WaPo’s Glenn Kessler — whose recent takedown of Obama’s Bain attacks prompted a tidal wave of outrage from the left — gave the Romney campaign three Pinocchios for its ad on Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comments. He starts out by saying the Romney campaign removed a big chunk of words from Obama’s speech (as 30-second political ads typically to do), to unfairly make it seem like the president was attacking entrepreneurship:
The biggest problem with Romney’s ad is that it leaves out just enough chunks of Obama’s words — such as a reference to “roads and bridges”— so that it sounds like Obama is attacking individual initiative. The ad deceivingly cuts away from Obama speaking in order to make it seem as if the sentences follow one another, when in fact eight sentences are snipped away.
Suddenly, the word “that” appears as if it is referring to a business, rather than (apparently) to roads and bridges. …
In other words, this is an argument that Democrats have been making for decades, one that Republicans have every right to reject. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, for instance, understood fully that Obama was talking about roads and still thought his logic was faulty.
What Kessler fails to establish is that Obama is referring to infrastructure as opposed to businesses. This is a debate that’s been going on for the past week, and instead of making the case one way or the other, Kessler starts from the assumption the Obama campaign’s explanation is correct. He also cites Charles Krauthammer as someone who has agreed that Obama was referring to roads and bridges, when in fact Krauthammer has specifically said the opposite.
The Obama campaign has a strong incentive to kill this controversy, or at least obscure the meaning of his quote. A Rasmussen poll found that 72 percent of likely voters believe small business owners are primarily responsible for their success:
Most Americans believe entrepreneurs who start businesses do more to create jobs and economic growth than big businesses or government. They also believe overwhelmingly that small business owners work harder than other Americans and are primarily responsible for the success or failure of their businesses.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe that people who start small businesses are primarily responsible for their success or failure. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 13 percent disagree.
Obama’s business philosophy puts him at odds with most voters, and the Romney campaign has been making that clear with its latest ad.
Small business owners know that if there was no infrastructure, many of them would have a hard time staying in business. Someone in the repair business would only be able to get to one customer a day instead the three or more jobs they can do now.r nr nThe customer, of course, would have to pay triple rates or there would be know one to call next time.
Kessler also skates over an inconvenient fact that’s been pointed out in various quarters, including here: Obama's remarks, in full context, are even more damning that that "You didn't build that" snippet. This is especially true if you watch the video of the President’s remarks. His sneering, contemptuous tone, e.g. "I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart” tell you everything you need to know about his attitude toward achievement and success. Incidentally, I’d like to see Obama deliver that particular line while gazing into a mirror…
What are those eight sentences Kessler refers to? Can he count? Here are Obama's words: n n“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." n nDo you see "eight" sentences after "roads and bridges"? Does "that" really appear all that "suddenly"? n nOn the contrary, the troublesome "that" appears in the sentence immediately after the sentence containing "roads and bridges." The so-called ambiguity in the President's remarks arises from an ambiguity in identifying the antecedent of the demonstrative relative pronoun "that." As a first pass, one notes that "that" is singular, so one would normally expect its antecedent to be singular as well, which obviously "roads and bridges" is not. So, on the basis of normal English usage, the Dingbats would seem to be wrong. There are good and sufficient reasons for concluding that the proper antecedent of "that" is "a business," a conclusion only strengthened by the fact that those words are in the same sentence as "that." n nThere is also the possibility that "that" is being used in a collective sense, in which case the antecedent could well be "the incredible American system" or "roads and bridges" or both (but not "a great teacher"; teachers are not built). n nI tend to believe that the "that" is being used collectively; mainly because of the very slight pause in the President's spoken words before "you didn't build that," a rhetorical pause that, to me anyway, was intended to offer the listener a moment to sum up mentally more than one prior sentence. But that's perhaps just me. The pause was very, very brief, and I might be reading too much into it. n nThe overall conclusion I come to is that, simply as words on a page, Romney has the better argument, but also that meaning in a speech depends on more than just what is written down. n nEven so, Kessler and the Dingbats are way off base in appealing or in seeming to appeal to "context" to justify the remark. Correctly identifying the antecedent of a relative pronoun would not clarify CONTEXT. Knowing to exactly which word or words "that" refers is a nice grammatical distinction, not a substantive judgment, whereas discerning the context of an extended argument means making just that sort of judgment. It means considering the entire speech from beginning to end, as Romney insists we do. Do that and the result is damning to the President's defense. The CONTEXT is not roads or bridges or teachers or even the merits of small-business ownership. The context is raising taxes.