A lot has been written about Obama’s “you didn’t build that” gaffe. While the mainstream media has been trying to spin what he said as hard as they can, the President’s speech has proven almost impossible to shake. The media seems flabbergasted by this, and an article Richard Cohen wrote this morning in the Washington Post is clear evidence that they still don’t get it.
As Cohen writes, “Barack Obama earlier this month updated John Donne’s “No man is an island” by knocking the idea that individual success is always the product of individual qualities, such as industriousness…” He mentions his friend Jack, a doctor who had attended public schools, used a government scholarship to go to college, earned his medical degree in the Army and then learned his specialty in army hospitals. Jack, he writes, insists that the government had done nothing for him, and that is why Republicans are now “brave idiots.”
If Obama was updating John Donne’s “no man is an island,” I would suggest that what Cohen and the rest of the left – including the President – don’t understand can be summed up in an even more cliched phrase: “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
What the President and his enablers in the media can’t seem to wrap their heads around is the idea that success isn’t something that can simply be handed to you. Regardless of whatever opportunities one receives in life, it is up to the individual to take advantage of them and not to squander them. Cohen may belittle his friend Jack’s beliefs, but the reality is that Jack’s success was his own – government may have provided him the opportunity to go to public school, to college, to join the Army, to attend medical school, but in the end it was Jack’s hard work and dedication that led him through that path. He could easily have failed, but his success was his own and not something anybody handed to him on a silver platter. Graduating high school, making it through boot camp, graduating college, medical school, internships – all of those are accomplishments that no one can hand to you. It’s a big deal to achieve them, especially because so many people don’t.
That’s why Obama’s larger point failed. Yes, the government builds roads and airports. But it took Fred Smith’s ingenuity to use roads and airports to create FedEx. Every student who goes to college on a federal loan is getting help from the federal government, but that only buys them the seat. What they do with it is up to them. Nobody is going to attend class for them, write their papers, learn – that’s up to the individual. And that’s why some kids who go to college on nothing but student loans and federal grants will graduate with honors, while another kid who worked his tail off and paid for it all himself (or whose parents did) won’t even get a diploma.
It’s the individual who, using whatever gifts he’s been given, fights and strives for his own success that has made America so great. Sure, there’s government help. Sure, there’s luck involved. But in the end, most of what we achieve in life has to do with the hard work we put in, not the help we’ve received. That great teacher Obama references doesn’t force the kid to learn – the kid has to do that himself. Those roads don’t tell you where to drive on them. That airport is just a building. It takes people using those resources, innovating and pouring themselves – their time, the treasure and their labor – into their work that makes people successful.
So when Obama says something like “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,” it demonstrates to me – and to a lot of Americans – that he just doesn’t get it. There is a pride one gets in doing a job well – any job. You can guarantee that the world’s best ditch digger walks with his chin up, knowing he’s the best, even if his wallet is a lot smaller than the worst lawyer out there. The President’s statement makes it clear that he doesn’t understand that.
Let’s be honest – people who think smarter, who work harder, who took the time to learn, to educate themselves, to take risks – they are the ones who are most successful. Yes, they may have gotten help from a variety of people, but in the end, they rose or fell on their own. Sure, there are anomalies out there, but even Kim Kardashian deserves credit for taking the opportunities she was given and running with them. Those exceptions prove the rule.
Everyone who is proud of what they’ve accomplished heard what Obama said – in the full context – and heard him belittle those accomplishments. Somehow, because someone helped, your accomplishment isn’t as valid. You cheated because you took advantage of public schooling, or the Army, a student loan, a federal contract, so you need to pay higher taxes to pay back what you took. We need to take some of the fruits of your success and give it to folks who weren’t as “lucky” as you.
That’s just wrong.
Obama’s statement underlies one of the stark, fundamental differences between the two parties. Democrats demand equality of outcome, and if that requires redistributing wealth from the successful to those aren’t or who simply haven’t gotten there yet, that’s what they’ll do.
Republicans, on the other hand, believe in equality of opportunity. Give everyone the same tools – the same shot at an education, the chance to go to college, to join the military, to start a business, to define success for themselves – and let each individual live up to their own potential, as they see fit. Some will succeed and some will fail, but all will have had the same shot at success. That’s the fairest system out there, and that’s why it’s been so important to America.
“You didn’t build this” in four words captures the Democratic belief that outcomes should be equal for everyone. That belief strikes at the core of what it has meant to be an American for hundreds of years, and that’s why it won’t go away. When the President’s campaign message is stripped of all the nonsense, when it’s boiled down to its most fundamental, it’s simple: we want equality of outcome for all Americans. It’s an idea that the Democrats have been selling for decades with little success.
Cohen, the President and the rest of the Democrats don’t understand this, and that’s why we’re on the path to victory in November.
