Matt Welch’s column enumerating the shameless contradictions in Obama’s speech last night is truly devastating. Welch may have the best bullshit detector in the business. That’s why his book on that inveterate bullshitter McCain was so good. And that’s why his clear-eyed take on Obama, sadly, seems so fresh. Here’s a bit, but do read the whole thing:
Obama aims to be the president of all Americans, a position that appears to be sincere. But I wonder whether in the process he might also want to consider appointing himself chief executive of his own head. All night long, with equally sonorous vigor, he served up confident assertions, only to state moments later, with equal conviction, their near opposite.
“We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before,” Obama crowd-pleased near the beginning, in the slot normally reserved for lines like “the state of our union is strong.” Not long after, though, Americans learned that our very “survival depends on finding new sources of energy.” Also, “there will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis…our recovery will be choked off before it even begins,” and if we don’t do whatever Obama wants us to do about the banking system, “it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.” Better! Stronger! Crippled for a decade!
After detailing some clean-energy advancements in China, Germany, Japan, and Korea, the president averred, “Well, I do not accept”—there’s that self-referencing again—”a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders.” A few paragraphs later, however, zero-sum gave way to kumbaya: “The world depends on us to have a strong economy, just as our economy depends on the strength of the world’s.” Just don’t you get strong by producing clean energy, Koreans!
It was like this all night. The president’s stimulus package “will save or create 3.5 million jobs.” One of those, anyway! His adminstration has “created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent,” unless they try to use it to find out how and where their money is being spent.
The source of Obama’s incoherence is easy enough to identify. It’s that his stated ends and the Democratic Party-pleasing means he has announced to achieve them are flatly incompatible. He’s fighting against himself.
Bus Driver Barrack: We want to go to the beach, and we will go to the beach. But if we keep on this road, we will end up in that lake.
Smart Alec Matt: You're being inconsistent! First you say we will go to the beach! Then you say we're going to end up in the lake!
Bus Driver Barrack: Well, anyway, looks like lots of people want to go to the beach. Mebbe if we follow that bus. They look like they're gonna get there faster than we are.
Smart Alec Matt: The beach isn't a zero sum! We can all go there! What part of that don't you understand?
Matt's piece is full of this non sequitor. Obama laid out the goals, set some priorities, and used “I” a lot. On the last charge, I think Obama's guilty. Personalizing the message like that isn't helpful, politically or pragmatically, because it places responsibility on him and the guvmint. But sheesh – talk about a foolish consistency being a hob-goblin of small minds.
I thought Matt's piece was excellent. Obama voices many general aspirations that almost everyone agrees with, but more his specific points reflect an unrelective acceptance of Democratic orthodoxy that take no account of compelling facts and arguments to the contrary.
truly devastating? i must be missing something… Is there supposed to be some incoherence in saying that the U.S. will recover and that there are things that need to happen before we get there? (We disagree with what he thinks needs to happen, but there's no contradiction there.) Or some incoherence in the prez saying that he wants the U.S. to on the forefront of new industries/export more, and saying that we live in a globalized world? Or something not real about preventing layoffs that projections indicate would otherwise occur? Again, you may disagree with the content of Obama's points, but at least from what you've quoted here, i'm not seeing incoherence unless you reduce Obama's words to generalities. Clearly Welch thinks Obama is wrong about what the country needs, but instead of just stating his disagreement, claims Obama isn't rational. looks to me like it's Welsh spouting the fallacies. I think you may have quoted the worst chunk of the column.
I fear that we are addicted to BS; vide the broad acceptance of “no one messes with” Joe Biden as well-qualified to take up the presidency if need be.
the part about having a financial system without speculators is the real telling part. it's as if 'speculator' is a moral distinction as opposed to a straight definition of someone who makes bets on the price of an asset.
there's parallels to be made to obama's attempts at ethics reform. it's all well and good to talk about removing influence peddling from washington; unfortunately, there's quite a bit of crossover between people skilled at conducting public policy and those who've been lobbyists or consultants.
if you want a viable financial system, it helps to have people who are good at making money. you can throw all the money changers out of the temple in a fit of righteous indignation, but then who's going to keep your credit system running ?
