A neo-neocon exclusive: how the White House saved or created the “saved or created” meme
It’s not often such things come my way, but I’ve just gotten hold of an audio tape made surreptitiously by an Obama confederate, and I’ve made a transcript of the goings-on.
The place: somewhere in the White House.
The time: early February, 2009.
The cast of characters: Obama and a few top advisers.
The topic: projected unemployment figures.
AIDE 1: Chief, I know you’re good at convincing the public of whatever you want them to think. You were born with the gift of a golden voice [aide 1, despite his youth, is a fervent Leonard Cohen fan].
OBAMA: [Nods]. Yes [deeply and sonorously].
AIDE 1: But figures are figures, and facts are facts. And when the unemployment figures start coming out…
AIDE 2: We’re going to have to say “who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?”
OBAMA [Laughs. Deeply and sonorously]
AIDE 1: But how should we frame it? How can you disguise something as clear as that? We make a projection, and we turn out to be wrong, and unemployment increases…
[Pause while all are lost in thought.]
AIDE 3: It’s all in the way the projection is made. We’ve got to figure out something…something…
AIDE 1: Something inherently ambiguous.
AIDE 2: Something inherently unprovable.
OBAMA: Something where the deniability is built in from the start, so I don’t have to backtrack or contradict myself and pretend I’m not. I’m getting tired of doing that.
AIDE 2: But are the American people that dumb? Will they buy it?
OBAMA: Yes.
AIDE 1: They’ve always bought it before, if Obama says it.
[All smile and nod.]
AIDE 3: But if too many jobs are lost, how can we…
AIDE 2: But they won’t all be lost. Some will be saved.
AIDE 1: Wish we could get the people to imagine that without us, there’s be no jobs left in America. That way we’d get credit for every single one that’s…
OBAMA: I’ve got it! [starts singing, to the tune of “Amazing Grace”] I once was lost but now am found/Was blind, but now, I see.
AIDE 3: What?
AIDE 2: What do you see?
OBAMA: [Singing again, same tune] I once was lost but now am saved…
AIDE 3: Those aren’t the words.
AIDE 1: There’s a crack in everything.
OBAMA: [To aide 1] Quit that Cohen stuff. Can’t stand the guy, even if he is a Jew (nods and smiles ruefully to Rahm Emmanuel, who’s sitting in the corner wrapping a dead fish to be sent to Reverend Wright].
[All wait expectantly.]
OBAMA: Don’t you get it?
[All shake heads and say in unison] Tell us, boss.
OBAMA: [Almost to self] I’m good; oh, I’m good. We all know that I need to convince the American people I’m doing something to create jobs [all nod].
AIDE 1: And we know that unemployment’s going to go way up anyway.
OBAMA: Yes. So, instead of just saying I’ll create jobs, I’ll say I’ll “save or create” them. Sounds good, and the beauty of it all is that it’s completely unprovable. You might say that every single job that isn’t lost in America during my administration is one I saved.
AIDES: [Together, in chorus]: Boss, you’re the best! Let’s use it every single time you talk about employment.
[NOTE: While I was researching the background of the phrase “save or create,” I discovered that Obama actually didn’t “create” the phrase itself, despite my fanciful imaginings. However, you might say he “saved” it.
The phrase has been used before in a very particular set of circumstances by the Agriculture Department during the Bush administration, to describe some programs designed to actually “save or create” a limited and circumscribed set of threatened jobs (see this). And here’s a press release with details of the groups receiving the relatively small amounts of money involved (all grants were under a million dollars, and most were well below that figure; how quaint it all seems now!) and how they were required to distribute it):
The loans must be used to start new businesses, expand existing ones, or create or retain jobs. The economic development program provides funding to Rural Utilities program borrowers, usually electric and telephone cooperatives, which then provide the money to support job retention or job creation efforts in their service areas.
Despite my little attempt at humor in the above piece, I think it’s interesting to seriously ponder Obama’s exercise of the phrase. If in fact he was aware it had been used previously—and I have no way of knowing whether he did, but let’s just assume so—he must have sensed it would be incredibly advantageous for him to extend the phrase from a very specific set of threatened rural jobs whose “saving” could be measured, to the “saving” of jobs in general, which cannot.]
