Daily Inspiration Quote by Valerie Jarrett

A neat little piece of political stagecraft hides inside that word “yet.” Jarrett is selling Obama as the rare liberal who can praise pluralism without getting trapped in the culture-war corner where “diversity” is caricatured as division. The line is engineered for an audience that wants permission to admire diversity while still believing the country has a shared center worth protecting. “Instinctively” matters: it frames bridge-building as character, not calculation, implying a kind of moral muscle memory rather than focus-group triangulation.

The subtext is defensive and strategic. In the Obama era, celebrating diversity was routinely recoded by opponents as identity politics, elitism, or a scolding politics of difference. Jarrett anticipates that attack and preemptively flips the script: diversity is the reality; common ground is the method. She’s also quietly smoothing over a harder truth of governance: progress usually comes through bargaining, not harmony. By emphasizing “builds on that common ground,” she turns compromise into construction, not surrender.

Contextually, this reads like the language of coalition maintenance inside a multiracial, ideologically mixed party and a polarized electorate. It reassures moderates that Obama won’t govern as a factional champion, and it signals to supporters that inclusion isn’t merely symbolic; it’s instrumental. The phrase “to make progress” is the payoff, but it’s also the justification: unity isn’t a lofty civic virtue here, it’s the only route to results.