From last night’s ABC World News (9/18/12):
DIANE SAWYER: But we do remember four years ago the president, then candidate, was at a fundraiser, it was during the primary, but he too was caught on tape.
JAKE TAPPER: That’s right, he was talking about the difficulty of reaching small-town Pennsylvanians and how, because of tough economic circumstances, they get bitter, they cling to religion and guns and xenophobia. But here is the key difference between what then-Senator Obama said four years and this Mitt Romney tape. What Obama said then, that was seven months before the election. He had time to change people’s views. This is seven weeks, and Mitt Romney does not have time to squander, Diane.
Actually, that’s not the key difference between Romney and Obama’s comments; Obama, after all, was in the midst of a hard-fought primary campaign, and arguably had less “time to squander” than Romney.
One might see a more plausible distinction in the lessons the two candidates took from their analysis of people who weren’t inclined to vote for them:
OBAMA: Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s no evidence of that in their daily lives.
ROMNEY: My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
Obama had just completed a six-day bus trip across Pennsylvania, which included dozens of town hall meetings in small towns, rather than the rallies in huge arenas that have been a feature of his campaign in other states. As a result, he engaged in face-to-face discussion with hundreds of working class voters, who told him stories of plant closings, lack of opportunity for their children, and countless broken promises from Democratic and Republican politicians alike.
Apparently, the Democratic senator is guilty of a double offense against the norms of contemporary American electoral politics: He allowed real-life experiences of social deprivation to affect him, and then spoke frankly in front of an audience, albeit a privileged one at a private fundraiser, of the economic realities of American society.
He compounded this political sin with the suggestion that religion, gun rights, economic protectionism and anti-immigrant agitation were used to divert working people from the economic oppression they face.
Nothing that Obama said was a surprise to the media pundits or his political rivals. If anything, he understated the level of bitterness in rural and small-town America, since he left out one of the most important factors in fueling popular anger—the war in Iraq, which has taken a disproportionate toll in these communities, where a far higher percentage of young people volunteer for the military than in urban or suburban areas…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/obam-a14.shtml
You took the last two sentences from a paragraph. Taking a smal section of a quote puts it completely out of context. Much like using only these parts of Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father”. “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.” or ““That’s just how white folks will do you.” The first statement would support the idea that Obama believes America is stupid and the second shows he is a racist. Of course those conclusion may be out of context with the complete meaning, but isn’t that what “FAIRNESS” is all about.
After reading several of these posts I would not call this a “fair” reporting website. Get out of the big city once in a while and find out what rural America thinks. Why does Fox News always get trashed as being so conservative yet they get such huh ratings? I have read several studies on liberal bias in the media where news coverage was compared to congressional voting and all results came back left of center. One of the best came out of UCLA. So anyway rethink that whole fair thing. By the way PBS is so slanted it makes me sick that my tax dollars go to it.
Points for Obama for being slick and glib.
The difference between Obama and Romney is the difference between surgery with and without anesthesia.
While in surgery, whether one is awake or having sweet campaign induced dreams, painful cuts are on the agenda. And as sure as medieval barbers will prescribe a further bleeding for an oxcart accident victim, the banker funded economists will prescribe more austerity for an anemic economy. More pain is sure to follow.
An economy already bled dry by the vampire squid of finance capital will again feel pain when the anesthetic soothing effect of campaign rhetoric has worn off.
Re the comment from John Murphy wondering why Fox gets “trashed”; You mentioned getting out of the city and into the country? You insult rural America. I like to believe that rural America is made up of countrymen who discern truth from propaganda. Fox news constitutes the latter category. Propaganda is accomplished by brain washing techniques such as repeating lies over and over until they are believed, distorting facts to fit the agenda and working toward a political outcome. These are standard practices on Fox.
btw, you have just inspired
me to finally contribute to this website.
Of course it’s all propaganda and Fair is in the eyes of the beholder. My dad taught me to be self reliant. That means if your ex-wife takes everything you had and leaves you 30 grand in the hole and you’re living in an abandoned building you don’t cry woe is me. You don’t beg for help until you have worked as hard as you can, exhausting all you efforts to succeed and by the grace of God, hard work and shear determination to dig your way out of that hole. Having been there: No phone, minimum heat,(23 degrees in building), and nothing but faith, hope and a determination to succeed no matter what. After slimming down to 150# @ 6’3″ do to lack of food. And working myself delirious I can say I’ve succeeded and now have a nice home that is paid for. I like Romney cannot worry about
the people with the entitlement attitude. They have been brought up that way and prefer
that way. All we can do is hope to help them learn and grow so as to be less dependent on others. Of course you cannot leave the truly needy behind but you can weed out the “Wants” from the “Needs”.
