It’s easy to say your objective, weighing evidence with dispassionate analysis and facts. You believe your judgement is sound and your positions are ethical, you’re not like the others.
But should you find yourself wrong without feeling livid, it came about with much consideration and deliberation that you could have been wrong at all. You feel you should stand tall or not at all.
Being right is about getting it right and how could you fuck up? It’s you! Right? How could you believe any lie or misconception, be subject to any deception? Without you knowing…
Romney:
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-mitt-romney-secret-video#47percent
Obama:
“As we think about the policy research surrounding the issues that I just named — policy research for the working poor, broadly defined — I think that what we’re gonna have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all. There has been a systematic, I don’t think it’s too strong to call it a propaganda campaign, against the possibility of government action and its efficacy. And I think some of it has been deserved. Chicago Housing Authority has not been a model of good policy making. And neither necessarily have been the Chicago public schools. What that means then is that as we try to resuscitate this notion that we’re all in this thing together, leave nobody behind, we do have to be innovative in thinking how, what are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live, and my suggestion I guess would be that the trick, and this is one of the few areas where I think there have to be technical issues that have to be dealt with as opposed to just political issues, how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot. How do we pool resources at the same time as we decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities.”