The controversy over Obama's "You didn't build that" quote is one of the more remarkable political controversies I've ever seen.
It is further evidence that political ideology can quite literally make people blind--or in this case, deaf. I've watched the conservative blogosphere go nuts over this quote, despite the fact that there's nothing really controversial or disputable about it. Obama is saying that business owners didn't build the infrastructure they depend on to do their business. He is making the point that no man is an island, that society, ie, government is a necessary part of any individual's success.
He is not saying that a business owner did not build his own business. That's absurd on its face. No one would say that.
But the conservative side of the spectrum is so eager to hear something dumb, something ridiculous, something self-damaging from Obama, that they are willing to ignore what he actually said, and instead hear something that he didn't say.
The two lines that are at the heart of the quote are this:
"Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that."
Anyone who listens to or reads the quote should be able to understand what Obama is saying. I'll print it in full below. All the examples surrounding "you didn't build that" fit exactly into the point that things like infrastructure take public investment.
But from this simple statement that some things we can't do on our own, the right has exploded into a frenzy--accusing Obama of hating business, hating free enterprise, not being American.
It's a disturbing spectacle. And it will play a role in this race. No matter how distorted, unfair, untrue their reading of the quote, the right has embraced it, and will continue to believe it, just as many of them believed John Kerry somehow lied about being a Vietnam Veteran.
Whether the public at large, and not just the extreme right, gets suckered into this false history is the bigger, and more ominous, question.
Full Obama quote:
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
"So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.
6 comments:
I'm surprised more people haven't been noting the similarities to Elizabeth Warren's similar remarks last year, quoted here: :
"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."
She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
You are so busy trying to justify what Obama said that you’re missing the bigger point. The theory is wrong. Businesses take risk and build industries in communities; this generates job growth and economic activity. People move into the area to take jobs generating more economic activity and other businesses are created to provide goods and services to them generating more economic activity. Of course along the way they all pay taxes, federal, local, etc. These tax revenues are what are used to build the roads and bridges etc. and would not have been available had it not been for the initial investment and the ongoing activity provided by business.
It’s the strength of our economy that makes these things possible, that funds our government, that pays for all these things that are somehow considered free because they are supplied by the government. It is disturbing that there doesn’t seem to be an understanding of the economics of the process and even more disturbing that our President doesn’t understand it. Businesses, and our participation in the economic activity provided by them, builds, maintains, and expands these assets and services when needed.
The truth is that business built all of “that”. Our economy makes all these things possible and without businesses, large and small, there would be no funding for them. President Obama is wrong by either interpretation of what he said. Whether that makes him anti-business, well that’s up for interpretation. It’s certainly an indication that he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the role of business in the economy or the governments capability to pay for these services. I left wondering which is worse.
I'm afraid we're really talking past each other. I'm not sure what you mean by "the theory"... the theory that a business can't exist without infrastructure? You *seem* to be saying, "no, that's wrong, infrastructure can't exist without private business" (really? are there no roads in China?) but as I've said before, they actually are interdependent. And that's all Obama was saying.
He was simply trying to point out that we are a society that needs both private and public enterprise. The fact that even trying to bring up the point that private business needs public investment has created such a firestorm on the right is another appalling example of how unhinged some on the conservative side have become.
Obama is not anti-business. If you look at what he actually says, rather than what Fox News *says* he says, he regularly promotes free enterprise and has supported all sorts of measures that help business owners.
Obama has been criticized by the business community because as a moderate he does believe that things like taxes and regulation have a place. The ever-more-libertarian Republican Party, on its quest to make the USA the next Somalia, therefore dubs him anti-business. That's crazy, but that's where our politics are today.
Well, um, yeah, actually he did say that, because he said "that." "Roads and bridges" are plural nouns that demand a plural pronoun, while "a business" is singular and demands a singular pronoun. "That" is a singular pronoun. If Barry had been referring to "roads and bridges" he would have said "…you didn't build those." But he said "…you didn't build that," which quite clearly referred to the singular noun, "business," that immediately preceded it. The grammar is inarguable. You can say that he didn’t mean to say it the way he did, but you can’t pretend that he didn’t say it. If Barry can't keep straight what he is talking about from one sentence to the next, then everything he says is meaningless until his staff and/or water-carrying bloggers tell us what he meant to say. So whom are we to believe, Barry or his mouthpieces? I find it more than a little odd that the greatest elocutionist of our generation is unable to say what it is that he actually means. And clearly a statement’s patent absurdity is not proof against Barry saying it, as evidenced by his bragging about having visited 57 states--all but Hawaii and Alaska (seriously, look at the video; he thinks for several moments before he comes up with the number 57—maybe confusing states with pickles?)
Or perhaps, just maybe, he meant to say what he said, but was subsequently astonished to discover that most Americans recoil from his collectivist worldview. We’ll never know, but what we do know for certain is that he said…”that.”
Wow. From conservatives who presumably supported George W. Bush, we get lectures about how the President should use immaculate grammar with every sentence that comes out of his mouth. Again, wow.
You're welcome to your own reality of course. The one where no one ever slips up on pronouns and where a president running for office INTENTIONALLY insults every business owner in the country. Again, it's amazing how Obama goes from being an elitist who's too smart for his own good, to a tone-deaf moron who can't comprehend that telling someone they didn't build their own business could be a problem.
I could ask what it says about the intelligence of conservatives that they can't follow a train of though from one sentence to the next--but that gets us back to one of the points of the post. It's not that conservatives are dumb. They just *want* to believe the absolute worst of Barack Obama. So they find their excuses, flimsy and pathetic though they may be.
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