I believe that there is such a thing as being too late. That hour is almost upon us.

We are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war. Our planet is in peril. The dream that so many generations have fought for is slowly slipping away. You see it everywhere you go: people are working harder just to get by. It’s harder to save. It’s harder to retire. People have never paid more for gas at the pump or for college education, paying their electricity bills. Our health care system is broken: we have 47 million people without health insurance, and if you’ve got health insurance you’ve seen your copayments and deductibles and premiums going up and up and up every single year. People are at risk of losing their homes. Our education system, despite the slogans, leaves millions of children behind, unable to complete in this new global economy. What I realized was that in such circumstances, we can’t afford to wait. We can’t wait to fix our schools. We cannot wait to fix our health care system. We cannot wait to deal with issues like global warming. We cannot wait to make college affordable. We cannot wait to bring to this war in Iraq to a close. We cannot wait. We cannot wait.

What I realized was that the size of these challenges had outstripped the capacity of a broken and divided politics to solve, and I was convinced that the American people were desperate, were hungry for a new direction, a new kind of politics; were interested in a politics that wasn’t about tearing each other down but was about lifting the country up. A politics that was not about spin and PR, but about was about straight talk and honesty and conversation with the American people.

In other words, I was betting on you. I was betting on you because — some of you know I now live in Chicago, but I didn’t originally grow up in Chicago. I moved there after college because I wanted to work at a grassroots level and I got a job as an organizer with a group of churches who were trying to deal with the devastation of steel plants that had closed. So for three years I worked setting up job training programs and trying to bring economic development to communities that had fallen on really hard times. And it was the best education I ever had, because it taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they’re given the chance. It taught me that change doesn’t happen from the top down; it happens from the bottom up. And so I continue to be convinced that Americans are a decent people and a generous people, willing to work hard and sacrifice on behalf of future generations. And if we could just get together and get beyond the divisions that have plagued us for so long, if we could come together black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor: if we could come together to challenge the special interests that have come to dominate Washington, but also to challenge ourselves to be better, better parents, better neighbors, better citizens, then there would be no problem we could not solve and no destiny we could not fulfill. That was the bet that I was making over one year ago.

And after traveling all across this country, after visiting VFW halls and diners and schools and work sites, after talking to tens of thousands of people and shaking thousands of hands and kissing hundreds of babies and eating hundreds of chicken dinners, I am here to report to you Buckeyes that my bet has paid off. My faith in the American people has been vindicated because everywhere I go, people tell me, “Yes, we want a new direction. Yes, we want to move in a direction of change. Yes, we can. We are ready to stand up and turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.”

Yes, we can.

I haven’t seen this kind of enthusiasm in my lifetime, the interest people are paying to elections. They’re going to rallies and they’re watching debates and they’re reading position papers. Young people voting in record numbers, which reminds me: Everybody here, I want to make sure everybody here understands there will be early voting in Ohio, so everybody can leave this rally and go cast your ballot today. Don’t wait until March 4th. We want you to vote now. I won’t tell you who to vote for, but do go out and cast your ballot. And if I’m making any sense, then you might consider voting for me. You just might. I see that marching band: you guys are still high school, right? So the Seniors, you might be able to vote. If you’re not a Senior, go tell your parents to vote!

So there’s been enormous enthusiasm and record turnout in all these states. I would like to take all the credit for it. I would like to say I’m completely responsible, but let’s face it: part of the reason everybody’s so excited is we’re going to be selecting a president come November and no matter what else happens when you walk into that polling place, the name “George W. Bush” will not be on the ballot! We’re pretty excited about that: no Bush. No Bush. The name of my cousin Dick Cheney will not be on the ballot. People are excited about that also. You know, when the news came out that Cheney and I had a distant relation in common, that was embarrassing. When they do these genealogical surveys, you want to be related to somebody cool! Dick Cheney? That’s a letdown. But that’s OK: his name won’t be on the ballot, which means that the failed surveys of the last seven years — the Katrina, the wiretaps, the Scooter Libby Justice, the Brownie incompetence, the Karl Rove politics — all that will be over next year.

