"The United States will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made," Obama said. "We will be partners in helping to alleviate poverty. But the American people have to get some positive reinforcement."

This week alone, Obama has recast relations with Cuba by lifting a series of sanctions, published an opinion piece in English and Spanish that pleads with the hemisphere to "choose the future over the past," stood with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Mexico City to show solidarity in a festering drug war and immersed himself in this get-to-know-you summit.