I have to agree with most of the above commenters; a case might be made that any public rhetoric by politicians contains inconsistencies, but Matt's piece doesn't come anywhere close to establishing that.
Will, I think you might be seeing what you already believe (the inherent incoherence of much of liberal policy agenda?) rather than what Obama is actually saying.
This is not a rousing defense of Obama's speech, but the self-congratulatory tone behind your claims comes off pretty badly given the utter lack of substance behind the claim that Obama is flatly contradicting himself.
All the incoherence is diffused with some proper context and basic appreciation for what he's trying to say. For instance when he says “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders” he means that he doesn't want a future in which they largely take root beyond our borders at the expense of here — i.e. he wants the U.S. to be a top tier player on things like car batteries, but if Korea wants to compete as well that's just dandy.
Whatever you think of his ideas, to call the speech “incoherent” and “contradictory” on these grounds is a sad stretch. The AP's factcheck is more useful.
I don't think it's a matter of ideas, Gherald.
It's more about what sells and what doesn't.
The contrarian market is deeply depressed right now, but it's still a market.
Pity so many Contrarians are giving it away for free these days.
The context you describe suggests a view of economic development that is essentially zero-sum. How, exactly, would it be a bad thing if manufacturers in Korea started producing car batteries that were vastly superior to anything currently available? This zero-sum view makes perfect sense when wealth is distributed through political machinations, but it is completely incoherent when juxtaposed to the creation and accumulation of new wealth in the private sector.
Individual cases like S. Korea making better car batteries better are beneficial. I see two points:
1) At the point where more and more jobs “take root” outside of the US, that kinda sucks for us in terms of job quality. So kind of a “hey lets keep up and be part of the game” rhetoric.
2) It's probably also an attempt to show that environmentally friendly tech is happening elsewhere and it's not just star wars or smoke and mirrors. Which to be honest, in some cases it is heh. Clean coil, biodiesel, etc. But you do have countries curbing pollution and making advances while still profiting.
I tend to agree that the contradictions in the speech aren't really contradictions – “we will get out of this” + “hey this is some serious shit to get through” is consistent. Granted I just read the blockquotes here and not the full article.
Yep, I agree with all erutan says.
Todd, you're objecting to his idea of being specifically concerned about batteries as being bad/misguided, and I happen to agree with that. The point is more useful if the example is generalized as erutan suggests.. But our disagreement with his particular car battery idea doesn't make it incoherent or contradictory, just unwise (in our view).
To alphie below: Will summed the speech up as “Oratorywise, so good. Ideawise, so weak. Combination, so dangerous.”
If the ideas were better the combination of using oratory to sell them wouldn't be so dangerous. So clearly ideas matter. And what with Republicans being the party of “NO” for now I'm not sure why you think the contrarian market as a whole is depressed.
What's depressed is the market for ,intelligent, well-argued contrarianism, which is why I'm an avid lurker here. Unfortunately this particular post (and the Welch column) don't have much merit, which is why I felt the need to comment.
It might be worth reading the full article, since in the second half that Will didn't quote, Matt goes into much more detail about the way that many of the economic activities that Obama castigates are actually essential to facilitating the kind of recovery and innovation he promises.
As for the two points you made above, if Obama's speech was merely intended as encouragement and opportunity to present reasons for optimism, I don't think you'd hear many complaints. The problem is that he is advocating using other people's money, acquired under threat of force, in ways not consistent with the guiding principles established in the Constitution meant to limit such exercises of raw political power.
If he, or anyone else, thinks they can make a profit on more environmentally friendly production processes, they should be free to try as long as they use their own money, or money acquired voluntarily from an investor. When the president announces he is going to pick winners and losers, and then says that we will all be winners, things don't really seem to add up.
I thought I made the point that if you generalized Obama's views on “car batteries” you come away with a zero-sum view of economics that contradicts the experience of specialization/globalization leading to tremendous increases in wealth and material well-being.
Ok reading now.