But that’s not the only reason that you’re here. You know, being against something? That’s easy. You’re here because you want to be for something. You want to feel like we can still solve big problems in this country, and we’ve got some big problems to solve. I was down in Cincinnati a few days ago. I had a meeting with four middle-aged women. They’re all about the age of my mother when she passed away, so they reminded me of her. Two of them were looking after aging parents. Two of them were looking after disabled children. Two of them were out of work. One of them was on medical leave. All of them were struggling with health care, with child care, with just paying the bills. All of them were not even thinking about trying to save for retirement because they could barely keep up right now. And one of the women said to me during the conversation, “I played by the rules. All of us have here. We always figured we’d live a middle-class life. We never expected we’d be where we are today. We never expected to find ourselves in this situation.”

I think that speaks for so much of America. A lot of people here, I bet, because everywhere I go I meet people who are struggling with health care, don’t have it or have gone into bankruptcy or dipping into their savings because someone got sick. All throughout Ohio I meet people who’ve worked twenty years in a plant and suddenly the job gets shipped overseas, the equipment gets unbolted and shipped out to Mexico or China. They lose not just their job but their health care, their pension. They’re trying to make ends meet on seven-buck-an-hour jobs at the local fast food joint. All across this state, all across this country I meet teachers who are having to dig into their own pockets to buy school supplies because the schools are underfunded. [Looking at a pointing woman] I guess you’re a teacher! So you know what I’m talking about. All across this country I meet people who are at risk of having their homes foreclosed, not because they did anything wrong but because they got deceived into some predatory loan because there was no oversight by the government over the last several years.

All across this country I meet veterans, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are proud of their service and rightfully so, because they have done everything that’s been asked of them. They have performed magnificently in these recent conflicts. But you know, they think about the buddies they’ve left behind who are still there. They question the wisdom of a mission that has cost us so dearly in blood and treasure. Sometimes at the rope line after rallies like this one, I meet the parents of a fallen warrior. A mother in Green Bay gave me this bracelet for son Ryan who at the age of 20 was killed in a roadside bomb. I have to hug these parents as they weep silently. Those are the stories I’m hearing all across this country. Stories of hardship. Stories of struggle.

And so people desperately want to see something new. They want change. And I tell people that I would not be running if I weren’t confident that we could bring about this change, and that I could lead this country in a better direction. But I also tell people that I can’t do it by myself. Remember, change doesn’t happen from the top down. You have to believe. You have to demand and insist and work for and organize towards a different America. You have to be ready for change. And if you are ready for change then we can go and tell the lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over, because they have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drive out the voices of the American people while I am President of the United States of America.

If you are ready for change, then we can stop talking about the outrage of 47 million people without health insurance and start doing something about it. I’ve put forward a plan that says everybody will have the same health care if they want it that I have as a member of Congress, that you can’t be excluded for pre-existing conditions, we’ll negotiate with the drug companies for the cheapest available prices. If you’re 25 or younger you can stay on your parents’ health insurance. If you’ve got health insurance, we’re going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2500 per family per year. And we will not wait 20 years from now to do it or 10 years from now to do it. We will do it by the end of my first term as president of the United States of America.

If you’re ready for change, then we can start having an economy that’s fair again. You know, I believe in business. I believe in capitalism, the free market, entrepreneurship — I believe in all those things. Most Americans do. Nobody expects to get a free lunch. Everybody knows they’ve got to work hard. But when a CEO is making more in 10 minutes than ordinary workers make in an entire year, and the CEO is getting the tax break, and the workers are left with nothing, and if the company goes into bankruptcy, the workers lose their pension and the CEO is still getting a bonus and a golden parachute, something is wrong and something’s got to change. It’s not fair.

