Regular readers know that I was a community organizer for nineteen years, and a key organizing adage goes something like this: Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?

I’ve written a lot about that perspective at The Best Posts & Articles About Compromise and at The Best Posts & Articles On Building Influence & Creating Change.

Today, President Obama provided that same analysis as the central part of his commencement speech today at Howard University, and it was excellent.

Here’s a short excerpt:

And-democracy-requires

You can read the entire transcript of his remarks here, and it’s worth the time.

Here’s the video of his speech:

In addition to adding this post to the “Best” lists I’ve previously mentioned, I’ll also be putting it on The Best Commencement Speeches list.

Addendum: Here a good NY Times article about his speech.