The comments on CEOs not spending taxpayer money (TARP II?) for personal benefit seems more like responsible governance than anger/seizing the moment.
save or create… well yeah. some spending will create, some bailouts/aid will save, cyclical effect of both. It does make it hard to measure, but you could never know how many jobs would have been created (disregarding save) in some alternate universe with differing legislation.
carbon tax + family making less than 250k. it's a fairly specialized case, but yes.
derivatives trader vs “rewarding executive” (taxpayer money going for bonuses, etc).
given banks hoarding money / acquiring other firms while restricting credit flow out, tossing them money and expecting them to act in the public interest does seem kind of naive. there's a difference between saying “zomg i hate banks they are evil and must die” and “hey maybe just tossing cash at them with no strings attached isn't the best idea, given their incentives are for private gain and not public utility.”
The writer hears what he wants to hear, as to an extent I do. I do think he's kind of sensationalizing this whole schizophrenia thing.
So you disapprove of his idea to spend other people's money to subsidize this stuff, and I agree with you. But our disagreement with him doesn't make his speech incoherent or contradictory.
I read the rest of the column. There was some external information that contradicts some of what Obama said, which is good to know (like the factcheck I linked to)
But never was it one “side” or “face” of Obama meaningfully contradicting the “other side/face” — and that's the wrongful theme of this post/column.
For instance when Obama says “If your family earns less than $250,000 a year you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” he doesn't mean that there will never be any deduction and tax break changes. Freezing those as they are would be a harmful and unkeepable promise. He's refering instead to just the overall bracket rates of people making under 250K.
And when he says “I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive”, he does not mean that no wall street executives will benefit from any of his spending; just that his purpose in doing these things that might benefit them will be something of more overarching interest to taxpayers, such as “keeping the economy stable”.
“Will summed the speech up as “Oratorywise, so good. Ideawise, so weak. Combination, so dangerous.”"
Will seems to be an example of Confirmation Bias in action these days.
Make a few fact-free declarations, find a few people who agree with them, and pretend its something other than his own personal bias.
Oh well, Andrew Sullivan quoted him, so it's all good.
Well you're generalizing it in a way inconsistent with Obama's meaning, which is that we should work harder to keep up with countries like Korea in areas like making batteries. There's nothing zero sum about wanting the U.S. to work harder and be competitive in these areas. And in fact when different players such as a U.S. company and a Korean company compete well with each other at supplying the same products, efficiency increases and more wealth gets created by everyone who uses those products.
Arguably any government subsidies for things like car battery manufacturers are likely to be a zero or negative sum monetarily, but not zero sum in achieving policy goals such as reducing carbon emissions. Whether it's worth it depends on how highly you value those policy goals. Obviously many on the right value carbon emission harm at something close to $0, but a typical lefty like Obama sees things differently, and that difference is not an incoherence on his part.
> Will seems to be an example of Confirmation Bias in action these days.
I wouldn't go quite that far, but I do think this post and the column are an unfortunate example of confirmation bias…
I agree that there is an element of sensationalism in both Matt's column and Will's response, but I don't think they are wrong about the incompatibility of Obama's goals and his announced methods. In particular, if Obama plans to more aggressively pursue the application of federal taxes to income earned in foreign countries by American-based corporations that has not been repatriated, he will provide greater incentives for American corporations to relocate to a more hospitable base country. He will not raise as much money as static projections would predict, and he will cause productive activity to fall worldwide.
As for money being acquired under threat of force, I was referring to taxation in general. There is a box for voluntary donations to the government on your tax return. It doesn't raise much money.
I guess this is the logician in me speaking, but when I hear “you will not see your taxes increased a single dime” followed by a pledge to increase taxes, that sounds an awful lot like a contradiction to me. From a more literal perspective, it could be true that a family might not “see” a new line item on their sales receipts allocating a portion of the total cost to a new carbon tax, but that doesn't mean that the price increase hasn't occurred.
Furthermore, if you think he'll be able to avoid raising the bracket rates below $250,000 and keep his pledge to cut the deficit in half, you'll have to show me where the $700+ billion in spending cuts are going to come from, because he's not going to get all that money by raising rates on the top 2% of earners.
