President Obama's Ghastly Mistake?

One of the problems with teleprompters is that you the speaker can’t improvise easily. You’re stuck with the pre-agreed script loaded on to the machine. Those words scroll inexorably across your screen, and if you deviate from them it is not easy for the person doing the scrolling to fathom out what is happening and so get you back on track smoothly. It all sounds incredibly ‘scripted’, as it is just that.

On the other hand, the problem with improvising is improvizacija. Making it up as you go along, and hoping for the best. Not always the best way to stay on track.

Thus President Obama’s latest speech mishap. Or was it?

Here is the full transcript.

Here is the passage that has created controversy, above all these two sentences:

If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Not, on the face of it, an encouraging line for the American entrepreneurial spirit.

Here is that sentence set in the surrounding paragraphs – my emphasis:

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. (Applause.)

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 point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. 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. (Applause.)

So, what did Obama mean? Was he referring business owners back to the trivial fact that ‘someone else’ invested in roads and bridges from which they have derived benefit? This is the line furiously being pushed by the Obama team.

Or was he saying (as the Romney team insist) that business owners substantively did not build their own businesses – a good slice of the credit they arrogantly assert to themselves really does lie elsewhere?

Well, here is the video. Judge for yourself:

I think that Obama is improvising. Watch what he does.

He plays the crowd, enjoying the applause he gets from putting the balance of the argument against the Individual and for the Collective. There is an unmistakeable whiff of patronising sarcasm/derision when he says this:

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

In other words, he’s playing a populist card, cutting down to size people who think they have achieved things. And, with that thought in his mind, he keeps talking and goes further than was wise: