President Obama enjoys quoting or paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s remark that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
Like his oft-repeated phrase that his political opponents are "on the wrong side of history," the statement suggests Obama’s view that real-world events will ultimately shift to what he thinks they ought to be, regardless of his own actions.
As chaos both domestic and abroad has shown, there is more to be done to influence the course of events than to dispense platitudes.