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He did the right thing. But it was a brave thing because he had to take on the muscle of the oil industry, including the American Petroleum Institute, which is their association, their lobbying group. The members of Congress who had expedited this — trying to railroad it through under an arbitrary deadline — received $42 million from the oil industry, the fossil fuel industry, and they were riding it through.

It was because Obama had people power behind him, that he could do the right thing. You know, Bill McKibben, the great naturalist writer and his organization called 350.org, and the National Resources Defense Council brought thousands of people to Washington to show the President that he could do the right thing and they would have his back. Franklin Roosevelt said to the union guys, you know, ‘Make me do the right thing. Go out and build popular support so I can do the right thing.’ Lyndon Johnson put his arm around Martin Luther King and said ‘Dr. King, go out there and make it possible for me to do the right thing.’

…The issue in the (Keystone XL) Pipeline — there were lots of technical issues — but the real issue was the integrity of the political process. There was collusion between high government officials and the (oil) industry to get this through before the public had a chance to be heard. They stopped it, and they also gave the President the ammunition to fight the right battles. He could not have done it without people power. That’s one reason why Occupy Wall Street is so important right now: to build the support for change.