I guess Ed Soja’s thinking is that since he made it, presumably without help (except god’s), then no one else should get help either. That’s a rather sad vision, and I think most people would not find it to be a fair one.
Secondly, if one agrees that the ‘truly needy’ deserve some help, then he/she has to agree that in the process of providing that help, some will manage to take advantage of it undeservedly. It wouldn’t be fair to deny help to the many, only because a few abuse the system, would it?
Ive notice no one has read the question that sparked the Romni reply.Once you have Heard it- it puts that into much better perspective.
People we are 17 trillion in dept.What the hell does any of this matter?Parsing words from these two and trying to make hay while the sun shines.Concentrate………17 trillion in dept.The collapse of this country in the next few years.
Romney not only wrote off 47% of voters (many of whom are no doubt lifelong Republicans) but treated them with a sneering contempt. Obama not only sought to win the votes of those who “cling to guns and religion” but more important to understand (and even more important to promote understanding of) those voters.
Compare Romney’s “And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-mitt-romney-secret-video#47percent, with Obama’s “We’ve got a couple of folks who are heading out to Pennsylvania to go door to door with us. And the question was: What kinds of questions should I expect them to get? … The places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html
It is also clear that Obama was not disrespecting these voters but empathizing with them: “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio—like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. And each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate. And they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or, you know, anti-trade sentiment [as] a way to explain their frustrations.” Id.
Finally, re Michael e’s offpoint and uninformed comment, where were you when Reagan tripled the deficit? When Bush II inherited a quarter-trillion annual surplus (the third in a row under Clinton, with the ten year surplus projected at several trillion) and instead doubled the existing cumulative deficit, adding $5 trillion via two tax cuts principally benefiting the rich, two wars that squandered American lives, honor and wealth? Were you worried about the deficit then, or did you only become worried when a black man inherited the worst economic crisis in 80 years?
I suppose the US could tax back the trillions of dollars it gave to the banksters in order to clear up their debt.
Never forget that the banks owed impossibly huge debts to their depositors and investors, and that the banks had no chance of ever paying them back without the government increasing the national debt and bailing them out with the proceeds.
These beneficiaries of government largess are the very same who took huge bonuses with tax payer money and now call for austerity for the 99%, the 99% being those commanded to pay more or do without life’s necessities and then clubbed for objecting in the streets, the streets being the only free speech forum available to those without the money required to enter into dialog with the government-debt funded plutocracy.
What none of these comments and that of Diane Sawyer have addressed is that there is little equivalence between what the president said and Romney’s remarks. The president wanted to pull these people out of their huddled down defensive posture. He wasn’t giving up trying to reach out to them. Romney bunched together many groups, some quite deserving of help, right in with the caricatures of welfare recipients the right set up as straw men, and wrote them all off. At first I thought he only meant the write off in a tactical sense, but then he added remarks that made it obvious he viewed them all as parasites.He’s not a bad man, but has never got close enough to the poor to see nuances in the many different circumstances. That is especially relevant now when so many have lost jobs for the first time in their lives. Romney and the right in general are blind to the concept of shared sacrifice. That is why it enrages so many people to see bankers take their usual bonuses after getting bailed out by the rest of us.
I agree with the opinion piece, and it is apparent, that the ABC news team made an unfair comparison between the statements of Romney and Obama. One cannot, however, judge the intentions of either politician by their words; Romney and Obama each may have only been trying to appeal to groups whose money and votes they needed; each party relies on a specific rhetorical style to pass, or to be accepted, as in conformance with their party’s electorate, despite their own personal beliefs.
Behind the camouflage of words it may be that one or the other candidate may hold the American people in lower esteem than the other. I will only argue that the case is more easily made that Obama demonstrated either incompetence or insincerity when his promises are compared with his actions in furtherance of bringing his promises to fruition.
Glen When Obama said he believed in redistribution I think he did….and still does.He simply believes that up to a certain level government is a good redistributor of other peoples wealth.
When Mitt was asked a question on what part of the the population is going to be the hardest to sway to his vote he said…..That 47% that has been made to feel like they are victims.That 47% that has no skin in the game.That pay no Fed taxes -but receive government “checks”.He believed that when he said it…..and still does.It may rankle people how he said it.But his numbers are correct and agreed on by Obamas own government and all the voting polls.Moving on……..We are 17 trillion in debt.Who among these two will stop the spending ?Will stop the borrowing and printing of money?Will allow business to flourish and make this country the most business friendly place on Gods green earth.Develop our natural resources to the highest extent ?And who will carry a foreign policy into the next four years ,where America leads from the front- instead of reacting from the rear?These question are our salvation.Whomever can make a case for this could save America.Whomever can’t- will be the nail in the coffin of our great experiment.
