Virginia Postrel observes that the President’s “you didn’t build that” remark appears to have legs and suggests an explanation:
Three weeks later, Obama’s comment is still a big deal.
Although his supporters pooh-pooh the controversy, claiming the statement has been taken out of context and that he was referring only to public infrastructure, the full video isn’t reassuring. Whatever the meaning of “that†was, the president on the whole was clearly trying to take business owners down a peg. He was dissing their accomplishments. As my Bloomberg View colleague Josh Barro has written, “You don’t have to make over $250,000 a year to be annoyed when the president mocks people for taking credit for their achievements.â€
The president’s sermon struck a nerve in part because it marked a sharp departure from the traditional Democratic criticism of financiers and big corporations, instead hectoring the people who own dry cleaners and nail salons, car repair shops and restaurants — Main Street, not Wall Street. (Obama did work in a swipe at Internet businesses.) The president didn’t simply argue for higher taxes as a measure of fiscal responsibility or egalitarian fairness. He went after bourgeois dignity.
She goes on to explain how a cultural change, “bourgeois dignity”, is largely responsible for the enormous explosion of economic growth in the Western world that’s transpired over the last several hundred years.
I honestly don’t think that President Obama was thinking about small businesses at all when he made his remark. I genuinely believe that when Washington politicians, Republicans or Democrats, talk about policy it should always be understood that they’re talking about big businesses rather than small ones or the new businesses that are responsible for most new jobs.
More jobs? More growth? Lower taxes? Bailout? Reduce regulations? They mean big businesses. One example of this that stays with me from twenty years ago was Hillary Clinton’s response when interviewed about the healthcare reform she was developing and asked about the effects that what she was proposing would have on small businesses. It was the remark that lost my vote for her irrevocably: “I can’t be concerned about what could happen to a handful of marginal businesses”.
Look at the track record. Big businesses have gotten bigger. The rate of new business formation slowed. Big businesses have trimmed their payrolls by millions of workers. If that’s the plan, it’s working.
The relationship between the POTUS and big business and Wall St. is as cozy as his predecessor’s.
I think the president was in fact talking about small businessmen who he largely sees as his confirmed political opponents personally and in general a group fairly hostile to core policy prescriptions of the Democratic Party of government regulation and redistribution of wealth. Big business is far more comfortable with those things when they are geared to cxeate barriers to entry and costs are shifted away through corporate tax deductions, exemptions and subsidies.
Moreover, it is an attitude particularly common to Chicago/Illinois Democrats who have never been warmly disposed to starter/bootstrap businesses in the city of Clout.. These Chicago folks fill his innermost circle at the WH. My guess is that Obama feels a certain degree of contempt, frustration and lack of comprehension toward people who have taken a path in life very different from his own where he was successful.
It was an impolitic remark because it was visceral, which is why it still hurts Obama. He is fortunate Romney is inept and very disconnected from the middle-class himself. A sharp GOP opponent would be clubbing the president like a baby seal with this. A Reagan type would do it with a velvet glove.
Peggy Noonan comments about the gaffe as well:
zenpundit
Romney is not a street fighter. And, he doesn’t have the political coyness or savvy of a Reagan where he could insert himself — ie. “clubbing the president like a baby seal” — without becoming a bully in the biased eyes of the MSM. It will be a political tightrope that will most likely be walked more by his surrogates than himself in carrying this message forward until November.
Obama also said this.
““And what this reminded me of was that, at the heart of this country, its central idea is the idea that in this country, if you’re willing to work hard, if you’re willing to take responsibility, you can make it if you try.—
Of course this has legs. Anything the media can play up for a long time has legs. Why people would take a half sentence, and emphasize it over what he said in the rest of the speech is pretty obvious. Good grief. There is plenty of policy on which to criticize Obama w/o having to go after grammar.
Steve
“There is plenty of policy on which to criticize Obama w/o having to go after grammar.”
