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President Obama tried Wednesday to turn the conversation back to the economy, calling the growing income gap the "defining challenge of our time."

"Some of you may have seen just last week the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length," Obama said. "How can it be, he wrote, that it's not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points. But this increasing inequality is most pronounced in our country. And it challenges the very essence of who we are as a people."

As Mark wrote last week, Pope Francis in an apostolic exhortation wrote that too many people are treated as "consumer goods to be used and then discarded."

"Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality," the pope wrote. "Such an economy kills."

Obama's comments Wednesday come as the president tries to shift the conversation away from the flawed rollout of the HealthCare.gov website back to the economy. The Associated Press reports:

"The speech comes amid growing national and international attention to economic disparities — from the writings of Pope Francis to the protests of fast-food workers in the U.S. ... He said Americans should be offended that a child born into poverty has such a hard time escaping it."

"There's our ship!" says Officer Lisa Sacco.

We're standing at the Port of Miami, where Sacco works for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Our ship, the Hansa Kirkenes, left Cartagena, Colombia, about a week earlier carrying all 6,078 of the Planet Money women's T-shirts.

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After voting for him in large numbers in 2008 and 2012, young Americans are souring on President Obama.

According to a new Harvard University Institute of Politics poll, just 41 percent of millennials — adults ages 18-29 — approve of Obama's job performance, his lowest-ever standing among the group and an 11-point drop from April.

Obama's signature health care law is also unpopular among millennials. Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed said they disapprove of Obamacare, compared with 38 percent who said they approve.

A majority of respondents also said they disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy, Syria, Iran and the budget deficit.

The results reflect a similar downward trend among the public at large. Recent polls ranging from Gallup to CNN show Obama's approval rating hovering around 40 percent, while disapproval of the health care law is in the mid-to-high 50s.

"Millennials are starting to look a lot more like their older brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents," IOP polling director John Della Volpe said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

The online survey of 2,089 adults was conducted from Oct. 30 to Nov. 11, just weeks after the federal government shutdown ended and the problems surrounding the implementation of the Affordable Care Act began to take center stage. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

Fifty-five percent of the survey's respondents said they voted for Obama in the last presidential election, while 33 percent said they voted for Republican Mitt Romney. If the election were held again, Obama would still come out on top, but by a tighter 46 to 35 percent vote; 13 percent said they would vote for someone else.

According to the Pew Research Center, 66 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Obama in 2008, and 60 percent voted for his re-election in 2012.

Harvard's poll found millennials, like the rest of the public, aren't happy with Congress either. Just 19 percent of respondents said they approve of congressional Republicans, while 35 percent approve of their Democratic counterparts. Both figures are single-digit drops from April. Forty-five percent also said they would "recall and replace" their member of Congress if they had the option.

There are many examples of triumphant liberation leaders and successful political leaders, but it's rare to find someone who has managed the transition from one to the other.

George Washington did it in the 18th century. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey did it after World War I. And Nelson Mandela also belongs to this exclusive club.

"It is hard enough to find someone courageous enough to lead a revolution, rarer still for them to have remarkable leadership skills," says Jack Goldstone, director of the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University.

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Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013