Why Obama Was Right

You know, watching the Romneyite ad, you could be forgiven for thinking that Republicans were livid at being told that success never belongs to one person alone.

But you'd be wrong. They're delighted.

Obama's recent line about "you didnt do it on your own" is already a big reason to celebrate for Republicans. One commentator I stumbled upon was even prepared to say, having seen the Romney ad-team response and praising it as a political campaign masterpiece on par with Reagan's Morning in America, that he believed the GOP nominee "just won the election." So what did Obama actually say that caused the conservative propaganda machine to launch this armada of attack ads, blogs, articles, and tweets? Here's the text from Obama's speech, much of which wasn't employed in Romney's ad (the italicized text was used):

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. 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.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Before I get started, aren't those word much more nuanced and much more representative of Obama's actual views on the subject than the vapid conservative vulgarization? It was nothing radical, I can assure you. Nothing that would cause you to brand it 'Un-American', as Charles Murray did, insisting to his readers that their president was thoroughly out-of-tune with the music of American culture. Nor was it particularly characteristic of what has become known as a political gaffe (the word 'gaffe' is itself clumsy, incase you hadn't noticed). But of course Obama's remarks here don't really fit the bill. There was no 'oops' moment, as in the case of Rick Perrry.

When it comes to the ad, my favourite part must be the moment at which Romney cites Steve Jobs as an example of the quintessential American success story. If you know anything about the founding of Apple, though, as I and most others do, then you'll know that Steve Jobs was incredibly lucky. So was Bill Gates — and as Malcolm Gladwell says when he talks about Gates' success in Outliers, he is the first person to admit that. Of course there's nothing wrong with being lucky, and there's nothing wrong with being successful; in the case of Jobs and others success is a legitimate cause for celebration. But let's not lose sight of the fact that while their success is largely due to their own drive and courage, they owe too much to others to claim authorship of their own success.

In Jobs' case, he had a string of lucky breaks. Take a look at Xerox PARC and the graphical user interface and the mouse, and how Apple invented none of these products, but simply knew how to bring them to market. Look at how Gates' mother was an influential member of the mothers's club at his high school, and pushed to have early, expensive, revolutionary computers installed for its students, one of whom was the future billionaire. Look at how the giants in the marketplace at the time saw none of the potential in personal computers that these two did, and were incompetent in catching up.

There are just too many variables.

Obama's words were unfortunate not because they were wrong but because they were politically dangerous. When he uttered them, the conservative media had the perfect lede for their attacks. Obama was savagely and undeservedly paraphrased in the most distorting manner. But for all his intelligence, surely he should have known better, as an intelligent man, than to have simply gifted ample ammunition to his opponents like this. Now his words have not only been distorted, but have metastasized. 

But here's the thing. When Obama said in Roanoke last week that "you didn't build that," he was right. The enduring fallacy of the self-made man is not only an illusion, but one which threatens to demonize those who aren't successful — whatever that is. Obama didn't demonize success; he just plucked the flowers from its chain.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in meritocratic systems to some degree. I really do, but the elevation of material wealth as the metric by which human beings are measured has had a kind of dulling effect on us. Republicans seem content to style themselves as the champions of capitalism, and the priests of the free market system. It would certainly seem so. I have no interest in a society which celebrates the accrual of material wealth as a product of someone's own work entirely. And I think any basic understanding of the market begins with the realization that, even though we talk about meritocracy all the time, there is really no such thing.