The current U.S. President Barack Obama has joined the league of the past remarkable leaders, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush when he paid his visit to South Dakota and has ticked off all the states to-visit before the end of his final term in the office.
The President has stated at a commencement address for Lake Area Technical Institute in South Dakota that he has finally visited all 50 states of the nation and that he has saved the best one for the last. He also humorously said that he hopes that other 49 states did not take any offense to his statement. Obama now is the 4th president of the nation to have visited all the 50 states during his term.
The purpose of visiting South Dakota has been to speak to the graduates at Lake Area Tech, which is one of the top-ranked community colleges in the country. The college is proud of its meticulous curriculum and a two-year graduation rate which is well above the national average.
The president has stated earlier this year that he strongly believed that community colleges should be freely available to everybody same as K-12 education as community colleges prepares students for high-skilled and technical jobs which the markets needs very badly at the moment and also in the future. He said, “We can’t afford to let any striving American to be priced out of the education they need to get ahead.”
In the beginning of year the President had visited 46 states and saved the four Republican ones for the end of his tour. The states before South Dakota that had been visited were Idaho, South Carolina and Utah.
The last time the Obama had visited South Dakota had been in 2008 during his campaign trail and this was his first visit he had been in the President. In 2014, he has visited North Dakota at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation but did not cross the border.
In spite of his kind words during his visit, Obama did not succeed much in courting South Dakotan voters. In 2012, he only won 40% of the vote, and faced another blow in the 2014 midterms when Democratic Senator Tim Johnson was ripped from his seat.
