Obama Word Games: The Meaning Of "Recovery"
In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. -- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Something subtle and important happened last night. Barack Obama, in his prepared remarks before the prime time press conference, changed the meaning of the word "recovery."
For months now, "recovery" in public discourse has meant something very specific--an end to the current recession. The stimulus bill, targeted squarely at the current downturn was called, for instance, "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." The website to track the stimulus spending was called Recovery.gov. In a talk Wednesday before the Council on Foreign Relations, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner used the word "recovery" 12 times, always to mean the same thing: An end to the immediate crisis. On Monday, Obama made the same use of the word. "As I've said before, there are a number of legs in the stool in economic recovery," he said, before listing them off: a housing plan, the stimulus, a small business fix and a plan to ease the credit fix. Each leg was narrowly targeted to the immediate problem, the rapid shrinking in economies around the world.
But last night, Obama adopted a different meaning for the word. Suddenly, "recovery" did not just mean an end to the immediate recession. "The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation so that we don't face another crisis like this 10 or 20 years from now," he said in a sentence so difficult to unpack that it reads as if it had been written by lawyers. (Does he mean build upon the recovery? Or build under the recovery?) Later, he completed the transformation with this line: "That's why this budget is inseparable from this recovery: because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."
Suddenly the time horizon had shifted. "Recovery" now meant the nation's long-term economic and fiscal stability. As politics, it was a masterful move, but as a practical matter it would surely make George Orwell wince. By the administration's own economic projections, on which Obama's budget is built, the economic bottom of the current recession should come either later this year or next year. After that, the economy is set to expand. The "recovery" (in the old sense) will be upon us by the time most of Obama's budget takes effect. This is why the bulk of Obama's new tax and spending proposals--for energy, education and healthcare--are not set to take effect until 2011 or later, after the recession is over.
Yet if the president can expand the definition of "recovery" to include this time period, he may be able to expand his political capital to carry out his long-range agenda, which has little to do with ending the current downturn. (Presidents, it must be said, try to pull this trick all the time. In a more egregious example, George W. Bush tried to expand the discussion of "terrorism" after September 11, 2001 to include Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with those attacks.) And so we get, on the front page of today's Washington Post, this headline: "President Points to Progress on Economic Efforts: He Says Budget Is Key To Recovery." Translation: Obama's foes beware. (More after the jump.)
In an instant, Republicans and moderate Democrats who oppose the significant medium-range deficit spending in the Obama budget, or who oppose his policy prescriptions around energy, health care and education, suddenly find themselves in the position of allegedly opposing economic "recovery." This is nonsense, if "recovery" means what it used to mean--an end of the current recession. Obama can claim that his opponents are working against long-term economic stability or even superior policy ideas, but not the end to the recession.
What makes this all the more notable is that Obama was, until recently, very keen on pointing out that the measures he was taking to deal with the immediate economic "recovery"--or an end to the recession--were not the same as broader policy plans for spending and taxation. Here is what Obama said in his first prime time press conference, on February 9:
My whole goal over the next four years is to make sure that whatever arguments are persuasive and backed up by evidence and facts and proof, that they can work, that we are pulling people together around that kind of pragmatic agenda. And I think that there was an opportunity to do this with this recovery package [the stimulus act] because, as I said, although there are some politicians who are arguing that we don't need a stimulus, there are very few economists who are making that argument. I mean, you've got economists who were advising John McCain, economists who were advisers to George Bush -- one and two -- all suggesting that we actually needed a serious recovery package. And so when I hear people just saying we don't need to do anything; this is a spending bill, not a stimulus bill, without acknowledging that by definition part of any stimulus package would include spending -- that's the point -- then what I get a sense of is that there is some ideological blockage there that needs to be cleared up.
In other words, back then Obama was pointing out--correctly--that short-term stimulus spending to prompt an economic "recovery" was not the same as a normal budget debate. The rules were different. Spending was the whole point. Now, when it serves Obama's political interests, Obama seems to have changed his mind. Deficits five or more years away are, he now claims, are about "recovery" as well. And all he did was change the meaning of a single word.
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1
Michael Scherer:
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God, you're missing the boat.
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Do you think that Obama's morphing meaning of the word "recovery" has anything to do with Treasury's new Monday diagnosis of the banks' lending problems? -
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MS -- I'm sorry, but I just can't walk with you very far down your path here. What he's saying makes perfect sense to an engineer (I hope that's not a bad thing) without changing the meaning of "recovery" at all.
In my profession, like many, we have "quick fixes" (aka "patches") and REAL fixes. All Obama is saying here is that while we're dealing with our mess here, let's fix it right so it doesn't happen again. That's putting the recovery on a solid foundation, instead of just patching some duct tape across a hole. "Recovery" still means "get out of this hole", but he's now adding the additional goal of staying out of it thereafter.
