President Obama Tells the Story of "Fired Up! Ready to Go!" at His Final Rally

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President Obama shares the story of "Fired up! Ready to go!" in Des Moines, Iowa.

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I got a powerful reminder of this myself on our last campaign.  Folks in Iowa, I know you may have heard this story but it was early in the primaries, and we were still way down in the polls.  I think this office had just finally gotten the heat turned on.  (Laughter.)  And at the time, I was still competing in South Carolina -- it was one of the early primary states.  And I really wanted the endorsement of a state representative down there.  I met her at some function where nobody knew me, nobody could pronounce my name.  They’re wondering, what’s he thinking? (Laughter.) 

So I asked her for her endorsement.  And she said, “I tell you what, Obama -- I will give you my endorsement if you come to my hometown of Greenwood, South Carolina.”  And I think I had a little bit of wine during dinner, because right away I said “okay.”  (Laughter.)

So it’s about a month later, and I'm traveling back to South Carolina.  And we flew in late -- I think we were coming from Iowa.  We had been campaigning non-stop, traveling all through towns and having town hall meetings and shaking hands.  And in between, I'm making phone calls, asking people for support.  And so we land in Greenwood, South Carolina, at around midnight.  We get to the hotel about 1 o’clock in the morning.  I am wiped out. I'm exhausted.  And I'm dragging my bags to my room.  Back then we didn’t fly on Air Force One.  (Laughter.)  And the accommodations were a little different.  (Laughter.)

And just as I'm about to walk into the room, one of my staf taps me on the shoulder to say, “Excuse me, Senator” --I was a senator back then.  “We're going to have to wake up and be on the road at 6:30 a.m. in the morning.”  And I said, “What?” (Laughter.)  “Why?”  “Well, you made this promise to go to Greenwood, and it’s several hours away.”  (Laughter.) 

And you know, Iowa, I try to keep my promises.  So a few hours later, I wake up -- and I'm feeling terrible.  I think a cold is coming on.  And I open up the curtains to try to get some light to wake me up, but it’s pouring down rain.  Terrible storm. And I take a shower and get some coffee, and I open up the newspaper and there’s a bad story about me in The New York Times. (Laughter.)  I was much more sensitive at that time to bad stories.  (Laughter.)  I've become more accustomed to these now.

And finally I get dressed, I go downstairs and I'm walking out to the car, and my umbrella blows open -- and I'm soaked.  So by the time I'm in the car I'm wet and I'm mad and I'm still kind of sleepy.  And it turns out that Greenwood is several hours away from everyplace else.  (Laughter.) 

And so we drive, and we drive, and we drive, and we drive.  And finally we get to Greenwood -- although you don't know you're in Greenwood right away because there are not a lot of tall buildings around.  And we pull up to a small field house, and I walked in, and I'm looking around.  I don't hear a lot going on. And the state representative said she was going to organize a little meeting for us, and we walked in and there are about 20 people there.  And they’re all kind of wet, too, and they don't look very excited to see me.  (Laughter.) 

But I'm running for President, so I do what I'm supposed to do -- and I'm shaking hands, I say, “How do you do?  Nice to meet you.”  And I'm making my way around the room, and suddenly I hear this voice cry out behind me:  “Fired up.”

AUDIENCE:  Ready to go!

THE PRESIDENT:  And I'm startled, and I don't know what’s going on.  But everybody in the room -- this is a small room -- they act like this is normal.  (Laughter.)  And when the voice says, “Fired up,” they all say, “Ready to go.”

And so once again, I hear the voice:  “Fired up.”  They say, “Fired up.”  They say, “Ready to go!”  “Ready to go!”

I look around, I turned behind me -- there’s this small woman.  She’s about 60 years old; looks like she just came from church -- she got a big church hat.  (Laughter.)  And she’s looking at me, kind of peering at me, and she’s grinning, smiling, looking happy.  Turns out she’s a city councilwoman from Greenwood -- who also moonlights as a private detective.  I'm not making this up.  (Laughter.)  This is true.  And it turns out she’s famous throughout the area.  When she goes to football games and when she goes to rallies and she goes to community events, she does this chant of hers.  She does it wherever she goes.  So for the next few minutes, she just keeps on saying “Fired up.”

