Obama Quotes Bush In OSU Commencement Speech, Calls For Citizenship

Obama gave a commencement speech at Ohio State University this weekend that called for "citizenship".

Tens of thousands of spectators swarmed Ohio State University on Sunday afternoon to see President Barack Obama deliver his first commencement address of 2013. Exactly one year ago, he held a rally on the campus to begin his re-election campaign. Ohio played a key role in the election for him.

Obama spoke to graduates about citizenship, change, and banding together in the face of adversity. "If there's one certainty about the decade ahead, it's that things will be uncertain," he acknowledged.

"You have been tested and tempered by events that your parents and I never imagined we'd see when we sat where you sit," Obama said. "And yet, despite all this - or more likely because of it - yours has become a generation possessed with that most American of ideas: that people who love their country can change it for the better."

"We are blessed to live in the greatest nation on Earth," Obama said. "But we can always be greater. We can always aspire to something more. That doesn't depend on who you elect to office. It depends on you, as citizens, and how big you want us to be."

Saying that he wanted to keep his remarks non-partisan, Obama quoted remarks George W. Bush made during his Ohio State commencement address in 2002: "America needs more than taxpayers, spectators and occasional voters ... America needs full-time citizens."

He asked students to tackle key issues that they will face in the future, such as education reform, economic uncertainty, infrastructure repair, gun violence, climate change, and issues of equality and LGBT rights with "dogged determination".

"I dare you to do better. I dare you to be better," Obama said.

Obama told graduates that responses to national tragedies including as the Boston Marathon bombings, the Texas fertilizer explosion, and the Newtown school are not just signs of tragedy, but of good citizenship and of people coming together in adversity. They showed "courage and compassion, a sense of civic duty, and a recognition that we are not a collection of strangers."

"That's what citizenship is," Obama said.

About 60,000 to 70,000 parents and friends attended the commencement, which had about 10,000 students graduating. They waited in long lines that had increased security to get into Ohio Stadium.