The Most Memorable
Words of 2013
A billionaire's worry: 'Every time I hear the
stock market went up I know the guillotines are coming closer.'
By Peggy Noonan in the
Wall Street Journal
What's the political
word of the year? For months journalists couldn't settle on how to describe the
rollout of ObamaCare. "Failed," disastrous,"
"unsuccessful." In the past few weeks they've settled on
"botched." References to the botched rollout have appeared in this
paper, The Hill, NBC, Fox, NPR, the New Republic, the Washington Post and other
media outlets.
A botch, according to
the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition, is a "bungled piece
of work"—to botch is to "spoil by unskillful work."
Merriam-Webster says to botch is "to foul up hopelessly."
It's a good word. It
even sounds like what it means, and it fits a headline.
***
The sentence of the
year is very famous. "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep
it," which President Obama promised from beginning of his health bill
straight through to the time before its unveiling. It was a lie and has been
called lie of the year.
Its variations—if you
like your doctor you can keep your doctor, etc.—also turn out to be untrue.
With millions thrown off their health-care coverage and millions more braced to
be thrown off, the president's promises leave him looking like Dan Aykroyd in
the old Saturday Night Live skit where the sleazy toy manufacturer is
confronted by a consumer reporter played by Candice Bergen.
She accuses him of
selling dangerous Christmas gifts for children, such as "General Tron's
Secret Police Confession Kit" and "Doggy Dentist." But the worst
product, she tells him, is a bag of glass. "We're just packaging what the
kids want," says Aykroyd. "We put a label on every bag that says,
'Kid, be careful, broken glass!'"
That's how ObamaCare
looks, like the bag of broken glass.
The president's
statement was simple, clear, understood—meaning it was memorable. Pretty much
anyone hearing the promise replayed today would know right away who said it and
what it referred to. For all his much vaunted excellence as a speaker, Mr.
Obama has never had a famous phrase that encapsulated his leadership—no
"evil empire" or "Ask not," or "We have nothing to
fear."
Now he does. And it
encapsulates more than he would have wished.
Could he get himself a
new and happier one? Yes. Something like, "Stubbornness is never a good
grounding for policy. Today I am ordering the federal government to delay
implementation of ObamaCare for one year. I mean to work with Republicans on
Capitol Hill to turn around what doesn't work. I am not giving up and not giving
in; we are, however, recognizing and accepting reality. The American people
should not be asked to pay the price in anxiety for mistakes that have been
made along the way. I am frankly asking for constructive cooperation from my
Republican friends. It would be a most unkind party that wouldn't pitch in at a
moment like this."
Over to you, Mr.
Speaker, and Merry Christmas.
***
There are also the
words this year that were most conspicuous by their absence. They're the words
we don't use when we talk about health care. Actually we don't talk much about
health care, we talk about health insurance. Fox News's Jim Pinkerton says the
absent words in the ongoing debate are "medicine,"
"research" and "cure." Do you want to make a dent in future
health-care costs? Cure Alzheimers. That's where the cost will be as the health
of the baby boomers falters. Insurance isn't the key. It was never the key.
It's a product. Cure and care are the words of the future.
***
Some nice, plain words
came from Delta Air Lines.
There aren't really a
lot of nice things about flying. It's scary, germy, full of delays. They don't
clean the planes as they once did—the tray is not clean and as you open it and
see the coke and coffee marks, you wonder if it was used on the last flight by
a Senegalese tourist with typhus.
The words you always
hear are "We have a full flight today," and they do, which is bad
news because of America's Personal Physical Boundary Crisis. Our countrymen
increasingly lack a sense of where their physical space ends and yours begins.
The young, blond Viking-looking woman with the big purse and the jangly
bracelets, waving her arms and yelling to her friends across the aisle; the
big, wide man who takes not only the arm rest when you're in the middle seat
but the shoulder and leg space . . .
Imagine these people
with phones. It will be hell. Their voices will have no boundaries. And they
are precisely the people who'll make the most calls, because they understand
their urgent need to chatter is more important than your hope for quiet.
There will be the
moment when softly and with a smile, you ask if he could lower his voice just a
bit. He will not. He's on with the office, it's very important. So after half
an hour you'll gesture to the stewardess, and she'll say something to the man,
and he'll snap the phone shut but he's resentful, and you have to sit next to
angry, no-boundaries man for another four hours . . .
And so the nice words
of 2013 are not "We're over Kansas or something, listen to what happened
on the Green case." The nice words came from Delta Air Lines CEO Richard
Anderson. If the airlines are
cleared by the federal government for cellphone use, Delta will not allow it.
In a survey they did last year "a clear majority" of customers said
cellphones onboard "would detract from—not enhance—their experience."
Flight crews agreed—cellphones will cause passenger discord and detract from
safety messages.
God bless Delta Air
Lines, and Southwest Airlines has also indicated it may make a similar
decision.
***
The most arresting
words heard this year? A billionaire of New York, in conversation: "I hate
it when the market goes up. Every time I hear the stock market went up I know
the guillotines are coming closer." This was interesting in part because
the speaker has a lot of money in the market. But he meant it. He is self-made,
broadly accomplished, a thinker on politics, and for a moment he was sharing
the innards of his mind. His biggest concern is the great and growing distance
between the economically successful and those who have not or cannot begin to
climb. The division has become too extreme, too dramatic, and static. He fears
it will eventually tear the country apart and give rise to policies that are
bitter and punishing, not helpful and broadening.
This year I came to
understand, at meetings and symposia, that this has become an ongoing
preoccupation of the wealthy. They are not oblivious, they are concerned. And
though they give away hundreds of millions of dollars to charities, schools and
scholarships, they don't know what can be done to turn the overall economic
picture around. Globalization isn't leaving, industrial manufacturing isn't coming
back as it was, technology will continue to give jobs to the educated, and the
ever-evolving mischief of men and markets won't change.
They are worried. They
are right to be. They are trying to think it through, trying to find any
realistic solutions, and words.
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