There’s been a lot of speculation about what President Obama meant when he told an Orlando television interviewer that the United States is “a great, great country that had gotten a little soft” over the last two decades. Some critics have compared Obama’s remarks to Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “malaise” speech in which Carter, down in the polls, the economy failing, his prospects for re-election growing dimmer by the day, made a television appearance in which he told Americans they were having a crisis of confidence. Others have argued that Obama’s statement revealed a mix of “condescension, incompetence, and narcissism,” in the words of columnist Charles Krauthammer.
There’s another way to read what the president said. Look at Obama’s speeches in the last couple of months, and he has repeatedly scolded audiences for not working hard enough and for not sacrificing enough to achieve the goals he has set for his administration. He’s done it with both supporters and with adversaries. With friends, his message has been: Nobody told you this would be easy, and you’ve got to work harder to enact my agenda. With adversaries, his message is: You’ve had it too easy, and you’ve got to make sacrifices to enact my agenda. Obama’s “gotten a little soft” remark fits into that theme: A soft America is one that is insufficiently willing to work and sacrifice to enact the Obama agenda.
Look at Obama’s September 24 speech to the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington. In recent weeks, Obama has been increasingly exasperated with liberal supporters who have complained that he has not done enough for them, and in the CBC speech, he let them have it. “I expect all of you to march with me and press on,” he told the crowd. “Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC.” Is it any stretch at all to suggest that Obama was telling the Black Caucus that it had gotten a little soft?
Obama has said similar things to liberal audiences in recent weeks. “I never promised you easy,” he told a crowd at a September 26 fundraiser at a glitzy restaurant in Los Angeles. “If you wanted easy, you wouldn’t have campaigned for Barack Hussein Obama.” At another fundraiser, on September 20 in New York, Obama said, “When I was in Grant Park [on election night 2008], I warned everybody, this is going to be hard.” The message was the same as the one Obama delivered to the Congressional Black Caucus: Shape up and get to work. For me.
One word that appears over and over in Obama’s speeches in “sacrifice.” By that he often means that higher-income Americans should pay higher taxes. “If everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice, that we’re not going to put the burden on any single person, we can solve our deficit and debt problem next week,” Obama told a town hall meeting in Illinois during his August bus tour of the Midwest. “Everybody has got to make sacrifices,” he said at another town hall in Decorah, Iowa. “Are we going to have a country where everybody is sharing sacrifices but also sharing opportunities?” he asked at an August 11 fundraiser in New York.
Quit complaining. Stop grumbling. Get to work. Sacrifice. Obama is constantly telling Americans they need to shape up and snap to it, all for the purpose of making the Obama agenda a reality. Lately, with the economy worsening and his approval ratings falling, he’s been having a hard time bending Washington, and the country, to his will. Is it any surprise that he’s now telling Americans they’ve gotten soft?
