The Trouble Today with ‘Simple’ Words
Vice President Biden takes to the pages of today’s NYT, defending the administration’s stimulus spending. In doing so, he writes:
… the [Recovery Act] was intended to provide steady support for our economy over an extended period — not a jolt that would last only a few months.
Ed Morrissey, with a little help from others, jumps on this dismissal of “jolt” as a descriptor of the Recovery Act’s intent — and cites multiple prior instances when Biden and his boss affirmed “jolt” as the intent of the Recovery Act.
It took a handful of professional and citizen journalists a few minutes to catch this apparent act of double-defining. You would think Biden’s cadre of researchers and ghost writers — who presumably took several days to stitch together the VP’s op-ed — would be more capable, considering the time allowed them and their collective number of brains. You would think they could have identified this vulnerability in the text and employed alternative phrasing (e.g., “quick fix”) to make their point.
Granted, in the context of the op-ed, the use of the term “jolt” is defensible. The punctuation of the cited sentence does not place a period immediately after “jolt” but after its qualifying prhase: “that would last only a few months.”
In other words, Biden’s team could counter-argue (legitimately) that — consistent with the President’s and Vice President’s prior statements — the Recovery Act was, in fact, formulated to act as a jolt, albeit a jolt that would “provide steady support for our economy over an extended period” rather than a jolt that “would last only a few months.” Read that way, the use of “jolt” tracks with the larger tapestry of the op-ed, wherein Biden argues that “two-thirds of the Recovery Act” funds are being put into action “without red tape or delays,” while the other third will “create jobs today — and support economic growth for years to come.”
The problem with this explanation is that it will be ignored. In today’s instant-review, hyperpartisan, snap-judgment environment, very few people take time to fairly and fully consider context. Instead, many of Morrissey’s readers (both the regular and occasional) will follow the blogger’s lead on the parsed meme of a double-defined word and never take time to consider the entire op-ed. Biden’s team knows that, and because they know that, they should have also known better than to allow even a single, seemingly harmless four-letter word like “jolt” make the final, for-publication cut.
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Addendum: Upon considering this post, some readers will probably accuse me of being a shill or unabashed apologist for the Obama administration. Accordingly, for whatever it’s worth, despite my insistence on reading the Vice President’s defense of the Recovery Act in context, my professional experience (outside of blogging) leads me to believe too much of that Act’s funding is hobbled by unnecessary red tape (regardless of what the VP says) and that the entire stimulus exercise would have been far more effective — in both the short-term and long-term — had much more than a third of the allocated funds been directed to tax cuts and tax incentives, for both individuals and corporations. I’ve heard too many solid arguments on why “stimulus via tax policy” is far swifter and more certain than “stimulus via centralized granting.”
7 Responses to “The Trouble Today with ‘Simple’ Words”
I think you are going down the path of Clinton's “it depends on the what the meaning of 'is' is”.
When you have to get that convoluted to make the new words fit the old words, perhaps it is time for Occam's Razor. And the simplest explanation is that it was sold as “X”, and now that it is not performing as promised/desired, backtracking and muddling of the message is the order of the day.
First time on this site. Sounds good, hope it lives up to its promise of moderation. This entry does–so thanks. However, have you discussed somewhere just how “stimulus via tax policy” works? If you have, I'll look for it, but if you haven't, IMO you should defend that rather than just stick it in at the end like an everyday naysayer with right leanings. I have yet to hear a single tax policy advocate explain how decreasing government revenue increases consumer confidence and spending. History has shown it increases our debt while defunding vital “safety net” programs needed to enable those on the brink to survive until conditions improve. Moreover, I'd love to hear (honestly–this is just something I haven't HEARD anywhere) how tax policy gets people to spend when most are paying down debt or saving, including businesses (I have a small business). What is the rebuttal to the argument that if the public isn't spending, government has to?