And so I’ve been very clear about my economic agenda. We are going to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas. We’re going to give those tax breaks to companies that invest right here in Ohio and in the United States of America. We are going to make sure that we have a tax code that’s fair. We’re going to roll back those Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and give them to hard-working Americans who deserve it, making $75,000 a year or less. $1,000 to offset your payroll tax per family. If you’re a senior citizen making $50,000 a year or less, you shouldn’t have to pay taxes on your Social Security. We’re going to give an additional mortgage deduction to people who live in modest homes if you don’t itemize it on your payroll tax and save them a little bit of money and make it easier for them if interest rates go up. We’re going to put forward a home foreclosure prevention fund to help bridge the gap for people who’ve been making their payments but who through no fault of their own have found themselves at risk of losing their home. We are going to have trade deals that work for all of America. I believe in trade, but I want labor standards and environmental standards that don’t undercut U.S. workers. And I want safety standards so our kids aren’t chewing on toys with lead-based paint of them.

We’re going to invest in infrastructure. If we can spend $12 Billion a month in Iraq, we can spend some money right here in Ohio rebuilding our roads and bridges, putting people back to work and making our economy more competitive. And I won’t raise the minimum wage every ten years; I’ll raise it to keep pace with inflation because if you work in this country, you should not be poor, and that is a goal that I will set when I am president of the United States of America.

If you’re ready for change, we can start providing every child the best education this country has to offer from the day that child is born to the day that child graduates from college. You know, the problem is not that we don’t know what to do. The problem is that we just give lip service to caring about every child. Actually, we’re not thinking about every child. A child in the inner city of Cleveland? “Ah, that child doesn’t look like me. That’s somebody else’s problem.” A kid in the barrio in South Texas? “Well that kid’s the son of an immigrant. I’m not worried about him. That’s not my problem.” Young girl in Appalachia? “Well, you know, those folks, you know, they’re far away. It’s not our problem.” Let me tell you something: every child is our responsibility! Every child deserves a chance! Every child is our child. Every child. And so we are going to make sure that every child can get early childhood education so that they are prepared for school. And I won’t just talk about how great teachers are; I will reward them for their greatness by giving them higher salaries, and giving them more support.

And I want the highest standards in our classrooms. Young guys, you are going to have to compete with kids in China and India. There are no shortcuts. You’re going to have to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your lives. You’ve got to take school seriously. And so we’re going to have high standards. But I don’t want those high standards measured by just one high-stakes test because I don’t want teachers teaching to the test. I want our kids to learn art and music and science and literature and poetry and civics.

And I don’t know about you, but I want to make college affordable for everybody. So we’re going to have a $4,000 tuition credit, every student, every year. But students are going to have to give something back. You’re going to have to provide some community service. You’re going to have to work in a homeless shelter or veterans’ home, or join the Peace Corps. We’ll invest in you, you invest in America, together we will march this country forward if you’re ready for change.

If you’re ready for change we’re going to have an energy policy that makes sense, because our current energy policy does not make sense. I read in the paper today we may see $4 a gallon gas. We are sending a billion dollars a day to foreign nations and we’re melting the polar ice caps in the bargain. And it doesn’t have to be if we’ve got a president who can communicate a sense of urgency about a smart energy policy. It would start with capping greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. That would generate billions of dollars that we could invest in solar and wind and biodiesel. We can put people to work building solar panels. Put people to work building wind turbines. Put people to work developing alternative energy. Put people to work making buildings more energy efficient, creating a green economy that drives economic growth for the 21st Century. We can raise fuel efficiency standards on cars. If we did it just to 40 miles per gallon we would save the equivalent of all the oil we import from the Persian Gulf. Imagine what that would do for our economy, for our environment and for our national security. And that’s how we will bring gas prices down, by using less gas. And by the way, when I made that proposal I didn’t do it in front of some environmental group. I did it in Detroit in front of the automakers. I told them we have to change our ways. I have to admit that the room was really quiet. Nobody clapped. But that’s OK, because part of what we need from the next president is somebody who will not just tell you what they think you want to hear but will tell you what you need to hear, will tell you the truth. That’s why I’m running, to be that president.

If you are ready for change, we can have a foreign policy that makes sense. I said last night in the debate: as commander in chief my job will be to keep you safe, and I will do whatever is required. I will not hesitate to strike against those who would do us harm. And that means that starts with maintaining the strongest military on Earth. And that means making sure our troops are properly trained, and properly equipped, and on proper rotations so they’re getting the proper rest. And it means that when they come home, they are treated properly. No more homeless veterans. No more begging for disability payments. No more waiting for hours to get into the VA. Our veterans have earned their dignity and their respect. They’ve earned it. They’ve earned the honor that we accord them.

