Lasers Are Not Focused

Let’s never say this again.

Tommology, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In November of 1992, President Clinton gave a speech in which he said, “I am going to focus like a laser beam on the economy.” That phrase has been repeated (as simply “focus like a laser”) by all sorts of people when they needed to emphasize that they were definitely going to do something.

The problem with this phrase is simply that lasers are not focused. There may be rare experiments wherein a laser beam is concentrated using a lens or mirror but that isn’t really focusing since it plays no role in clarifying an image (definition #2 for “focus” in the OED). No matter how we consider it, there are no cases where a laser gets “focused.” What Clinton seems to have actually meant was “I will take aim at the economy as if I were using laser targeting.” Unfortunately, that is not very memorable or quotable.

We have a similar problem with George H. W. Bush, who intoned that he would “draw a line in the sand”, implying that he was daring Saddam Hussein to cross it. He said this despite the fact that almost all historical cases of leaders drawing (with the toe of a boot or a sword) a line in the sand resulted in failure. The only case I find of it succeeding was in 168 BCE. Roman Consul, Gaius Popillius Laenas, was standing alone with sword drawn on the Egyptian border as Seleucid King Antiochus IV and his invading army approached…