You didn't build that.

If you don't follow political news any better than I do you may have wondered what all this "You didn't build that" stuff involving the President is about. Comments, advertisements, speeches, Facebook postings, everywhere you see references to it

 

In a speech in Roanoke, Virginia last week Mr. Obama said “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

 Depending on how you approach that statement I can agree or disagree. If he had said "you didn't build that all by yourself" or you didn't build that without others" and skipped the last sentence, I don't think it would have become a political statement.  In fact, I'd be the first to agree with it.

None of us do it alone.  We have support, we have employees and contractors, we use roads and bridges, we were taught by someone else. It is never one person all by their self.  If nothing else, they have customers

The argument can be made the president was saying that public investment in education, infrastructure and research fosters private business. In return, so the argument goes, successful business leaders have an interest in supporting government programs.

But the way it came out, it fit exactly  into what the Romney campaign has been saying, that the president fails to understand how business and private enterprise work. Most of the time, Obama carefully balances his arguments about tax fairness and the role of government with other references to the importance of individualism. His stump speeches are typically peppered with lines like “we’re not a country that believes in handouts, we believe in working for what we get,” and “we believe in individual initiative and self-reliance.” 

But with the “you didn’t build that” line, Obama made people set back and wonder if his real faith lies in the power of government, not private enterprise.

That's what it is all about.