But making sure that I keep you safe also means using our military wisely. The war in Iraq was unwise. It was an unwise war. It has cost us billions, soon a trillion or more dollars. Thousands of precious lives. It distracted us from the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, a war that needed to be fought. It fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment. It was an unwise war, and that is why I opposed it in 2002, and that’s why I’ll bring this war to a close in 2009. I will bring our troops home.

But I don’t want to just end the war. I want to end the mindset that got us into war. I want to put an end to the politics of fear that uses 9-11 as a way to scare up votes rather than a way to bring the country together against a common challenge and a common enemy. I want to usher in a new era of American diplomacy. I said very early in this campaign I would meet not just with our friends but with our enemies, not just with leaders we liked but leaders we didn’t. And I was criticized for saying this. Senator Clinton, folks in Washington said, “You can’t do that!” I said, “Yes, I can.” Because I remember what John F. Kennedy said. He said, “We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate.” Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries and tell them where America stands. That’s what I intend to do when I’m president of the United States.

That will allow me to go before the world community and say, “America’s back. America’s back. We are ready to lead.” And yes, we will lead militarily. We will lead going after terrorists. But we will also lead in creating a new era of nuclear non-proliferation, working to create treaties to reduce stockpiles of nuclear arms around the world. We will also lead in bringing an end to climate change. We will lead in helping poor countries deal with the devastation of HIV/AIDS. We will lead in bringing an end to the genocide in Darfur. That’s leadership.

And we will lead by having the highest standards, by setting an example of human rights and civil rights, due process and rule of law, which is why I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. And we will end torture and rendition because you will have elected a president who has taught the Constitution and believes in the Constitution and will obey the Constitution of the United States of America.

All these things are possible if you are ready for change. But you can’t just sit back and wait for it. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to go out and vote for it. There are people who are now saying, “Well, Obama may talk a good game, but he hasn’t been in Washington long enough.” That’s what they’ll tell you. And I’ve got to remind them, to remind them that I know they want to season and stew me a little while longer, boil all the hope out of me, but the American people understand we don’t need the same old folks doing the same old things, playing the same old games over and over again. We need something different. People want a new direction.

Some were arguing that, “Well, Obama may not stand up that well against the Republicans. They’re so tough! They’re so mean!” Well, let me tell you something. I revere and honor the service of John McCain to this country. He is a genuine American hero. He deserves our respect and our gratitude. But I have to say that when it comes to policy, John McCain is looking backwards. He’s tied to the failed policies of George Bush. He’s not going to bring about change. I heard Senator McCain said this morning — I guess he had gotten this from watching the debate last night, or at least his staff had — he said this morning he had news for me: Al Qaeda is in Iraq! Remember Russert was asking us during the debate, “hypothetically, if you started bringing people out and the Iraqi government told you to just go ahead and leave, would you still potentially, blah blah,” this big hypothetical, and so I said, “I would always reserve the right to go in and strike against Al Qaeda if they were in Iraq.” So you know, this is how politics works. McCain thought that he could make a clever point by saying, “Well, let me give you some news, Barack! Al Qaeda is in Iraq!” Like I wasn’t reading the papers. Like I didn’t know what was going on. I say, well first of all, I do know that Al Qaeda is in Iraq and that’s why I’ve said we should continue to strike Al Qaeda targets. But I have some news for John McCain! And that is that there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq! I’ve got some news for John McCain: he took us into a war along with George Bush that should never have been authorized and should have never been waged. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9-11: that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that is stronger now than at any time since 2001. I’ve been paying attention, John McCain. That’s the news. So John McCain may say he’d like to follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but so far all he’s done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that’s cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars and that I intend to bring to an end so that we can actually start going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place. That’s the news, John McCain.

I respect John McCain, but he’s tied to the politics of the past. We are about the policies of the future. He’s the party of yesterday. We want to be the party of tomorrow. That’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America.