For instance, my staff right now is arguing to make some fixes on a solid foundation -- that is, rewriting a troublesome section of software code -- rather than continuing to make small incremental fixes which only lead to further problems on down the line.
So I'll agree with you that Obama's agenda goes further than immediate cessation of pain, but to me this is nothing like Orwellian word-crafting. -
3
Oh Michael once again when faced with your own intellectual short comings you've chosen to attack the messenger rather than consider you've missed the message, despite the fact that it used a pretty standard definition of recovery.
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Recovery & Reinvestment = America getting over its addiction to a boom and bust economy and reinvesting in a sustainable model.
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America got into this mess because of our inability to think long term. Lately it seems we can't think even beyond the current news cycle. Obama didn't deceive you, you weren't listening. WE NEED A NEW SUSTAINABLE SOURCE OF ECONOMIC GROWTH! -
4
I don't know, Michael. It seems to me that clearing up the deficits we are forced to incur while dealing with the short-term mess qualifies as part of "recovery", " too, sorta like exercising to build your arm up after it's been in a cast for three months is still "recovery" from a bad bone break.
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I like Obama's new definition of recovery better. Band-aids and quick fixes are no longer acceptable. We've tried that approach in the past - doesn't work. To have a true economic recovery, you need to address both short and long term problems, and you should probably try to do both at the same time. Even if we doubled or tripled the dollar amount of the stimulus package, that would do nothing to prevent this mess from happening again in 3 to 5 years. So, yes, we need to reform healthcare, we need to improve our education system, and we need to free ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels. If we keep kicking that can down the road, we'll never have a true recovery. I would argue that we never truly recovered from the 2001-2002 downturn. Sure, jobs came back and the stock market went up, but salaries for most people stagnated, debt increased, and the economy was largely supported by yet another bubble (ie - housing) that any fool should have seen was unsustainable. In order to avoid finding ourselves in a vicious cycle, we need to address the longer term issues.\
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Republicans/conservatives may disagree with Obama on how to reform healthcare, increase our usage of alternative energy sources, and improve education, but I doubt any of them would disagree that these aren't important issues that need to be addressed. And because Obama won and his party increased their majorities in Congress last November, one could argue that his policy proposals should carry more weight than those of the GOP or even the Blue Dogs.
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I would be disappointed if Obama defined "recovery" as simply short-term stimulus aimed at short-term fixes only. And I would also be disappointed if he only focused on one thing at a time. -
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MS you're being vastly incompetent on that one. Most economists say if we do the right things the economy will BOTTOM OUT this year or next year. recovery actually won't happen until 4 to 5 years down the road when we've found an new engine for growth.
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do u really think we'll have a fully sustainable auto industry later this year or next year? anyone thinks small businesses will find a way to compress the toll healthcare costs is taking on their balance sheet? Anyone thinks that a financial markets and stock markets-led economic growth really the way to recover? the same old bubble and bust model of the past 30 years?
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first of all, you won't have the same employment level later this year or next year that we had back in jan 07. And these were already dismal.
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When reagan came into power, gov't was just too big. slashing it was perhaps the right thing to do. But he balloned the defense spending, and the national deficit. So, he wasn't a real fiscal conservative. We've neglected since then to make the right investments to facilitate the creation of small business growth for the past 30 years. We're just scraping at the bottom of the pot right now. It's about time we invest in a new engine for growth for this country: Alternative Energy. It's time we invest in cutting health care costs: so small businesses can grow. And it's time to invest in education: so we're not still ranked 19th in the quality of our education in the world.
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Now, i think you might be making an honest effort to research this truthful and wonderful quote. You're just misusing it. -
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I think your the one who's playing games with the meaning of words.
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While you may think recovery has a dictionary definition that confines it to the current upswing, the word itself is significantly more versatile. If you ask an AA'er what recovery means he's certainly NOT going to suggest that it refers only to getting out of the immediate woods and not to the long term. Ask a cancer survivor what recovery means and you'll get similar attention to the long view.
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Our economy is suffering from systemic failure and its absolutely accurate to characterize the boom/bust cycles as part of a larger problem. There isn't any ju jitsu involved in using the word for what it broadly means. Your insistence that it means less than what people use it to designate daily is the real word game here. -
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Why do we, the viewing public, need to spoonfeed you, the supposed journalist?
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It's fairly obvious what the President meant, and Joe and the other commentators nailed it pretty solid: the Recovery is not just getting the Dow above 10,000 again. It's rebuilding the wealth-generator that is the economy so that it runs better than it did before.
