Part 1 of Obama's Style: Just Words?

Update: This post is the first in a series of 3 that will analyze aspects of the new President, Barack Obama, that are marked elements of his Presidential style. Because this blog seeks to think thoughtfully about the news, and because President Obama is the most prominent international news figure, it stands to reason that I should think more thoughtfully and comprehensively about different aspects of Obama's young presidency. So this first post is about how Obama uses words and how he plays the political game.

I had a conversation with a woman last year about meaningful things. We were sharing ideas about truth and God and religion. In the middle of that conversation, she said something utterly curious and totally incoherent:

All language is a metaphor, so it doesn't matter if you tell me that Jesus is God.

Well, she's wrong of course. Her statement, after all, was not in fact a metaphor. She made a propositional statement, and if all language is a metaphor then her statement must suffer by the same standard. Therefore, it is false. The emphasis of her statement, however, is plaguing our culture on many fronts.

Words are going without meaning. The increase of moving images on the internet and television erode the place of the written and spoken word. There's little care for argument and reason in our public and political discourse. The untruth of postmodernity is affecting our very language. And, sad to say, our President (and many politicians including Republicans) contributes to this erosion. According to this article, Obama deftly gets to change definitions of words to suit his political purposes.

But last night, Obama adopted a different meaning for the word [recovery]. Suddenly, "recovery" did not just mean an end to the immediate recession. "The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation so that we don't face another crisis like this 10 or 20 years from now," he said in a sentence so difficult to unpack that it reads as if it had been written by
lawyers. (Does he mean build upon the recovery? Or build under the recovery?)
Later, he completed the transformation with this line: "That's why this budget
is inseparable from this recovery: because it is what lays the foundation for a
secure and lasting prosperity."...

In other words, back then [in a Presidential debate] Obama was pointing out--correctly--that short-term stimulus spending to prompt an economic "recovery" was not the same as a normal budget debate. The rules were different. Spending was the whole point. Now, when it serves Obama's political interests, Obama seems to have changed his mind. Deficits five or more years away are, he now claims, are about "recovery" as well. And all he did was change the meaning of a single word.

Language does have and should have fixed points. We should demand this of friends and colleagues as well as our Presidents.