{"id":11510,"date":"2008-10-03T12:06:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T16:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/10\/03\/11510.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:49:19","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:49:19","slug":"two-words-four-meanings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/10\/03\/two-words-four-meanings\/","title":{"rendered":"Two words, four meanings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So. Your Humble Blogger wrote last week<\/a> about the way that John McCain misinterprets the word precondition<\/i> in Barack Obama’s foreign policy statements. In short, Sen. Obama uses the word to mean a meaningful concession made before a negotiation can even begin. Sen. McCain pretends to understand Sen. Obama to mean any conditions or terms whatsoever.
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Then, last night<\/a>, there was the following exchange:
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BIDEN<\/strong>: Yes, well, you know, until two weeks ago—it was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o’clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George—we’ve made great economic progress under George Bush’s policies. Nine o’clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o’clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn’t make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he’s out of touch. Those folks on the sidelines knew that two months ago.
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IFILL<\/strong>: Gov. Palin, you may respond.
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PALIN<\/strong>: John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. And that’s what John McCain meant.<\/blockquote>
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Now, is the disagreement about fundamentals<\/i> the same as the one about preconditions<\/i>? In both cases, the candidate said something that was widely understood to be a gaffe, or at least a statement worth mocking. In both cases, the candidate now claims that the word he used is now being misunderstood by the mockers. So is it the same?
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I honestly don’t know. I am inclined to think that they aren’t. I have a sense that the term precondition<\/i> in the context of diplomacy did have the meaning that Barack Obama now claims. The other interpretation requires the interpreter to believe that Barack Obama is has a policy that doesn’t jibe with his written policies, nor with common sense. But perhaps that interpretation only requires it to have been a misstatement, or perhaps the sort of slip that reveals a deeper disorientation with the topic. Certainly, my interpretation of his meaning is going to be charitable. I like the man.
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On the other side, I don’t actually know what the fundamentals<\/i> of the economy are. The GDP? The labor market? Productivity? Per capita savings and debt? I don’t think there’s any wide agreement about the term. So in that sense, when John McCain said the fundamentals of the economy were strong, he wasn’t really committing himself to any actual meaning that could be empirically checked. Maybe he did mean what Sarah Palin says he meant. Certainly, my interpretation of his meaning is going to be uncharitable. I don’t like the man.
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See, I think there’s a difference, and here’s what I think it is: If you accept Barack Obama’s explanation after the fact, it means something. It’s a policy you can agree with or disagree with, and it is connected with his other foreign policy positions. If you accept John McCain’s explanation (via his running mate) after the fact, it means nothing.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger compares two things that seem somewhat similar, and probably are somewhat similar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18527,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510\/revisions\/18527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}