The Right Side of History, According to President Obama

“The right side of his­tory.” It’s one of those tired lines that politi­cians have used for years. In­deed, it’s one that Pres­id­ent Obama has used on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, in­clud­ing his speech Tues­day be­fore the United Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sembly.

Who are we to be­lieve that today’s chal­lenges can­not be over­come, when we’ve seen what changes the hu­man spir­it can bring? Who in this hall can ar­gue that the fu­ture be­longs to those who seek to repress that spir­it rather than those who seek to lib­er­ate it? I know what side of his­tory I want the United States of Amer­ica to be on.

But who else is on the right side of his­tory, ac­cord­ing to Pres­id­ent Obama?

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the White House on June 23, 2009, the pres­id­ent ad­dressed the protests and polit­ic­al act­iv­ism seen in Ir­an at the time:

Above all, we’ve seen cour­ageous wo­men stand up to the bru­tal­ity and threats, and we’ve ex­per­i­enced the sear­ing im­age of a wo­man bleed­ing to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and ex­traordin­ar­ily pain­ful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are al­ways on the right side of his­tory.

An­oth­er per­son on the “right side of his­tory” is ap­par­ently Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Harry Re­id, D-Nev. After a new book re­vealed that Re­id called Obama a “light-skinned” Afric­an-Amer­ic­an “with no Negro dia­lect, un­less he wanted to” dur­ing the 2008 cam­paign, the pres­id­ent stood by his former Sen­ate col­league in a Jan. 10, 2010 tele­vi­sion in­ter­view:

This is a good man who has al­ways been on the right side of his­tory.

In the af­ter­math of the Ar­ab Spring and the polit­ic­al turnover in Egypt and Tunisia, the pres­id­ent called for cau­tion dur­ing a March 3, 2011 press con­fer­ence:

And I think that the re­gion we’ll be watch­ing care­fully to make sure we’re on the right side of his­tory but also that we are do­ing so as a mem­ber of the world com­munity, and be­ing will­ing to act on be­half of these val­ues but do­ing so in a way that takes all the vari­ous equit­ies in­to ac­count.

Obama con­tin­ued his de­fense of the up­ris­ing in Egypt dur­ing a Feb. 14, 2011 press con­fer­ence at the White House:

Well, first of all, without re­vis­it­ing all the events over the last three weeks, I think his­tory will end up re­cord­ing that at every junc­ture in the situ­ation in Egypt that we were on the right side of his­tory.

At a Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee event in Chica­go on April 14, 2011, he used the line once more to tout his for­eign policy re­cord:

Now, part of the hope­ful­ness and the an­ti­cip­a­tion we all felt that night in Grant Park was also about what we could do to se­cure and re­store Amer­ica’s stand­ing in the world.  So that’s why we strengthened our al­li­ances.  We signed his­tor­ic arms-con­trol agree­ments, se­cured loose nuc­le­ar ma­ter­i­als. That’s why we’re on the right side of his­tory now throughout the Middle East, be­cause we be­lieve in pre­vent­ing in­no­cents from get­ting slaughtered, and we be­lieve in hu­man rights for all people.

In his de­bate with Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Mitt Rom­ney on Oct. 22, 2012, Obama de­fen­ded his for­eign policy re­cord and trips abroad:

And they can look at my track re­cord — wheth­er it’s Ir­an sanc­tions, wheth­er it’s deal­ing with coun­terter­ror­ism, wheth­er it’s sup­port­ing demo­cracy, wheth­er it’s sup­port­ing wo­men’s rights, wheth­er it’s sup­port­ing re­li­gious minor­it­ies — and they can say that the pres­id­ent of the United States and the United States of Amer­ica has stood on the right side of his­tory. And — and that kind of cred­ib­il­ity is pre­cisely why we’ve been able to show lead­er­ship on a wide range of is­sues fa­cing the world right now.

When meet­ing with Demo­crat­ic law­makers on Ju­ly 31, the pres­id­ent, ac­cord­ing to Rep. Janice Hahn, D-Cal­if., told mem­bers:

As we all go back to our dis­tricts in Au­gust that we are on the right side of these is­sues and the right side of his­tory in terms of provid­ing health care to Amer­ic­ans and to ul­ti­mately find­ing com­pre­hens­ive im­mig­ra­tion re­form is the right thing for the coun­try to do at this time.

So, ac­cord­ing to the pres­id­ent, his for­eign policy re­cord, Harry Re­id, and Obama­care are all on the right side of his­tory. We’ll see if the his­tory books agree.