Obama: Time of crisis can be 'great opportunity'/When economy bottoms out, how will we know?

WASHINGTON – Trying to buck up a dispirited nation, President Barack Obama on Saturday promised that prosperous days will return and cast these bleak times as nothing less than a "great opportunity." Packing some heft with his hope, he defended his fast-moving and expensive agenda. "We will get through this," Obama said in his weekly radio and video address, taped Friday after another week of downbeat news. The unemployment rate climbed to 8.1 percent, the highest in more than 25 years. Stock values kept tumbling, down to their lowest levels since 1997. The latest Gallup polling finds that an anemic 20 percent of people in the United States are satisfied with the state of the nation. At least that's an improvement from the 14 percent a month earlier. Rather than pitch ahead to his next message, Obama devoted his address to recapping what his team did this past week to help get people working and spending. The goal was to demonstrate that the administration is on the case and, more broadly, that history shows American resilience will win. "We've experienced great trials before," Obama said. "And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper — to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do." The echoes of history emerge often as Obama seeks a balance between the practical language of governing and the oratory meant to keep people inspired. Just a few days earlier, he promoted new transportation plans by saying the nation built itself up before, during the Civil War and the Great Depression.