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The Disappearance of the Smaller Government Message

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Sadly, No! points us to a typically tragi-comic exchange in which our president, once again, demonstrates his inability to remember the various twists and turns in language manipulation, this time vis-a-vis his plans for social security. Here’s Seb’s executive summary. I didn’t see it, but it seems about right:

The Post: Will you talk to Senate Democrats about your privatization plan?
THE PRESIDENT: PERSONAL SAVINGS ACCOUNTS.
The Post: Yes, exactly. Scott has been —
THE PRESIDENT: We don’t want to be editorializing, at least in the questions.
The Post: You used partial privatization yourself last year, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: The fuck I did.
The Post: Yes, three times in one sentence. Mike Allen, the industrious Mike Allen, found it.
THE PRESIDENT: Allen did what now? (not a shortening or alteration)

Seb then searches the WH website and Mike Allen is, unsurprisingly, exhonorated. But think about what just happened here. Our “conservative” Republican president just stood up and explicitly said that “privatization” is a term that is a negative editorialization. The reality is the modern GOP has never had much use for their own small government rhetoric, policy-wise. But once upon a time, that rhetoric was a crucial, central theme in their national political message. Now, the President stands up and says to the press corps, in effect, “it is now an unacceptable slander to suggest that I am trying to take some activity out of the realm of government and into the hands of private individuals.” It’s staggering, really. In my alternative universe this cognitive dissonance would have inspired a line of questioning from the press. I doubt our president would have been able to give a coherent answer, even if he wanted to. It’s not his fault, there’s almost certainly no coherent answer to give.

Update: wagster is concerned I’m working a little too closely with a satire summary. Here’s a transcript with the actual conversation. The portion of the discussion is about 2/3 down. It’s actually an unusually congenial moment for the president; he concedes his original claim (about what he said, not anything substantive) may actually be incorrect.

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