I think this is less about going after grammar than taking what Obama said as literally what he means. I’ve heard a good part of that speech replayed, in context, and this really did escape his mouth as an opinion, which was then soothed over by more conventionally accepted adjacent comments.
However, that one sentence has hit a public nerve, and does dovetail into his overt behavior towards business. Obama is not seen or felt as a business-friendly president. He has offered them but crumbs in policies — incentives that really don’t move the needle all that much. He is seen as a regulation-obsessive, green energy biased, energy killing, tax-the-rich (which includes small businesses and high income couples) kind of president. He has also been a wedge issue kind of guy, in his attempts to seperate people into good and bad groupings: by class, success, race, gender, religious versus secular affiliation, beliefs — the divisiveness in his leadership is mind-numbing, and does not lend itself to people giving him a pass, when he is absent his teleprompter guiding his rhetoric to better and more tolerant places. BTW, that teleprompter has now been reactivated….
steve, the two paragraphs that went along with “you didn’t build that” displayed a contempt for business that was visceral. Especially when heard. Mealy-mouthed boiler plate spoken without conviction vs. an off the cuff bit of rabble-rousing with great passion. Hmm.
The Romney people are fools for not putting out an ad that says, “President Obama claims we’re taking him out of context. Here’s the context” followed by an extended clip of the words around “you didn’t build that” followed by some more voice over asking “How much more context does America need?”
Added: Obama keeps saying he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy so he can cut taxes for hard-working Americans. Are the wealthy not hard working? He betrays himself and his attitude every time he goes off script – and frequently while on script. I note that the telepromptr is back….
The Obama’s have been great for complaining that they’ve been taken out of context even when the whole of the context is provided. “Typical white person.” “For the first time, I’m proud of my country.” “You didn’t build that.” Not only do their comments come with expiration dates, they also come with disclaimers that state “No statement should be taken at face value.”
“steve, the two paragraphs that went along with “you didn’t build that†displayed a contempt for business that was visceral. Especially when heard.”
Didnt see that in the speech. Think people see what they want to see, or vice versa. I do think you have to ignore what he said is the CENTRAL idea of America to come to the conclusion that he hates business.
Steve
Steve,
I think you have a point, but on the other hand, it’s hard not to interpret it as a condescending lecture. If you’re a business person, you’ve got to think, “who is this guy, who’s never run a business, reminding us that we get benefits from communal infrastructure and that we had help building our business? How would he know?” And really, business people did “build that” as much as anyone else – they pay their taxes too.
What’s still confusing to me is, what was the President’s purpose in pointing that out? What was he trying to accomplish? What political benefit does he get, even assuming he didn’t flub up the delivery?
Zenpundit provides one answer, but I think one of the President’s frequent problems is that he too often acts the role of a professor, providing nuanced explanations to be taken as wisdom by attentive students. Instead he comes off looking like this.
Here it is.
So hard work doesn’t matter, intelligence doesn’t matter, nothing you do for yourself matters, the only thing that matters is that the government did something for you. But then, the government has done those things for everybody. What really cinches it is the snide tone, the pure condescension in his voice.
Not to mention that he never considers who or what paid for those teachers, bridges, research, et cetera, or who DID build those roads. (Sorry, Dad, but you didn’t build those interstates. You’d didn’t build those launch pads and canals and roadways at the Cape. And you didn’t build that road and canal system at Disney World either. You and your co-workers didn’t do that. Someone else did that for you.) It sprung forth from Leviathan fully formed and dressed in Red White and Blue body armor (but mostly red) like Athena from Zeus’s skull.
I’m pretty sure my great-to-the-fifth grandfather would also wonder who did everything for him. Oh, wait, no one did, save for family. But then, he’s best known for killing the last Injun in his part of the country, so he is the kind of typical white person that Obama hates. But then he didn’t kill that Injun on his own, did he? No, he had my great-to-the-fifth grandmother with him, pulling him back into the cabin after he had been shot in ambush and loading muskets for him.
Crap, there should be a close blockquote before “so hard work doesn’t matter….”
Fixed
Thanks.