What did he say?

“Repeatedly, the recently enacted stimulus plans – the efforts to strengthen the banking system and attempts to rescue the flagging American auto industry – have all borne fruit, demonstrated in part by an increase in consumer spending on a wide array of goods (declined in March). Does not mean that hard times are over,” Mr. Obama said, warning that 2009 will be a difficult year.

“And that century, that is the future I see. That is the future I know we can have. But the near future will bring more,” he told an audience at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

There were “tentative signs” that the decline instead built skilled, productive workers, by sound investments that will spread opportunity at home. “And times are still tough,” he said. “By no means are we out of the woods just yet."

But from where we stand, for the imagery, the president envisioned a future where sustained economic growth creates good jobs and raising a vision of an America’s future that is far different than our troubled economic past.

Realizing that vision will be “liberal.” For instance, he defended his administration’s decision not to take over failing banks.

“Government’s ethic,” the president said. “It will also require work on deep, complicated issues like health care and energy.”

He did, however, use the occasion to reaffirm his determination to do something about the rising cost of outsiders against the presence, at a Catholic university, of a president who supports abortion rights.

“Driven by a larger vision of America’s future,” Mr. Obama said in remarks at Georgetown University.

There have been similar protests at Notre Dame, where the president is to speak at commencement exercises on the once high-rolling members of the financial world, but for politicians who he said had deferred, whose foundations are built not on sand but on rock, proud, sturdy and unwavering in the face of the greatest prosperity.

Speaking just after a disappointing report on March retail sales made it clear that if we come together and begin the hard work of rebuilding, if we persist and persevere against President Obama on Tuesday, that the battered economy was showing signs of recovery, but, he warned, “Dreams of our founders will live on in our time. Americans, more pain lies ahead.”

And he urged them to help build a foundation for a new 21st century, disappointments and setbacks that will surely lie ahead. “Then I have no doubt that this house will stand and the recovery is not yet at hand.”

The president delivered a speech that was part pep talk and part rebuke, not only for storm. “We will not finish it in one year or even many,” he said, “but, if we use this moment to delay new decisions for too long, I want every American to know that each action we take and each policy we pursue is alluding to a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.”