Finally, isn't the purpose of paying anyone anything to entice them to perform some action that you deem beneficial? If Obama is saying that he's not going to be distributing money to people he likes just because he likes them, then ok, well, he's telling us he's not totally corrupt which is good to hear; however, if government money does continue to flow into Wall Street and the President goes on national television to respond to public protest, I doubt many people will be satisfied by the explanation that the bonuses aren't meant to “reward” the bankers, but rather to “help” all of us. If, on the other hand, he is saying what I think most people heard, which is that banking executives are going to be treated like government bureaucrats in which their salary is more of a stipend than payment for a job well done, then I think such actions are again logically incompatible with the goal of “keeping the economy stable.”
Boy this is lame. You are criticizing a need for action. The only way for Obama to be confident by your lights is for everything to be already perfect. You are saying that “I am confident in America, because there is nothing left to do” would be the only acceptable, non-”contradictory” argument.
Was that, say, Reagan's logic … that one month into his Presidency all work was done, everything was perfect, and for that reason he could express confidence?
Or was it because he was confident in a path, with work to do?
I'm surprised the thread continued beyond this comment.
i agree. well done, paul.
Yeah, my next post, which I think preceded Paul's comment, was a grudging recognition of the thrust of Paul's point. Ah, blogging. Sometimes one feels so vulnerable.
I was in fact projecting too much of my opinion of the viability of Obama's proposed route, which is why he sounded to me like he was saying that if we keep going this way, we'll end up in the lake, and so we'd better go straight into the lake, which is after all the quickest route to the beach.
It was a good comment, but there is a sleight of hand here:
We will go to the beach (if [and only if] we do what I think we should do)
We will end up in the lake if we don't do what I think we should do.
Obama removes the antecedent of the first statement. In order for the abridged statement to remain true, the antecedent must be true.
Therefore, Obama is implicitly saying “We will do what I think we should do.”
Maybe that's true, but you have to admit it's kind of an odd thing to say, even implicitly. Unless you're a politician and you want to get credit for being optimistic and still scare people into action!
Let me make that clearer.
What is the point of saying “if ((something that won't happen)), we end up in the lake”? If it won't happen why mention it?
Well, he's trying to persuade us to make sure it doesn't happen. In other words, he believes we don't yet agree with him.
But he is also predicting that we will agree with him. He's figured everything out for us! He understands our perspective better than we do, and knows that once we consider his arguments we will be convinced!
In other words “This is the right thing. I know you'll do the right thing.”
Does this strike anyone else as smarmy and presumptuous?
Not that that's anything new. Bush was significantly worse of course.
The incoherence is obviously based on goals that cannot stand the scrutiny of real world economics. People do not behave as Obama and the Democrats (or Republicans for that matter) want them to and as long as they ignore human nature the confusion and contradictions will be visible for all objective observers to see.
I get it. You don't like the new president. Reading your blog, I get the impression that you don't like much of anything. You live in a world where all decisions can be Monday-morning quarterbacked. Here in the tactile world someone has to clean up the mess left by a generation of bubble-economics so that knuckleheads like you can spend your days banging on a keyboard. If you don't like it, then run for office yourself. Knob.
It would depend on whether the increase in taxes was enough to cause companies to flee the country, or just rethink the degree of outsourcing. There's a difference on taxing profits made in other countries and “ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas” imo.
I'm a bit baffled how this (or havng government sponsored R&D) is a raw use unconstitutional power…
It all depends on how seriously you take the notion that the Constitution was intended to establish a government of enumerated powers for the benefit of a people with unenumerated rights. I see the 9th and 10th amendment as clearly saying that unless the power the federal government wishes to exercise is authorized in the Constitution, it cannot legally proceed. I can't find a provision that sanctions the use of tax revenues to fund scientific research. This is the closest thing I could find “The Congress shall have Power…To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” but I don't see how that authorizes anything other than the granting of copyrights and patents.
Government stupidity got us into this trouble by inflating housing prices and now the answer (of course!) is more government stupidity.
Obama is just digging a deeper grave that he wants us to all willingly jump into. No thanks. You and all the other kool-aid drinkers are welcome to jump in of course.
Government stupidity got us into this trouble by inflating housing prices and now the answer (of course!) is more government stupidity.
Obama is just digging a deeper grave that he wants us to all willingly jump into. No thanks. You and all the other kool-aid drinkers are welcome to jump in of course.