We’ve heard a lot about “context” lately. It’s the first refuge
of a scoundrel: what I said doesn’t mean what you think I said if
you take it in context with everything else I said, whenever I said
it.
But there’s a second part of the “context” issue, and it’s more
important than the first. The second part is the context placing
what politicians say into the issues that are in voters’ minds. How
far apart is the rhetoric from what people really care about?
No longer does anyone claim the “context defense” for Joe Biden.
When Mr. Biden he speaks, there is either no context at all, or
there are so many unrelated concepts strung together that no one
can keep track of them. Biden plays with words like a musician who
changes the key he’s playing in three times in the course of one
song.
Case in point: last week, Joe started with an accusation that
Romney and Ryan would “unchain Wall Street” and ended the same
phrase (sentence? paragraph? Who knows?) by telling an audience
(about of which half were black), “…they’ll put y’all back in
chains.” Only Joe would string together an accusation the first
half of which is class warfare and the second half is the threat of
a return of slavery. Rudy Giuliani had it about right in saying
Biden evidently lacks the mental capacity to serve as vice
president or president.
The context defense is the media’s favorite to explain away
Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment, which is the sum total of
his total faith in government and his rejection of free market
capitalism. For the record, here’s the entire quote:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with
me — because they want to give something back. They know they
didn’t — look, 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. 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 full quote doesn’t change the meaning of the excerpt. Obama
clearly said that government, not smart, hard-working business
people, is responsible for the success of businesses large and
small. This is a kitchen table issue. Small business owners, such
as Mr. Chris McMurray of the “Crumb and Get It” bakery in Radford,
Virginia, understand that. Mr. McMurray declined a visit by Mr.
Biden and his entourage because of Obama’s “you didn’t build that”
remark, noting that his wife had just worked twenty-four hours
straight.
Mr. McMurray understands that people expect that America’s
economy is supposed to reward hard work and initiative. It’s an
issue that is worrying a lot of Americans this year and not only
because of Obama’s remark. Our economic system has been
fundamentally changed in the past three and a half years by Obama’s
spending, by the enactment of Obamacare (which gave the government
control of about 16% of our economy) and by the over-regulation of
our economy by Obama’s federal agencies.
Kitchen table issues such as that are the real context of the
presidential race. And neither candidate has boiled his messages
down to explain how they will solve these issues.
It’s not simply “the economy.” The economy is an amorphous
concept that people think about only in terms that affect
themselves. To boil it down the candidates have to reduce it to
those terms: how to bring unemployment down, how to revive the
housing market, how to make gasoline and other forms of energy
cheaper and how to make Social Security and Medicare solvent.
And the kitchen table issues go beyond the economy. They are
about how to preserve personal freedom that is under attack by the
government everywhere from the entry gates at airports to the
ability of businesses, both small and large, to function in the
overburdening regulatory environment. They’re about how all
Americans will be able to afford and obtain the best medical care.
They’re about how sequestration may cost one million defense
industry jobs and why Obama’s Justice Department is suing Ohio to
block early voting for military members. And it’s about voters’
growing distrust of the gatekeeper media who are spending each day
proselytizing for Obama.
Romney says the answer to unemployment is to spur economic
growth by relieving the regulatory burden and reducing tax rates
for business and individuals. But he hasn’t explained how that will
work, or explained the many economic studies supporting his idea.
Obama attacks Romney’s plan, but hasn’t presented any new ideas.
He’s still insisting on more spending, more debt, and that tax
hikes are the answer.
We know — from the Social Security and Medicare Trustee’s
report —
that Medicare Part A is bankrupt now and Part B will be bankrupt as
early as next year. Social Security will be bankrupt about ten
years later. Both Obama and Romney are now arguing about whether
senior citizens will be hurt by Romney’s plan, which is written to
prevent anyone over 55 from suffering any reduction in benefits. No
one — except Paul Ryan — is talking about how to make Social
Security and Medicare solvent.
Romney spent most of last week trying to differentiate his
economic plans from Paul Ryan’s specifics. Going into the
Republican Convention next week, he needs to be able to explain a
unified, simple plan that he and Ryan can run on. He needs to say,
specifically, how he will balance the budget by the end of his
second term. Both men need to stay on the attack against Obama’s
commitment to government solutions to every problem we have.
In an August 12 editorial the New York Times
wrote of Paul Ryan’s budget, “By cutting $6 trillion from
federal spending over the next 10 years, he would eliminate or
slash so many programs that the federal government would be
unrecognizable.” But isn’t that the point of this campaign? We’d
love it if the government as it now stands were cut back to the
point that the liberals didn’t recognize it.
That’s a promise to make, and to keep.
