Some thoughts on one of the president’s more duplicitous rhetorical tactics:
I thought of a few of Obama’s statements along these lines. We choose either his entire program of massive deficit spending or we choose “an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices, and maxed-out credit cards.” We either choose his budget, which is “inseparable from this recovery,” or we go back to “the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt.”
Obama frames himself as the man with all of the solutions. Even if America has experienced noteworthy bubbles and busts of some kind in nearly every decade of its existence, we’ve never had a leader like Barack Obama before, so maybe we can prevent it from ever happening again:
[T]he most critical part of our strategy is to ensure that we do not return to an economic cycle of bubble and bust in this country…The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation so that we don’t face another crisis like this 10 or 20 years from now.
Those who have other ideas, who worry about nationalization of the economy, the doubling of the national debt in six years, and who fear that they are watching the nation collectively drink Drano to fix its stomach-ache — we call them “nay-sayers.”
And haters. And racists.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Only peripherally related, but here’s someone diagramming an Obama sentence.
Unlike the blogger and commenter, I never enjoyed, or was very good at, diagramming sentences. Fortunately, though, like spelling, I seem to have a good innate sense of English grammar.
I’m by no means an Obamaniac, but all parties reps do this. This is part of selling your policies. I expect this from Obama. However, that being sid, his speech…
The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation so that we don’t face another crisis like this 10 or 20 years from now.
The stronger foundation being triple the debt and an annual spending budget of unbelievable size. Won’t be the same crisis, true, but it will be far worse.
The breathtaking arrogance inherent in President Line-by-Line’s refrain about eliminating the “boom-and-bust” cycle is nothing short of disturbing. A less sycophantic White House press corps might think to call him on statements like that.
Woah Rand, that is weird! I had just posted a comment and when I edited 6 sentences down to 2 I left off some ‘of’s’ and ‘is’s’ that tied my prepositions together. I didn’t notice until after I hit submit. I thought to myself, “Mr. Wilkinson (my 5th grade teacher) would make me diagram that sentence as punishment.” Then, your very next post was about diagramming sentences. I think we have some planets aligned under our astrological signs today.
Mr. Wilkinson was old school to the extreme. We got to the chapter in the English text about diagramming and he said, “The state curriculum says I’m supposed to skip this chapter.” He clapped his hands together and with an evil grin said, “but I’m gonna teach it to everyone anyway.” *groans from the class as he chuckled with glee*