Sometimes the best part of a speech isn’t the one with the brilliant metaphor, the side-splitting joke or the devastating retort. It’s the part where the speaker makes a case plainly but eloquently, and where the drama comes from the clash of ideas instead of from cranked-up rhetoric.
President Obama’s best moment tonight may have been this one. I don’t think it took anyone’s breath away at the time… but I’ll bet you see this language repeated in speech after speech by Democratic candidates and incumbents in the coming months:
We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right.
