CBS Defends Obama's 'You Didn't Build That' Remarks; Invokes 'It Takes A Village'

On Thursday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose and John Dickerson shamelessly defended the President Obama's "you didn't build that" comments on business. Rose asserted, "If you look at the full context of that He was talking about building roads to these businesses, and they didn't build the roads."

Dickerson invoked a liberal slogan from the 1990s: "What the President was saying, is it takes a village essentially, to use a cliche from a previous campaign; that no matter what you've done, you've been helped in your life, whether it's by teachers or roads or the policeman on the corner."

The CBS political director brought up Mitt Romney's attack on Obama's remarks as he pointed out the presidential campaigns' strategies to paint the opposing candidate as disconnected from ordinary Americans. Co-anchor Erica Hill followed up by asking Dickerson if the Republican candidate's attack on the President's remarks was "working as an attack line for them?"

The former Time correspondent acknowledged that "it certainly has got the President's campaign a little bit back on their heels. The President has put out an ad, saying that, of course, he supports small business. So, this is -- the Romney campaign is back on offense, after being on defense for a few weeks."

Rose then launched his "full context" defense of the President. Dickerson agreed with the anchor's liberal talking point, and cited the Clinton-era catchphrase:

ROSE: But the President was saying, if you look at the full context of that, he was talking about building roads to these businesses, and they didn't build the roads; where the Romney campaign seems to try to indicate that he was saying, they didn't build the businesses.

DICKERSON: Exactly, and what the President was saying, is it takes a village essentially, to use a cliche from a previous campaign; that no matter what you've done, you've been helped in your life, whether it's by teachers or roads or the policeman on the corner.

What the Romney campaign is saying, is that the President has a kind of -- if you look at the totality of his remarks, everything he said -- he sort of says that small business owners have, kind of, a kind of inflated sense of what got them there, and that's what the Romney campaign is playing on. This idea that the President is -- you know, the President is good at striking a cord a lot of times. Here, he's touched a nerve, saying to entrepreneurs, you know, you kind of think you've done too much. Well, other people helped you, too. That's the heart of this. 

— Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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