I do not hesitate to criticize President Obama—severely—not only for what I regard as his misbegotten policies, but also for his personal delinquencies (such as saying things that he knows are not true). I must in candor say, however, that I believe he is getting something of a bum rap on the statement that might, in the end, cost him the election if he ends up losing in a squeaker.
Recently I revisited the video of the President’s infamous “you didn’t build that” comment. It has been interpreted as saying to entrepreneurs and small business people that they did not build their businesses, the government did it for them. This, then, buttresses the picture of Obama as holding a fundamentally socialist outlook and having no appreciation of what it takes, and what it means, to build one’s own business.
Now, I think it is true that Obama has a dangerously inflated view of the proper role of government and very little understanding of business and the contributions to the public weal made by those risk-takers and hard workers who build businesses. But examined in context, I don’t think it is correct to interpret the “that” in “you didn’t build that” as referring to businesses.
Here, I believe, the President is telling the truth in saying that by “that” he meant the infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) that makes it possible for businesses to flourish, but which businesses do not themselves provide. Now it is fair enough to say—in fact, I will myself say—that the money used by governmental authorities to build infrastructure comes from tax dollars generated by businesses (taxes on businesses, income taxes paid by business owners and their employees, etc.).
So this comment of mine is not intended as a defense of what Obama said, much less of his economic and regulatory policies generally. It is simply an ackowledgment by a rather severe critic that his comment has been misunderstood and his explanation of what he intended to say seems truthful.
Having said that, I can certainly understand why people interpreted the comment as they did—especially in view of the President’s inflated ideas about the role of government and his insufficient appreciation of entrepreneurship and business. In the video, he seems clearly to be speaking off the cuff and he chose his words poorly. I don’t think his critics are merely taking his words out of context to distort their meaning (which is what Mitt Romney’s critics did during the primaries with his comment about “not being concerned with the poor”).
For what it’s worth, I accept the President’s account of himself on this one as truthful. And I feel obligated to say so, since I am always so forceful in going after him when I believe he is not telling the truth (as, for example, on his position on re-defining marriage, and the grounds of his opposition to the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act). Fair is fair.
September 24th, 2012 | 2:59 pm
Yeah I felt the same was as you did on his comments. I always go back to.. what was his point then? What was he trying to say? I still can’t figure out, as a business owner, if he was saying anything that made me feel like he understood me or business in general. It seemed negative no matter how I translated what he said.. so then.. what was his point? And what was he trying to accomplish by pointing out that we didn’t build certain infrastructure? I don’t know, I do think what he said was overblown, but it still makes no sense to me. :)
September 24th, 2012 | 3:27 pm
If that was all he meant, then it was a fatuous comment, and in context with other comments had a very clear subtext. Overlooked, however, is that while “government” (mostly state and local, but also some federal) did provide infrastructure used by entrepreneurs, that same infrastructure is also used by millions of people who did not build profitable enterprises. One may as well point out that businessmen did not provide the air they and their employees breathe.
September 24th, 2012 | 4:20 pm
I appreciate Mr. George wanting to interpret the President charitably. We need more of that in our politics.
But even if we interpret the President’s “that” as a reference to infrastructure rather than the businesses themselves, he still gets things wrong. In our country, the government is us. “We the people” created the federal government to do certain things collectively that we can’t do individually. Infrastructure is one of those things. So we did build that. We built it when we created the government, used it to build infrastructure and paid the taxes to pay for that infrastructure. Small business owners pay taxes – personal income, business, sales, gasoline, and others. Most Americans understand we’re in this together and that there are certain duties that come with citizenship, but the government is not some body separate from us to which we owe fealty.
September 24th, 2012 | 5:56 pm
Bless Robert George for calling it as he sees it.
I have thought since the beginning that Obama was making an even broader point than people acknowledge. He said,
The line about the great teacher seems to have been overlooked in the haste to misinterpret “you didn’t build that.” I think Obama was saying nobody who has gotten anywhere can take credit for all of their accomplishments. He wasn’t just talking about infrastructure. He was talking about everything. I didn’t watch the Emmy Awards last night, but I am willing to bet few if any of the recipients didn’t have a list of people to thank. I certainly haven’t reached a great pinnacle of success, but I could make quite a list of people and institutions without which I wouldn’t be where I am today. I think Obama meant all of that.
September 24th, 2012 | 8:58 pm
I don’t entirely disagree with you David; still, his rather snide comments about entrepreneurs not being smarter or working harder than anyone else pretty clearly showed a certain contempt for them and an exaggerated sense of what they owe the government. So while his “you didn’t build that” was obviously a grammatical error, I don’t think it beyond the realm of possibility that it was a bit of a Freudian slip.
