There are certain Americans who will castigate Obama no matter what he does. The vast majority of these Obama-pummelers are middle-aged white men who cannot accept that Barack Obama is smarter than they are, has a better-looking wife (to say nothing of smarter) than they do, and has had more success than they’ve had. The final insult to these “real” Americans is—Obama is black. (He’s actually half white, but that fact seems to elude them.) Most of those who don’t like Obama are, of course, Republicans.

This dislike of Obama verges on a visceral hatred, inexplicable when the President’s personality is taken into consideration—by all accounts, the Pres is a nice guy. Now that the pre-election furor is in full gear, I fully expect the Obama-bashing to ramp up.

One of the ideas the GOP constantly tries to perpetuate is that Obama wants to redistribute income. The basis for this myth is that Obama is against the rich, maybe because he wants the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times column “The GOP’s Uneven Playing Field” mentioned how Obama “invoked the spirit” of Teddy Roosevelt, something sure to piss the R’s off.

Well, it did, and I quote:

Mitt Romney, in particular, insisted that where Roosevelt believed that “government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities,” Obama believes that “government should create equal outcomes,” and that we should have a society where “everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk.”

Unfortunately, Krugman’s sentence structure, while absolutely correct, is too complicated for most American adults.* Many will overlook the word “where,” and come away with the idea that Obama actually believes everyone should receive the same reward., instead of understanding that this is just Romney’s interpretation of what Obama believes. The concept of “same rewards etc.” is something that Romney (by all accounts, also a nice guy) and the GOP want you to believe.

In point of fact, Obama does not believe that everyone should receive the same reward regardless of their effort, and has never advanced this idea. But if people are richly rewarded for their effort, Obama wants them to pay taxes. Corporations, too, since we now know that corporations are people.

To return to the metaphor of “level playing field”: according to several sources, the expression came into vogue in the 70’s, probably from football/rugby/soccer. Even if you’ve never played football, it should be incandescently obvious that it’s easier to attack going downhill and harder to defend going uphill.  “Level playing field” simply means that the field (i.e. the set of rules) is the same for both sides. There is no intrinsic advantage to either team on a level playing field. Success is attained through a team’s effort, not an accident of topography.

Obama is not anti-business. However, he is for a level playing field, which means that everyone should have the same opportunity to make money, not that everyone should make the same money, as Republicans would have us believe. By extension, it means that the tax code should be just as fair to small business as it is to the big business; that if Joe Six-pack pays taxes, so should GE; that if Grandma has to pay a town water bill, the Mega-Meat Corporation should not be getting free water from the gummint to graze their stock or grow crops. On a level playing field, both Mega-Meat and Grandma would have to pay for their water, which is how it should be.

Equal opportunity never meant equal results. It means the chance to get equal results. It’s a simple concept. It takes ideological intent to misunderstand it.

* Footnote: Several years ago a businessman I know was in the delicate position of having to write/rewrite correspondence for a colleague because the (American born) man’s English was so poor despite being in a managerial position for a medium-sized company. I was horrified.