Which brings me to the last point that people seem to be making. Senator Clinton’s been making this quite a bit lately. It’s an argument about hope. The argument goes something like this: “Oh, Obama talks about hope all the time.” Now, now it is true I do talk about hope quite a bit, and understandably because if you think about it the odds of me standing here are very slim. I was born to a teenage mom and my father left when I was two. So my grandparents and my mother helped raise me and they didn’t have a lot. They didn’t have money, they didn’t have fame or fortune. They could give me love, they could give me an education, and they gave me hope. They gave me hope, so I talk about hope a lot. We have “hope” on our signs and I gave a speech at the Boston convention about hope and I wrote a book called “The Audacity of Hope.” But now the argument, it goes something like this: “Oh, he talks about hope all the time. He’s so naive. He’s peddling false hopes. He needs a reality check. He doesn’t see the world clearly. He doesn’t know how tough and difficult things are. He’s talking all the time, but he doesn’t know what it takes to get things done.” The implication is, if you talk about hope you must be naive, you must have your head up in the clouds somewhere. You know, you’re just strolling along waiting for good things to happen to you! I just kind of stumbled into running for president! That’s the implication. Huh.

But you know, that’s not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not ignorance of the challenges we face. You know and I know how difficult it is going to be to bring about change. You know, people have been talking about the people who come to these rallies: “Oh, they’re so romantic! They’re just infatuated. They all have these rose-colored glasses.” There are a bunch of folks out here, I’ll bet, who have gone through some tough times and are going through some tough times right now. You know life can be hard. You’ve lived hard. You’ve seen hard. You may have lost a job. You may not have health care right now. You may have seen a loved one who is struggling, on the brink of losing their home. You know there’s nothing romantic.

People know how hard it is to change. I know it. It’s not going to be easy to provide health care to everybody. If it was easy, it would have already been done. It’s not going to be easy to change our energy policy. Exxon Mobil made $11 Billion last quarter; they’re not going to want to give up all those profits. It’s not easy to alleviate poverty that’s built up over generations. It’s not easy to fix our schools because it doesn’t just mean more money in the schools, it’s also going to require change in attitudes. Our parents are going to have to parent better. You’re going to have to put away the TV set, turn off the video games, instill a sense of excellence in your children. Those things take time. I know how hard it is. I’ve seen how easily this country is divided, how we can be pitted against each other, how politicians can scapegoat people who are “not like us”. You know, Muslims or immigrants or gay people, trying to pit us against each other, to find reason to blame each other.

I know how hard it is to change our political culture, but I also know this: that nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened except when somebody somewhere was willing to hope. That’s how this country was founded: a group of patriots declaring independence against the mighty British Empire. Nobody gave them a chance. But they had hope. That’s how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system and our new president charted a course that we would not remain half slave and half free. Hope. That is how the greatest generation defeated Hitler and fascism and lifted itself up out of the Great Depression. Hope. That is how women won the right to vote. That is how workers won the right to organize. That is how young people traveled down south in the sixties, and they marched, and they sat in, and some went to jail, and some got beaten, and some died for freedom’s cause. That’s what hope is. That’s what hope is.

That is what hope is: imagining and then fighting for, then struggling for, that which did not seem possible before. And that is the opportunity we have right now. That’s the chance we have right now in this election, if you vote, if you are willing to go forward. There is a moment in the life of every generation when that spirit of hope has to come through, when we cast aside the fear and the doubt, where we don’t accept what the cynics tell us we have to accept, when we instead reach for what is possible, when we insist that the next generation deserves the same chance that somebody gave us, when we demand that we keep the American dream alive. For those who still hunger for justice, still thirst for opportunity, when we decide to come together, arm in arm, and remake this country block by block, county by county, state by state, this is our moment. This is our time. And if you will stand with me, and if you will vote for me and if you will organize with me and march with me and fight alongside me, then I promise you this: we will not just win Ohio, we will win this nomination, we will win the general election and then you and I together, we will change this country and we will change the world. Thank you, Ohio, and God bless you.