September 24th, 2012 | 9:48 pm
“I think Obama was saying nobody who has gotten anywhere can take credit for all of their accomplishments. ”
In that case we’re back to fatuous. If that’s all he was saying, then he was disabusing the person he was talking to of something he never said, and rather patronizingly, to boot. Does anyone other than sociopaths or movie or cartoon characters with funny mustaches claim that?
You can make it come out not to say that he was claiming that business owners didn’t build their own businesses (and I agree, he didn’t say that) but you can’t make it come out to anything that indicates that he wasn’t to some degree insulting or undermining a class of people he doesn’t really want to credit without at least taking with one hand what he’s pretending to give with the other.
September 24th, 2012 | 9:55 pm
Obama’s comments are far more troubling than the prevailing debate has explored. It’s not merely a case of claiming credit for entrepreneurial success or the inflated role of government (On the latter, there’s many examples far stronger.) The real problem in his comments is his view of the government replacing society or directing its ambitions.
When governments built bridges and power plants in the past, they were responding to private demand and public concern. In Obama’s America, private activity is to be coerced toward Obama’s agenda. No bother funding that bridge unless it facilitates a campaign speech, subsidize a blue state or pander to a purple state. Yes to bailing out campaign contributors. No to grants and permits for campaign opponents.
Obama was developed within the world of left-wing community organizing and the Chicago political machine. It’s a culture of nepotism, back-scratching and self-protection. He has been raised to understand that one retains and grows ones power through corruption. To him, public service means the opposite of how we usually understand it.
September 24th, 2012 | 10:18 pm
David Nickol,
Of course the point he was making was that we need to continue or increase funding for infrastructure. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of the ‘everything’ that helped create this unbelievable American system he doesn’t support sustaining. He merely picks and chooses that which grows his political power.
September 24th, 2012 | 10:45 pm
If we’re trying to put the infamous speech in context, I think we need to back up a few more sentences:
“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.” ["You didn't build that" comes next.]
For me, the offensive part is in the middle. As I read it, the President goes beyond ideas of “we’re in this together” and “success has many fathers” to state that my success depends more on the help I received than the effort I put into the business.
Perhaps he was merely inartful in constructing his argument, and perhaps I’m pulling more from his choice of words than he intended. But the whole tenor of that speech, and especially the follow-up conversations, leads me to believe otherwise.
September 25th, 2012 | 12:39 pm
pastor tim keller and thomas aquinas would say we continually owe our very existences — not to mention our intellects and propensities for hard work — to God. ergo, let’s be humble, grateful, and gracious. which is probably not too far from what the president wanted to say.
by the way, has thomas aquinas ever said anything fatuous?
September 25th, 2012 | 1:31 pm
Aquinas likely said fewer fatuous things than 99.9% of people who have ever lived.
But Thomas wasn’t a government official lecturing an adult citizen about that which there is every reason to believe he already knew quite as well as instructor did. I think the point has been made recently that context is important.
September 25th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
pentamom,
Which “adult citizen” was the President lecturing? He made the remarks in a speech he gave at a campaign event. Near as I can tell, he was trying to disabuse us of the vain and prideful thoughts that our success in life is attributable only to our own industry and excellence, and that the work of the people in the form of good collaborative work, including good governance, had nothing to do with our prosperity. Christians of all people should have his back, not least because the alternative he was presenting was manifestly NOT some sort of government-is-God shtick.
Here’s what came a paragraph or so before the infamous remark:
“I’ve got a different idea. I do believe we can cut — we’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently. (Applause.) Not every government program works the way it’s supposed to. And frankly, government can’t solve every problem. If somebody doesn’t want to be helped, government can’t always help them. Parents — we can put more money into schools, but if your kids don’t want to learn it’s hard to teach them.”
Then he has this to say afterwards, “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 all I hear the President saying is that human collaboration, including collaboration through good government, has played an important role in the success and prosperity of many Americans. In calling his remarks “fatuous,” are you saying that President Obama is obviously correct about the legitimate function of good governance in contributing to social and economic success in this land?
The proof that his critique of the radical individualism rampant in our culture actually hit a nerve is the unhinged response he’s been getting for saying something so “fatuous.”
September 25th, 2012 | 4:26 pm
What reason is there to suppose that a significant number of people in the taudience harbored those thoughts (as in actually believing that they got where they are with no help from anyone) and what is the chief executive’s role in addressing the vain imaginations of our hearts?
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