Barack Obama parrotted the Socialist claim to power by saying that successful citizens owed their success partly to public infrastructure and government spending, and that they should contribute to finance public goods. But my parents paid for their portion just as their parents before them and their parents before them all the way back to paying for infrastructure ever since America was founded.
An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on July 17, 2012, stated that the speech is a “burst of ideological candor” and that the statement meant that “the self-made man is an illusion”. In another Wall Street Journal piece, James Taranto wrote that “The president’s remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom.” Later, Kimberley Strassel wrote that the portion of the speech that spoke about Obama’s views on the relationship between business and government was similar to statements made by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and that the effect of the speech was to “suck away the president’s momentum”.
In The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin wrote that the statement showed that Obama “revealed a level of resentment toward the private sector that was startling, even to his critics”, and that the speech reflects that “the anti-business assaults become the campaign. Meanwhile, his affection for government becomes a chip on his shoulder, prompting him to dare those private-sector wise guys to deny the centrality of government in their success.” Glenn Kessler later said that the Obama statement was taken out of context and that he was speaking about higher taxes for the wealthy, comparing individual initiative to the system of many people working to create supporting infrastructure.
In The Atlantic, Andrew Cline wrote that what Obama said was an “enormous controversy – a philosophical rewriting of the American story” and that “With his Roanoke speech, Obama turned Jefferson on his head. In Obama’s formulation, government is not a tool for the people’s use, but the very foundation upon which all of American prosperity is built. Government is not dependent upon the people; the people are dependent upon the government.” This, Cline writes, is fundamentally non-Jeffersonian. Earlier in the same publication, Clive Crook wrote that Obama’s statements did not mean what his critics wrote they meant, but that the caricature resonates due to it being recognizable as part of his theme of the “rich aren’t paying their fair share”. Jonah Goldberg, in the National Review, wrote that Obama’s “gaffe” was at best truism, and the reason for Obama’s supporters attacking others, for taking Obama’s words and progressive roots seriously, is because they do not portray Obama as a pragmatist and a moderate.
Guy Benson, on Townhall.com, wrote that the Romney campaign did not take Obama’s words out of context since “Obama essentially posits that no private or individual success is possible in America without the government’s help.” Rachael Larimore, in Slate, wrote that it didn’t matter what Obama meant to say, as conservatives heard “You didn’t get credit for your hard work”, and even with the context of the entire speech, the reaction would be largely the same. More importantly, it damaged his relations with small-business owners. Rush Limbaugh commented that business owners did build the roads and bridges through their taxes, and that Obama wants to socialize private profit. Mark Levin, in reaction to the speech, said that Obama was “disrespecting the American people” and that “he despises the capitalist system”. Josh Barro, in Bloomberg, wrote that Obama’s speech was needlessly insulting, and that the statement resonated badly with people of all income levels.
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