If you want to consider your site FAIR, why leave out the fact that Romney was responding to a direct question which was… “In the past three years, all people have been told is, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.’ How are we going to do it? … to convince every body that you’ve got to take care of yourself?” That explains where the “take responsibilities for their lives comes from.
And Michael, as far as the government being a good distributor of people’s wealth? Really, charities have a much better return. Government is to big and bloated, they are becoming a ruling class that gives themselves greater benefits than the people it serves. Lets see it switch its pension system to a 401K instead of using our money for its lifetime pensions, please, its nothing but a wasteful middleman now. Just look at California if you want a clear example of that.
In the end, American’s have been brainwashed about the role of government. What the news media is missing is that Government is not supposed to be in the business of redistributing wealth, its supposed to be paying for vital service, and that’s it. It will never report that to the American people.
The reason corrupt politics prevails is because the public forgets what occurred. Heed what the public has been told by the corrupt: Just go to the mall and spend, Trust us, The Iraqi oil will pay for it. After President Carter, the National Debt was a $Billion, after Pres. Reagan, $3Billion. When Bush/Cheney took office, a budget surplus was in place with a ten year prospective of paying off the entire National debt. Instead of allowing that N.D. payoff to occur, they instituted a ten year tax cut, put us into two unfunded wars and permitted the largest financial fraud to grow unregulated, with the most rapid decline in employment since the Great Depression, until a near total economic collapse at the end of their 8 year long administration that resulted in the largest National Debt increase in all of history, up to $13Trillion. That must be remembered, if we are not to make the same mistakes that permitted this to occur. The facts remain that When Pres. Obama took over in 2009, he was saddled with continuing the finantial bailout, begun by Bush/Cheney and led by their Ex-Goldman-Sachs CEO, Treasury Secretary, H. Paulson, who distributed one half the TARP “bailout” funds without accountability. In his three years in office Pres. Obama has enacted policies to reduce the rate of National Debt increase, changed the unemployment trend rate, that included more jobs created than in the entire previous 8 year Bush/Cheney administration, made the “bailout” funds accountable so that pay back with interest has been occurring in about 90% of the funding, brought the automobile industry back to prominance, including profitability, from almost total destruction, has eliminated our troop participation in the costly Iraq war and scheduled the elimination of our troop participation in Afghanistan, following the successful capture and elimination of Osama bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda and the acknowledged designer and leader of foreign based terrorism in our country that resulted in the 9/11 Twin Tower disaster. Let’s not forget, all of this change has occurred in the brief 3-year time of President Obama’s administration with the third year being opposed by a clearly corrupt Republican congressional majority.
Joseph, you have some valid points, but need to take a non partisan look at the world. You completely leave out Clinton, his signing to repeal Glass Steagle, his Administration’s changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, and might as well throw in failing to capture Bin Laden when we could have therefore preventing 9/11.
Black Sheep, when the government redistributes wealth, it tends to do so in favor of those who are already wealthy. This has been true for literally thousands of years. Occasionally, broad coalitions of people whose wealth (usually in the form of thier labor) has been redistributed to the already wealthy, put enough pressure on a government to reverse or retard this historical trend locally and temporarily. In such cases the very wealthy and thier retainers shout loudly that the wealth they have “rightly stolen” is being “redistributed”.
Interestingly, wealth inequality has accelerated under the current administration. Those who accuse Obama of wealth redistribution are correct; he does so in favor of those who already have plenty, at the expense of everyone else.
The arguments are good here(except Joseph who is God bless him -trying to find and believe something good about this disaster we have as a president).Listen we can argue all day about what went before ,and it wont help any more than blaming Napoleon.Bottom line is we are 17 trillion in dept. With real numbers probably nearing 200 trillion.Divestitures coming due will push that to 1 quatrillion(with a Q)Any man running for this job must promise 5 things.Stop printing,spending,and borrowing money.And……make this country thee most business friendly place on Gods green earth by lowering taxes across the board to spur investment, and expansion, toward the recreation of wealth.At this moment that is an absolute prerequisite for this job.One last thing I may mark as 5.Develope our natural resources at warp speed.Anything standing in the way of that must be brushed aside.If all that is done- we may buy some time.If Obama continues on his path I think this country will collapse within 12 years.
Some of the best comments on this topic. No name calling! Yea!
Please read “Michael e’s” comment. Well done. This comment does what most political talking points try to avoid. Rather than spinning emotion around the “minors”, it directs our mind to what are the “majors”. Don’t let spin distract you from what are the major questions of our time. This comes from one who is just awakening – as if by a cold bucket of water.
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