The White House has been in damage control mode ever since those remarks, and Friday’s report showing the economy grew at an anemic 1.5 percent in the last quarter only added to the urgency of Obama’s re-election campaign to find a way to change the subject. The main thrust of Obama’s defenders is that his comments were taken out of context. Here’s what he said:
“[L]ook, 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.”
In context, it’s devastating. Obama is indicted by his own words, condescending to small-business owners and elevating government as the wellspring of all success. If that’s so, why can’t government help all the smart and hardworking among us pull down 1 percent incomes? After all, any of us smart, hardworking individuals could have come up with the iPhone, right?
It takes more than smarts and long hours. Sometimes it begins with a simple ambition: I want to be my own boss. Or it’s an idea: a computer in every home. Starting a business involves a daunting risk — sinking every penny you have in your dream, abandoning the safety net of a 9-to-5 job, focusing to the exclusion of all else on what it takes to realize that dream. It’s a lonely quest. No, government does not make that happen.
What does make it possible is good governance — a society committed to the rule of law, property rights, reasonable taxes and dependable fiscal policy. Yet, Obama displays a cavalier attitude to those principles.
More.
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