Well, one speech with two takes on same: President Obama's now famous/infamous "You didn't build that" speech in Roanoke. You can read the full text of the speech in a few places, here's two, Politifact http://bit.ly/QLzIi1 and the Washington Times http://bit.ly/NpTVHF -- these two were chosen for their diverse conclusions from the same text.
The Times agrees that the speech denigrates entrepreneurs while Politifact assures us that such claims ignore the context of the full speech. So, what's the accurate view?
Consider this portion that precedes the bight heavily used by the loyal opposition: "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." Clearly the message here is that success didn't come by dint of effort or exercise of talent by the successful.
Next comes the portion Politifact states is critical to context re "you didn't build that" (and damns the Romney campaign for allegedly ignoring same): "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 president's campaign says "that" means the aforementioned infrastructure while the Romney campaign says it's the businesses themselves. The trouble for the president is he's wrong either way, it's just a matter of degree. Why? Because barring favoritism we a) all have the benefit of that infrastructure and 2) all support it according to our station in life. So, the honestly successful person must have applied his or her efforts and talents to utilize what the infrastructure provided in a way that others didn't. Similarly, they pay back more to maintain that infrastructure for the benefit of all.
Sure we all know people who have had very bad breaks and face tough lives accordingly but money doesn't insulate you from Time and Chance. One can quite readily end up hocking the silver spoon that was in one's mouth when born. Most end up at "C" or better in life based on our choices and efforts. We risk serving in the military to get benefits...or we don't. We choose this education/career path or another. Sometimes we crap out, regroup, and try something else. It's great to have a country where we can do that but what we do and how far we go is up to us.
The real context of the president's speech is that it came from a man who just got done stirring up hatred against the successful as not paying their fair share, of falsely claiming that a rate change in taxing this group would help the economy when a year's worth of such revenue wouldn't cover federal spending for a fortnight.
That message (along with having his surrogates falsely depict Mr. Romney as a felonious, tax-dodging outsourcer) wasn't working well. The president was playing to his base and losing the center. The Roanoke speech might have been an attempt at diffusing some of the backlash from those ploys. Certainly the later phrases of the speech (somehow ignored by the president's defenders at Politifact) points to such an attempt: "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative [and here the president contradicts himself], but also because we do things together...So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together...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."
Unfortunately, Mr. Obama had already given his opposition further fuel to foster the perception that he is, at heart, anti-free enterprise, that at heart he believes success means getting unfair, disproportionate benefit from the stuff "we" built. (Of course it's common to see our sins in others, but that's another story.)
Is hammering on the damning sound bight unfair in the context of what the president wanted to say? Sure. Would the tactic have succeeded, would the clip _be_ damning if it didn't capture the greater context of the man? No.
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