What’s that old saw? “I know you think you understand what I said. But what you don’t realize is that what you heard is not what I meant.”
Two examples from this summer represent the exploiting of statements made by both of our nation’s currently presumed prominent political parties’ presidential candidates.
First, Governor Romney, who was visiting England prior to the opening of this year’s Summer Olympics in London. When asked–given his past experience from heading the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, here in America in 2002–Mr. Romney explained that in planning an event of such magnitude and complexity, one realistically wonders, when so many details are involved, if all the t’s have been crossed and all the i’s dotted.
When even the best laid plans can still go wrong . . .
Anyone hearing Mr. Romney’s qualified observation–at least those who had paid much attention to the preparations for these 2012 Olympics–likely suspected he was referring to extensive press coverage questioning ever-increasing concerns over adequate security measures and personnel.
Even those most experienced and knowledgeable about such matters, with no particular political axe to grind, had raised the question. Suggesting, then, that Mitt Romney was hardly being unreasonably skeptical or critical of the London Olympics planners and organizers.
Yet Romney was soundly criticized for his comments on both sides of the Atlantic.
The outcry in Great Britain–England, in general, and London, in particular–was that Romney had been discounting and dismissive of the British efforts to secure a safe and negatively uneventful Olympic experience for such a massive gathering of both participants and sports fans from throughout the world, those who would be traveling to this prominent and historic international city.
“He said we weren’t prepared for the Olympics,” they declared.
Indeed, if Mr. Romney had hardly over-stated such a sentiment, his critics surely had, in claiming what they insisted he had said–which he hadn’t
And here in America, of course, Romney’s political opponents (and even some supporters) seized upon his statement as yet another example of, at best, the governor’s seemingly incurable capacity “to open his mouth in order to merely change feet.”
While at worst–at least among his political enemies–his having embarrassed America in this, his first venture into foreign relations (at least as a public political figure) by exhibiting insensitivity and a lack of good manners as a guest in an historically hospitable host nation and city.
But then, as they say, “Turn about is fair play”–however “un-fair” it may be.
Since the same thing has happened to President Obama over an observation he has made consistently, throughout the summer, in his political campaigning.
“Anyone who has been successful has hardly done it all on their own,” Mr. Obama has insisted, quoting the Harvard attorney, Elizabeth Warren, who is running as a Democrat for the United States Senate in Massachusetts.
A statement his critics have reduced to: “Obama decries individual initiative and achievement.”
Despite the sentiment of such iconic pop tunes which reveal a cultural value as American as “baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet.” As when the Beatles sing, “I get by with a little help from my friends,” or the Hollies or Neil Diamond or the Osmonds wail, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”
Much less the declaration of recent Olympic women’s skeet shooting champion, Kimberly Rhode, upon winning her historic fifth straight Olympic medal (mostly gold) in the sport.
“I couldn’t have done this by myself,” she confessed with authentic humility and gratitude, citing the long and continued support of family and friends. Including the generous offering of a new shotgun, when her trusted older weapon was stolen.
We’re talking about competitive skeet shooting here. As if anything could represent more individual dedication, discipline and accomplishment.
In this regard, I’m reminded of the late Reverend Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor, distinguished minister-educator, who used to speak of no one achieving much of anything good without the benefit of “good sponsorship.”
“In my case,” he would say, “it was my grandmother, a cultured, sophisticated woman who so profoundly shaped my life. A freed slave–instead of her owners shipping her off to somewhere up North, they sent her to Hampton Institute to be educated, a legacy she passed on to me.”
According to Dr. Proctor, “I didn’t earn it nor deserve it–this gift–that of ‘good sponsorship.’ I’ve merely made good use of it, while also ‘sponsoring’ others, myself, along the way.”
The political parsing of our President’s rhetoric–the tension which always persists somewhere between individuality and community, between competition and cooperation–it’s interesting.
Since it goes to the very heart of most religious traditions. Certainly the one with which I’m most familiar and knowledgeable: evangelical Christianity. Ironically, a subject which continues to invade American political discourse these days.
Even though a nation such as ours was founded on the principle of keeping the two as separate as possible–politics and religion.
I say, “ironic,” since those most opposed to Mr. Obama’s presidency claim to be the most “evangelical” of Christians.
Even if, in promoting the creative tension which has made our nation great–individuality and community, competition and cooperation–in doing so, our President is merely quoting the Bible.
As in the ancient Hebrew concept of “corporate personality,” where the “individual is the group,” and “the group is the individual.” For example, when, in the Hebrew Bible (our Christian Old Testament) “Jacob is Israel” and “Israel is Jacob” (as in Isaiah 40: 27, or in the alternate use of singular and plural pronouns in Hosea 11).
Not to mention, Jesus. When he prays for his followers, “that they may be one,” (John 17) or declares that the “greatest of commandments” involves the “loving of one’s neighbor as oneself” (Matthew 22, Mark 12, Luke 10); in the promoting of “community” and “cooperation”–is Jesus there being too obvious?
Or Paul, in Galatians 6, where he explains to a congregation in conflict that “individuality and together-ness” are not either/or alternatives, but more of a both/and synthesis. Admonishing them, as he does, to both “bear one another’s burdens” and “for each one to bear his own load.”
Or again, in I Corinthians 12, to yet another conflicted and competitive-to-a-fault congregation, where Paul uses a metaphor–that of the human body–to emphasize the necessity, yea the importance of “the various parts working together.”
Our President–merely quoting the Bible to so to many so-called “evangelical Christians,” here in America–those who seem so convinced that he is neither: a Christian or an American.
How’s that for irony?
