Washington ? Trying to buck up a dispirited nation, President Barack Obama on Saturday promised that prosperous days will return and cast these bleak times as nothing less than a “great opportunity.” Packing heft with his hope, he defended his fast-moving and expensive agenda.

“We will get through this,” Obama said in his weekly radio and video address, taped Friday after another week of downbeat news.

The unemployment rate climbed to 8.1 percent, the highest in more than 25 years. Stock values kept tumbling, down to their lowest levels since 1997. The latest Gallup polling finds that an anemic 20 percent of people in the United States are satisfied with the state of the nation. At least that’s an improvement from the 14 percent a month earlier.

“We’ve experienced great trials before,” Obama said. “And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper — to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do.”