Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
During a bus tour this week, President Barack Obama made some interesting revisions to the history of his first term. At a campaign stop at a historical society of all places, Obama described the financial crisis as an unexpected event that voters could not have anticipated when they elected him in November 2008. Here's the key excerpt:
So we came together in that election -- Democrats, but also independents and, yes, some Republicans -- to restore that basic bargain that built this country. And we knew at the time it wouldn’t be easy. We knew it would take more than one year or one term or maybe even one President. But what we didn’t realize at the time was we were going to be hit by the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes.
If this version of events is true, then Obama was the only person in the country who hadn't realized by November 2008 that world was in the midst of a serious financial crisis. Why else had Congress already passed the bailout? The absurdity of the remark highlights a tension in Obama's reelection narrative: He wants to convince voters that the country's economic problems predated his administration, but he also wants to convince disillusioned supporters that he could not have been expected to anticipate those very same problems. Like so much else over the past three and a half year, the accounts simply don't add up.
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
Oh what a tangled web we weave...
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
Roberto, you said it. But let me add a note about my own tangled web of prose here: A slip of the finger on the keypad resulted on this post appearing online before I had finished writing the last paragraph. It's completed now, but apologies to everyone for the mistake.
Roberto
Oh what a tangled web we weave... · 2 minutes ago
May '10
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
You're overanalyzing it. :-)
They're just words on a teleprompter. They're not intended to be parsed or understood. They don't have to be accurate or consistent. They don't even have to make sense.
They're intended, instead, for emotional reaction.
And sure enough, the audience reactions are even included in the transcript:
It's postmodern speechifying.
Sep '10
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
"and yes, some Republican's" really hurts doesn't it?
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
Silly me for taking the president at his word.
Don Tillman: You're overanalyzing it. :-)
They're just words on a teleprompter. They're not intended to be parsed or understood. They don't have to be accurate or consistent. They don't even have to make sense.
They're intended, instead, for emotional reaction.
And sure enough, the audience reactions are even included in the transcript:
It's postmodern speechifying. · 1 hour ago
Dec '11
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
There is no cognitive dissonance when you make your own reality and have no historical memory. Both conditions are abundantly manifest in our current president.
Jul '10
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
Isn't this rather difficult to square with all the campaign rhetoric about how electing Barack Obama would begin the transformation, the turnaround, the bright new day for America? Don't I remember something about how, if he failed to improve our economy in the first term, we would be entirely justified in making The One a one-term president?
Well. Never mind, I guess.
Aug '10
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
You didn't realize that there would be economic problems? That's odd, given that your fellow travelers in the media were wringing their collective hands that all of the economic indicators told us that the economy was in shambles and getting worse everyday. I believe they began to sound the alarm on that about 3 months after Bush came into office and they didn't let up until inauguration day-ish 2009.
Jan '11
Re: Historical Revisions at a Historical Society
Johnathan Horn:
You must think that Detroit was destroyed in one four-year term.
Or that Camden, NJ was.
Or Cleveland.
Or Buffalo.
Or Chester, PA.
Or Newark, NJ.
Or Milwaukee.
Or Stockton, CA.
Or California, Illinois, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera will be.
Please be patient. Democrats need more time.
And remember: Under no circumstances are conservatives or Republicans allowed to say that it was the Democrat Party that was responsible for America's urban collapse, through the implementation of the same social policies that Obama and the Democrats want to enact in the entire country. Such a public declaration is strictly verboten.
Democrats can blame Republicans for wars Democrats voted to fight and then abandoned; but Republicans are never allowed to blame Democrats for the domestic carnage of our inner cities which one-party Democrat rule unilaterally inflicted.
Wouldn't be "fair," you know.