The nature of democracy

"First of all, democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this. We're diverse, got a lot of points of view. We kind of romanticize sometimes what democracy used to be like. But when you listen to what the Federalists said about the anti- Federalists and the names that Jefferson called Hamilton and back and forth -- I mean, those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me." (Barack Obama, Iowa, August 2011)