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Lets see...ah, metaphor: Your car engine breaks down. You take it to a mechanic, who has the choice of using a rusty part he pulled out of a junkyard, or ordering a part fresh from the factory.
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The cheap and quick way is to throw in the rusty part and get you back on the road--and this is emblematic of the political will (or lack thereof) that we've seen in our 'leaders' in DC thus far. Obama is laying it on the line and saying "No, that's not good enough" and is ordering the more expensive part, so that we are that much less likely to see another economic collapse in our lifetime. -
9
It only be a sentence difficult t' unpack if ye be havin' th' readin' comprehension o' a second grader, mate - are ye so intent on demonstratin' yer intelligence equivilance wi' a mindless jellyfish tha' ye no be understandin yer broadcastin' yer own nincomposity more than ennithin' else?
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Ye ought t' be a wee bit more careful wi' yer yammerin, ye scurvy blighter - though yer doin' a fine job o' foistin' yerself, by my lights. So, on second thought, carry on, he hearty, carry on!
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YARR! -
10
Drat and blast all t' 'ell!!!
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Tha' last line be, carry on ME hearty! Sorry 'bout tha' mates! -
11
Suddenly the time horizon had shifted. "Recovery" now meant the nation's long-term economic and fiscal stability. As politics, it was a masterful move, but as a practical matter it would surely make George Orwell wince. By the administration's own economic projections, on which Obama's budget is built, the economic bottom of the current recession should come either later this year or next year. After that, the economy is set to expand. The "recovery" (in the old sense) will be upon us by the time most of Obama's budget takes effect. This is why the bulk of Obama's new tax and spending proposals--for energy, education and healthcare--are not set to take effect until 2011 or later, after the recession is over.
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Jeffrey Sachs refutes this argument in an interesting (and concise) article in the Guardian: The global economic crisis will be with us for a generation, not just a year or two, because it is really a transition to sustainability. The scarcity of primary commodities and damage from climate change in recent years helped destabilise the world economy and gave rise to the current crisis.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/20/g20-globalrecession -
12
Mike Scherer you can't be that phucking stupid. Well let me show everybody else how dumb you are since you can't read a phucking transcript.
.And so a -- a budget is a snapshot of what we can get done right now, understanding that eight, 10 years from now we will have had a whole series of new budgets. And we're going to have to make additional adjustments. And once we get out of this current economic crisis, then it's going to be absolutely important for us to take another look and say, ”Are we growing as fast as we need to grow? Are there further cuts that we need to make? What other adjustments are -- is it going to take for us to have a sustainable budget level?”
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Do you understand the difference between a recession and a budget deficit Scherer you moron? Damn I get tired of reading bogus bullsh*t from you. -
13
Michael and Joe are both right. I like the comparison to Bush's use of the word terrorism, even though I hated Bush for his use and love Obama for his. Bush really believed that regime change was the only way to 'fix' the root cause of terrorism. Obama really believes that radically changing Energy and Health Care Policy are the only way to 'fix' the root cause of our recession.
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Obama just happens to be right - and with all things, it's not the political method which is sinister, but its use by an unethical/ignorant agent. If Gordon Brown claims the UK is democratic and Robert Mugabe claims that Zimbabwe is democratic, they may use the same language for the same purpose (silencing critics and/or justifying a government action), but one is right and the other is a giant douche.
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Now replace Brown with Obama and Mugabe with Bush. -
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Yes, moving from short term quick fixes to long term solutions is very troubling indeed. Why, it's an insult to the American way. Fixing things long term instead of leaving ticking time bombs for the next person. How Dare He!
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-MBirchmeier -
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blah my /snark tag got eaten... my kingdom for an edit/preview.
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-MBirchmeier -
16
MS is right about one thing. Politicians -- and I'd add journalists, pundits, and the various beltway hangers-on -- do abuse the meaning of words all the time.
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Unfortunately, MS suffers from poor reading comprehension. Obama doesn't redefine "recovery". He simply says that the recovery must be built upon a foundation of economic stability (I'm half surprised that Obama didn't quote Matthew 7:26).
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What I find amazing is that of all the instances where politicians abuse language, MS picks out this. Obama has always maintained that our economy is not just in a slump, but needs structural fixes. Fixes that will grow real wages for Americans and not merely the DOW or GDP.
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Regarding the current crisis alone, we have far more examples of redefining key words:
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"Toxic assets" used to mean assets that were inherently risky and possibly, if not probably, worthless. Now it means assets that are hard to value or temporarily depressed.
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"Bonus" used to mean compensation for performance. Now it simply refers to compensation that is paid infrequently.
