Political speech is often couched in ways that different people hear different things, so President Obama and his speechwriters probably thought he was safe when he railed against the idea that businesspeople and others who have achieved success did it on their own.
The line that "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." has been parsed by friends and foe alike. The friends argue that the President was only trying to correct for the efforts people make to give sole credit for success to the entrepreneur or other successful person. The foes argue (correctly, I think) that almost no one takes full credit for his own successes. The whole attack is against a straw man. Instead, the speech, taken as a whole, by assuming the worst of achievers in society, is scornful of them. Politically, of course, it is a not so subtle excuse for class warfare. Remember, even if the Obama tax increases on the "rich" go through, the huge deficits are only dented. So why this constant theme?
So, apart from the speech content, there is the sneer, the sly way the President talks about this subject. It suggests to me that Mr. Obama doesn't understand entrepreneurism and truly doesn't respect the entrepreneur--except perhaps as a campaign donor. It's like the person at the dance performance who points at the stage and declares, "I could do that."
Sure he could.
