Monday, November 10, 2008

Some Things Never Change...

President George Bush has often been the subject of jokes for his "creative" use (or misuse) of the English language. Apparently this is one thing that will not change with an Obama Presidency. Here's an item from the James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal website:

As we noted Friday, one of Barack Obama's selling points, among a certain class of educated Americans, is that he talks good, unlike President Bush. Yet less than a week after Obama's election, the evidence is accumulating that he and those around him are not living up to the promise:

The Belfast Telegraph reports that last month Obama told TV hostess Ellen Degeneres: "Michelle may be a better dancer than me, but I'm convinced I'm a better dancer than John McCain." It should have been, "Michelle may be a better dancer than I." Mr. Obama was using than as a contraction; the implication was "than I am" or "than I may be."

In his press conference Friday, the president-elect declared, "President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to meet with him and First Lady Laura Bush." No, he invited "Michelle and me." You wouldn't say, "President Bush has invited I," now would you? One of the Kos Kidz saw a teachable moment here.

In the same press conference, Obama said that in choosing his cabinet, "I want to move with all deliberate haste, but I want to emphasize deliberate as well as haste." That is an oxymoron. Haste by definition is precipitate, not deliberate. Probably he meant "all deliberate speed," a phrase made famous by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. It was actually a problematic term; as Clarence Page argues, the emphasis on "deliberate" provided an excuse to slow down school desegregation. But let's save the history lesson for another day.

London's Daily Telegraph reports: "Mr Obama is to meet Mr Bush at the White House on Monday. The visit will include a tour of the residence for his wife Michelle conducted by First Lady Laura Bush, and forms part of what Obama aides described as a 'collegiate' transition of power." This is the White House, not "Animal House." The word is collegial.

Yesterday on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's White House Chief of Staff said: "We have postponed dealing with an energy crisis since 1974. We had a crisis; we kicked it down the can. . . . We had a health care crisis. . . . These are, just taking those two examples, these are crises you can no longer afford to kick down the can. The crisis we have here, the American people know we have one. . . . You cannot afford now to kick those down the can any longer." You can kick a can down the road, and you can flush something down the can, but "kick down the can"--a phrase Emanuel repeated three times--simply makes no sense.

Jake Weisberg of Slate had a long-running feature called "Bushism of the Day." So eager has he been to find verbal miscues by Obama's predecessor that he has even, as we noted in 2002, mistakenly attributed foreign leaders' misstatements to Bush. We suppose there's no chance of Slate reprising this feature for Obama. But the real question is, are children learning?