A simple youtube search will show numerous other examples of similar comments. However, since becoming President Obama has not made nearly as many public speeches, and now that he is in a policy making position he has been a little more hesitant to expouse specific views on a variety issues. Even the left has criticized him for failing to take the lead on issues ranging from healthcare to energy. However, I have notice an interesting trend when Obama does speak, and it is eerily familiar to a type of propaganda described by George Orwell over half a century ago. Doublethink, the term penned by Orwell in his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-four, was described by him as follows:
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink..Now obviously Obama's rhetoric has not quite reached that of "the Party," but he is slowly inching his way in that direction. The more common terms, doubletalk and doublespeak, both derived their meaning based on Orwell's concept of doublethink, and they may be more apt terms for Obama's current rhetoric. Defined as any language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of a statement, resulting in a communication bypass, doublespeak has been employed by governments throughout history in order to enact unpopular policies or to hide those policies true costs. Let's take a look at a couple of things Obama has said of the past year.
On healthcare: "We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care," Obama said. "Families will save on their premiums; businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future. This plan will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of that program. And because it gets rid of the waste and inefficiencies in our health care system, this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in over a decade." This was one of the main ways Obama was able to sell reform: he claimed premiums would go down for current insurance holders, that he would strengthen Medicare and total government spending would decrease. All this while giving over 33 million more Americans coverage. This is the essence of doublethink. Claiming that we can dramatically increase the total number of services while paying less for it! However, in May the CBO released a new estimate saying that the cost of the bill would be $130 billion more than originally estimated over the first decade, effectively eliminating any "savings." And this estimate uses ten years of revenue to pay for only 6 years of benefits. Just look at Medicare as an example. The program now costs almost ten times what the original estimate said it would be when it was passed. First year economics tell you when you drastically increase demand for a service (by adding 30 million new people seeking care) while instituting a number of new mandates (accept everyone with preexisting conditions, covering dependents until age 26, etc.) that the price will rise - in this case premiums. A great example of what happens when government tries to take over the healthcare system is in Massachusetts, and the current debacle up there has been documented thoroughly in today's Wall Street Journal.
On Energy: "Each of us has a part to play in a new future that will benefit all of us. As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs – but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment. And only if we rally together and act as one nation – workers and entrepreneurs; scientists and citizens; the public and private sectors." - Barack Obama, June 15, 2010, from whitehouse.gov
Obviously this quote refers to the notorious cap and trade bill. In his oval office speech on the oil spill, President Obama tried to make the case the economics alone justify getting away from fossil fuels. In the speech he did not mention the phrase "climate change" even once, instead claiming that job growth and prevention of oil spills were the main impetus behind a cap and trade bill. Once again the contradictions in such a statement are apparent. Raising the cost of carbon will make energy more expensive. This will put businesses in a precarious position: either devote more of their limited resources to paying for energy, or buy less of it and produce less as a result. This will leave all types of industries with less money to spend on new investments or hire workers. Will there be more workers in subsidized industries like wind and solar? Yes, probably. But these will be far outweighed by the losses in traditional industries. You simply cannot pay more for energy as a whole, decreasing the capital available for investment, and expect the total amount of prosperity to increase. Regardless of how pressing an issue climate change may or may not be, trying to sell cap and trade as a jobs bill is contradictory.
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