a tasty recipe for American business:
We intend to shape it. Just as soon as we get through shaping the future of Iraq, I guess.The President's domestic agenda was dominated by an "American Competitiveness Initiative" that's strongly supported by the vast majority of the business community, from large corporations to Main Street shops.
While only a few items on Bush's wish list were new to a State of the Union audience, it was significant that he focused on economic issues pushed hard by business, rather than on the social agenda of religious conservatives.
Facing tough economic competition from India and China, the President called for "a better path" on economic policy, "an agenda for a nation that competes with confidence.... Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it."
- Richard Dunham/Business Week 01.Feb.06
The language is important here. You need to see that he's saying "Americans" - that's us, you, me. And he's saying "we" - that's not us, not you, not me.
It is kind of, but it isn't really, not even in the context of the speech and its intentions.
In the real world the gulf of difference between what's meant by "Americans" when it's used by men like Bush - the people, the common people of the country - and what's really being carried in that third person plural "we" - the natural elect, the privileged by birthright - is wide enough it could be describing two separate species.