Pete I see your point but Biden (and the Democrats in general) are trying to have it both ways. The stimulus was sold to us by saying it was critical to get it done as quickly as possible, bypassing the usual committee and budgetary processes. The impression was given that the economy needed quick and decisive intervention, so even if one wants to parse words the message was that the economy needed a jolt and that's what the stimulus would deliver.
Now later Biden is trying to argue the stimulus was meant to be a gradual steady influence on the economy. That definitely was not the argument we heard in February from Obama.
As far as the makeup of the stimulus package a lot of it seems to be in essence turning state debt into federal, something that I can't see is much of a stimulus.
“Biden’s team knows that, and because they know that, they should have also known better than to allow even a single, seemingly harmless four-letter word like “jolt” to make the final, for-publication cut.”
I think “jolt” is a word Biden uses and I like to see the personality of people come out in speeches.
Obama has said all along that it will take months for the economy to recover. I am not sure how much I want to get into this but…. I've told the Rush-supporting, Obama-hating Republican people that Obama's recovery plan will take months to take effect. (This was back in Jan/Feb)….
First the recovery plan had to be agreed up, then funded, then disbursed to the various localities, agencies and other recipients. Then they would have to study it, decide how they could spend it within the parameters of the plan and then hire people or otherwise spend the money. Some recipients might be able to put the money to good use immediately, for others it would take time. I never saw the stimulus plan as a quick jolt.
So it seems to me that if the reporters are trying to make a case for inconsistency, and if the Obama administration has made previous statements that the plan WAS a jolt, then Obama's administration has been consistent in one thing: being inconsistent.
But for me, Biden's most recent comments (above) are consistent with how I have always viewed the recovery plan, which is as a long-term solution.
I'll also admit that I really haven't been keeping a close eye on every word that the administration says around this. Because I view the plan as a long-term solution, mostly what is said now is the right attacking Obama on everything around this that they can. ANd we are talking about Republicans protesting the Obama administration…. Their protests can only go so far before they start falling on deaf ears. Particularly since that is the strategy of the GOP these days: protest anything Obama, regardless of its merits.
I'd like to see where the economy and unemployment figures are a year from now before passing any judgement on the plan. Though to be frank, I don't think the unemployment will have improved that much….
DaGoat, “The impression was given that the economy needed quick and decisive intervention, so even if one wants to parse words the message was that the economy needed a jolt and that's what the stimulus would deliver.”
I agree with you there…. however I don't agree with your conclusion. The economy needed the stimulus plan as quickly as possible so it would take effect sooner rather than later. If the plan is passed in Feb. then the economy would feel the effects sooner then if the plan had been debated for six more months. If the GOP had their was the plan would never have passed, so there would never have been any benefit from the plan.
To be clear…. I don't know how effective the plan will be (and as I noted in my early comment I'd like to wait a year to see how the economy is going)… but the plan has undoubtedly kept some people in their jobs and has enable others to be hired. Whether it will have the desired effect on the economy as a whole has yet to be seen. But many people have jobs because of the plan. If the GOP had their way and the plan never passed, then those people would be adding to the unemployment rate. Perhaps incrementally, but…. a little increment here… a little increment there and soon you have 10% unemployment.
Oh come on, StockBoy, this is purely religious economics. A year from now the economy will be better, and you'll conclude the stimulus was a success, or not, and you'll blame the GOP for hamstringing it when it mattered.
So please, convince me this is not just faith healing with $700B worth of rosary beads. Under what circumstances would you conclude the stimulus did not help and was the wrong approach?
Bad salesman of bad ideas, unlike his boss who believes he's a master salesman, …. of bad ideas.
This is what we should call: BLATHERING FROM INCOMPETENTS
Why is averyone listening to the lies, but there is so little questioning of anything, substantively?
Bernanke is the same expert who only last year told Congress wonderful fairytales about housing, the markets, and the economy just as the bubble was beginning its implosion.
Apply the controls available, without inventing new ones, and refrain from creating a Nation dependent on its government (through politicized cronyism) for financial success. Prosperity has no address on that road.
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2009/07/ber…
Make changes at the top and change the structure over money’s controls.