Obama's Weekly Address Focuses on Global Cooperation

President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One, speaks this week on the need for global cooperation and explains his overseas trip to the American people. He begins with the now-familiar, but still excellent refrain on global interconnectivity.

In this new century, we live in a world that has grown smaller and more interconnected than at any time in history. Threats to our nation’s security and economy can no longer be kept at bay by oceans or by borders drawn on maps. The terrorists who struck our country on 9/11 plotted in Hamburg, trained in Kandahar and Karachi, and threaten countries across the globe. Cars in Boston and Beijing are melting ice caps in the Arctic that disrupt weather patterns everywhere. The theft of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union could lead to the extermination of any city on earth. And reckless speculation by bankers in New York and London has fueled a global recession that is inflicting pain on workers and families around the world and across America.

The challenges of our time threaten the peace and prosperity of every single nation, and no one nation can meet them alone. That is why it is sometimes necessary for a President to travel abroad in order to protect and strengthen our nation here at home. That is what I have done this week.

Take a look at the whole address:

Also, Obama's town hall in Strasbourg yesterday, following a surprisingly successful G-20 summit, was pretty amazing, both in itself and its symbolism of a new era of American leadership. His tone and policy prescriptions are right on the mark. Read Simon's blog about it and the politics of bottom-up going global.