Obama just returned from a ten day trip through Asia, with visits to Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The trip has widely been considered a diplomatic and strategic success. Yet all Perry, Romney, and the rest of the Republican candidates took from it was an out of context sound bite in which Obama allegedly calls all Americans lazy.
Within days of a November 12th meeting, Perry released this classy ad with the well trimmed clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_NJgKoBERM After a turn towards the camera reminiscent of a supervillan rotating in his chair to address world leaders with outrageous demands, Perry says “Can you believe that? Thats what our president thinks is wrong with this country?”
Actually, the fragment was part of a CEO business summit held by APEC (Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation). The question was about limitations on receiving foreign investment from China, a contentious issue facing both legal prohibitions on foreign ownership of nationally strategic industries and businesses failing to keep up with attracting money from foreign investors in an increasingly competitive international atmosphere.
After lauding American business, innovation, and limitless opportunities, Obama says, “But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America.” Sounds like an excellent observation to me, what do you think Rick?
Romney was just as quick to load his campaign guns with these verbal bullets. Too bad they’re blanks. In a speech in Massachusetts he fired off with “…I just don’t think that President Obama understands America. Now, I say that because this week…he said that Americans are lazy. I don’t think that describes Americans.” Well done Mitt. Anything else you want to contribute? “I’m convinced that America is not lazy…they’re being held down today by a government that is too big…”
This central tenet of both Perry and Romney, that government is always bad and always too big, is border line scientific truth, unquestionable – especially when doused with counterfactual evidence. Not even the Obama administration’s program SelectUSA, one he mentions in the same meeting, which helps streamline and assist foreign investors building job generating firms, could threaten the creed. Even when Obama’s goal of doubling US exports in five years through such programs is largely on track.
What is more upsetting is that Republican campaign rhetoric has tarnished probably one of the most important presidential trips in the last decade. One which strengthened economic and political ties with some of the worlds largest developed and emerging economies. One that reasserted American influence in the region after a long hiatus. One which showed the growing economies of Asia they have an ally, friend, and protector.
Whose really lazy? The candidates who can’t come up with anything better than taking words out of context or the globe-trotting president working hard to make accomplishments abroad because Congress won’t let him do anything at home?