AUDIENCE:  Ready to go!

THE PRESIDENT:  And everybody says “Fired up,” and she says she’s “Ready to go,” and everybody else says “Ready to go.”

And I’m thinking, this woman is showing me up.  (Laughter.) This is my meeting.  I’m running for President.  (Laughter.)  And she’s dominating the room.  And I look at my staff, and they just shrug their shoulders.  They don’t know what to do. 

So this goes on for a few minutes.  Now, here’s the thing, Iowa.  After a few minutes, I’m feeling kind of fired up.  (Laughter.)  I’m feeling like I’m ready to go.  (Laughter.)  So I start joining in the chant, and my staff starts joining in the chant.  And somehow I feel pretty good. 

And we go on to talk about the lives of the people in the room, and their families and their struggles and their hopes for their kids and their grandkids.  And we drive out and it’s still raining, but it doesn’t seem so bad.  And we go to our next stop, and for the rest of the day, even after we left Greenwood, even though we still weren’t getting any big crowds anyplace, even though people still couldn’t pronounce my name, I felt good.  (Laughter.)   

And I’d see my staff, and I’d say, “Are you fired up?”  They’d say, “We’re fired up.”  I’d say, “Are you ready to go?”  And they’d say, “We’re ready to go.”  (Applause.)

And we brought that to Iowa.  And during our rallies, this became a chant, and we’d have signs saying “Fired up, Ready to go.”  And the woman, her name was Edith Childs -- she became a celebrity, and she was written up in The Wall Street Journal -- (laughter) -- and folks did news stories on her.  And this became one of the anthems of our campaign back in 2008. 

Now, here’s the end of the story, though.  We knew we were coming back to Des Moines for the last campaign rally I’ll ever do for me.  And so we were getting kind of sentimental.  And we called up Edith Childs.  And we said, why don’t you come on up?  (Applause.)  No, no, listen to this.  We said, why don’t you come on up; we’ll fly you up from South Carolina and you can do this chant one more time, just for old good-time sake.  It’s like getting the band back together again.  (Laughter.) 

And you know what Edith said?  She said, I’d love to see you, but I think we can still win North Carolina, so I’m taking a crew into North Carolina to knock on doors on Election Day -- I don’t have time just to be talking about it.  (Applause.)  I’ve got to knock on some doors.  (Applause.)  I’ve got to turn out the vote.  (Applause.)  I’m still fired up, but I’ve got work to do.  (Applause.) 

And that shows you what one voice can do.  One voice can change a room.  And if it can change a room, it can change a city.  And if it can change a city, it can change a state.  And if it can change a state, it can change a nation.  (Applause.)  And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.  (Applause.) 

And, Iowa, in 2008, your voice changed the world.  And Edith Childs asked me to ask you that if you’re willing to still stand with me tomorrow, if you’re willing to get your friends and your neighbors and your coworkers to the polls tomorrow, if you’re willing to make sure we finish what we started, she’s pretty sure we’ll win Iowa.  (Applause.)  She’s pretty sure we’ll win this election.  (Applause.)  And she just had one question for you, and that is:  Are you fired up? 

AUDIENCE:  Ready to go! 

THE PRESIDENT:  Are you fired up?

AUDIENCE:  Ready to go!

THE PRESIDENT:  Are you fired up?

AUDIENCE:  Ready to go!

THE PRESIDENT:  Are you fired up?

AUDIENCE:  Ready to go!

THE PRESIDENT:  Iowa, tomorrow let’s remind the world just why it is the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth.  (Applause.)

I love you.  (Applause.)  Let’s go vote.  Let’s keep moving forward.  God bless you.  And God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END
10:35 P.M. CST