Two Hundred and Fifty Years, and Counting

Here’s a truth I’ve learned the hard way, in politics and in life: you can love something that’s imperfect.

My fellow Americans.

I say it that way because you’re not going to hear it said that way from this White House. You’re not going to get a speech this Fourth of July that tries to bind up the country’s wounds, that speaks to all of us, that treats the 250th anniversary of the American experiment as something bigger than one man’s ego and one movement’s grievances. So somebody has to say it, and it might as well be me.

Happy birthday to this big, messy, glorious, terrible, wonderful, astounding, frustrating, inspirational, terrifying, noisy country.

Two hundred and fifty years old this weekend, and worth every fight, every struggle, every drop of blood, sweat, and tears it ever cost us.

Here’s a truth I’ve learned the hard way, in politics and in life: you can love something that’s imperfect.

Thank God for that, because it means imperfect things can be loved, and imperfect people can love them.

That’s how I feel about America.