Neo, On this line the link is broken:
Aide 1: There’s a crack in everything
To demand accountability, the government would have to tell businesses to register on the new website called: wwwwww.saveorcreate.govt and let the government know which job and how many were saved because of the stimulous plan.
Of course what would happen is this:
1) Business owners who are democrat oriented would go on and register their whole set of employees to inflate Obama’s numbers.
2) The press would accuse business owners with leaning conservative/Republican if they weren’t participating by registering employees on the website.
Why?
Because journalism is dead. Facts and figures mean nothing to journalist any more. They are lazy and negligent !!!!
Baklava: Thanks. I fixed it.
The “save or create” concept has been around quite a while. I worked for an economic development organization back in the late 90’s, and nearly all of our funding sources used that as an objective measuring stick of our efforts. Of course, we were on the ground, and had a good idea of how many workers the local wood mill was going to lay off if they didn’t expand their markets.
Still, it wasn’t a truly objective measurement. There were often a number of factors that affected job creation and salvation. We couldn’t take responsibility for all of them.
Our area of influence was fairly small, and we dealt with minor funding amounts. To take this concept nationally, with trillions of dollars, is ludicrous. There is no way to demand accountability for every job created or preserved when the scope is this large. The inputs are orders of magnitude more complex. Moreover, the likelihood of corruption and misuse is so much greater.
The administration didn’t decide to use “saved or created” as some way of objectively measuring results. They knew full well that the unemployment figures would likely rise, even after throwing obscene amounts of money around. Instead, they adopted this fuzzy pretense of measurement as a way of obfuscating their false numbers.
When the Marx we quote is not Karl but Groucho, we know we have entered the politics of the absurd.
Why is it that 1930 comedies remind us of Obama? Obamam reminded me of President Wintergreen of Gershwin’s musical Of Thee I Sing. Wintergreen won on a platform of LOVE.
“who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?”
versus
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/groucho_marx_4.html
OK, Neo. You’ve been reading too much Vanderleun.
Would Obama be a saved or created marxist?
Yes, saved or created has been around a *long* time.
Sadly the “saved” part *can* be true, indeed it can be highly important. Lets say we note an asteroid hurtling towards us at 30 miles per second and we send a group out to destroy it – we saved the planet. No matter the death rate or anything else *we saved the planet*.
There are economical realities are there too – in hindsight had we avoided the Great Depression then yes, we would have saved millions of jobs and trillions of dollars even back in those times money scales (over its length).
However the problem there is how do we dertimine what might have been? With the case of a physical end of the world thing hurtling towards us it is obvious – but something political avoided? Lets face it, did Reagan deciding to win the Cold War avoid WWIII or put us closer to it then we would have otherwise? Who can say for sure?
In this case I think it laughable that Obama has saved us – all but his most die hard supporters shrink up and move away when his True Supporters start up with that. I know a number who said at least they tried – and I guess I can somewhat see that but it’s like saying “at least he tried” if someone tried to use a shotgun to blow the cancer out of their body and lived through it – well sorta but shouldn’t you have *realized* that was a bad idea to begin with?
I have stated it here before but many depend on what I call a “Throw a Dog a Bone Syndrome” – that is throw them a bone, no matter how bare, and they will wag their tails and thank you with all their might. All you have to give them is that bone and after that all else is irrelevant. That you “saved” jobs and we would be worse is *always* a bone. Democrats (and note I use this term specifically over liberal) are VERY big on that – I chose the “dog” analogy because of the term Yellow Dog Democrat.
Obama rides the TDBS more than any politician I know of, but at some point most realize that the bone is bare and are not happy – us not being Dogs and all. I do not know when it will happen, some are slowly realizing it, but it *will* happen. Too many in the past have tried the whole “Tell us the Bone is Bare” and that isn’t popular even if true – animals (and make no mistake – we are in the animal kingdom) *really* like those bones and like to think they are meaty.
Great!
Also… Pangloss.