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"Journalist" used to refer to someone who investigated stories of public interest and reported the stories accurately, while governed by a code of ethics. Now it refers to stenographers employed by large media empires who regurgitate whatever their sources ask them to print (See DeSantis, Jake, possibly). -
17
Maybe one day the conventions of online discourse will change (though I hope the pirate talk remains). To those who are so instantly outraged. I am not arguing above that recovery cannot mean something long-term, or that Obama should not focus on long-range economic issues, or that the budget he has proposed is a terrible, awful thing. I am simply saying that he changed the terms of debate here. Where once we spoke about recovery in terms of the immediate steps needed to deal with immediate problems and to stop the recession, he is now talking about recovery to mean something else. And that this shift is worth noticing, because the debates are very different. It is one thing to argue over whether the federal government needs to react to the current crisis, with stimulus, housing and credit plans. It is another to debate the best mixture of long term programs will ensure long-term economic stability. Obama is now either conflating the two or making the shift from one to the other with the same word. That's the point of this post. I am not arguing that it is bad for Obama to try to tackle healthcare, or education, or energy. Just that it's a different discussion.
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18
You could have flagged the supposed redefinition in a reasonable enough 2-paragraph post, but instead you had to go all drama queen and doll it up with a bunch of Orwell quotes and hand-wringing as if he called torture "enhanced interrogation" or something.
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Even if you were right, which the above commenters shot down, the two definitions are closely related. "[W]hen we talk about war, we're really talking about peace" this ain't.
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You have a damn strange notion of how to do your job. Sure doesn't seem to have anything to do with informing anyone about anything. -
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Mr. Scherer,
The money quote from President Obama last night was this:"If we don't tackle energy, if we don't improve our education system, if we don't drive down the costs of health care, if we're not making serious investments in science and technology and our infrastructure, then we won't grow 2.6 percent; we won't grow 2.2 percent. We won't grow.
And so what we've said is let's make the investments that ensure that we meet our growth targets, that put us on a pathway to growth, as opposed to a situation in which we're not making those investments and we still have trillion-dollar deficits."
The economy is not going to be "recovered" when it stops contracting. Millions of jobs have been lost. Wealth has vanished. If I get shot and go to a hospital, the Doctor doesn't say I'm recovered once he or she has stopped the bleeding! Obama is talking about all the things that are necessary to not just stop the bleeding, but to get us healthy again.
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20
Say you've had a heart attack. Is the recovery over when you leave the hospital because the immediate crisis is resolved? Well, you're better but you're not healthy. Does the recovery include changing your diet and exercising? Stop playing gotcha.
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21
Michael Scherer:
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I am simply saying that he changed the terms of debate here.
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Right. I get it. Just like Treasury just did.
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Do you think that these two shifts are related, perhaps? -
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It is one thing to argue over whether the federal government needs to react to the current crisis, with stimulus, housing and credit plans. It is another to debate the best mixture of long term programs will ensure long-term economic stability. Obama is now either conflating the two or making the shift from one to the other with the same word. That's the point of this post. I am not arguing that it is bad for Obama to try to tackle healthcare, or education, or energy. Just that it's a different discussion.
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MS, Okay, who thinks that it's a good idea to NOT address long-term instability? I'm a little lost here. I understand there is debate about how to increase long-term economic stability (e.g. obviously Republicans don't think healthcare is a high priority), but I wasn't aware of anyone suggesting that we ignore the issue. Given the consensus that long-term stability is desirable, and the reality that measures taken to address the short-term and long-term instability are inextricably linked, I'm not sure I see the relevance of this distinction you're making. -
23
Again MS -- nobody agrees that Obama changed what he meant, you failed to grasp what he meant accurately and now you've substituted your interpretation for reality. When will you learn that the vitriolic responses to your posts is the direct result of your inability to acknowledge your errors. Like the rest of the entitlement babies you come to the table with an exaggerated sense of intellectual superiority and then you run into someone like the President, or most of the commenters and you find yourself wanting.
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24
ms refer to the post right above you. no one is outraged. it's just that we uniformly think you made an idiotic argument that deserves to be shut down instantly.
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25
This thread debate is getting a little off track, i think, if we want to talk about the actual issues at play in the discussion about midterm spending/investment priorities. There is some agreement in Congress that more money for education, energy independence, and control of healthcare cost will improve economic potential. The issue is whether the economy, in the meantime, grows at a rate fast enough to sustain this spending. The White House agrees that if CBO forecasts come to pass, their own budget will not be sustainable. This lack of sustainability would risk damaging the economy, through higher interest rates, less capital in the private sector and possible inflation, more than the investments will help the economy. (Healthcare cost savings, in this discussion, sort of have their own place. Either we fix that stuff, or its all over anyway.)
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