Second look at "you didn't build that"?

That statement was then used to further a fictitious narrative of the president as a socialist, assaulting entrepreneurship. American Crossroads, a political organization connected to Karl Rove, quickly produced a commercial purporting to show small-business owners reacting to that one line on an iPad and noting their responses: “Unbelievable”; “What an insult”; “I am outraged”; “I can’t believe he just said that”; “We risk everything every day”; “It came from my personal savings.”

But the context of Obama’s two sentences was a far cry from an assault on American entrepreneurship. He was arguing that, while he was willing to cut government waste, he would not gut investments that grow the economy or give tax breaks to the likes of himself or Romney…

The trouble with the president’s remarks? They extended beyond the 20-second attention span of this campaign. And when the edited version made the rounds, a legitimate, substantive conversation about social contracts was instead reduced to silly charges of socialism.