The New Republic

Aside from his complete ignorance about economics and his main gig of ascribing everything that happens in the world to a self-satisfied conservative's view of culture, the most consistent thing about Brooks is his disinformation campaign directed at the left. If Brooks is suggesting that the left do or refrain from doing something, it is drop-dead certain that his real objective is for the left to destroy itself. And he is forever helpfully suggesting new ways for it to do so. Indeed, he is a reliable guide both as to what not to do and for any successful tactic that he fears may succeed. Brooks is a disgusting toady for conservative power, its court Jew.

- roidubouloi

October 28, 2011 at 12:17am

Simply put, Brooks has it wrong; Mann and Ornstein have it right.

- Bigarn

October 28, 2011 at 2:33am

Brooks is afraid of left populism. I can't wait to see his dastardly butt marginalized. He is, as roid says, the court Jew. That said, if the Overton Window opens up a left flank, it will be hilarious to see Brooks and Friedman suddenly start to sing the praises of "Grand Bargains" that are closer to the Democrat pole. Triangulating idiots, they.

- chaitless

October 28, 2011 at 5:53am

From the very beginning it's been clear that the Republican definition of bi-partisanship is for a liberal Democratic president to govern as a right wing Republican or not at all. And the beltway media and establishment has gone along with this farce by insisting that a measure cannot be defined as bi-partisan unless it gets votes from both parties -- no matter the reason Republicans are voting against it and even if they are voting against their own past positions, as they did on health care. Why Brooks would suggest that Obama play nice with a Republican Party he already defined as "not normal" last July is anyone's guess. But in measuring it's wisdom consider what George F. Will said about the Republican presidential field -- the one that it is "cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons." This is the right wing our Beltway Establishment factor into its equation for locating that all important "Sensible Middle" toward which all responsible politicians are advised to migrate like moths to a flame. Those who say America's political and media elites have a liberal bias are making an elemental mistake. America's Beltway Establishment is conservative in the same way that all establishments are conservative -- defending a status quo that's worked out pretty well for them, whatever that status quo happens to be. These are people who have risen to the top of their professions mastering a two-party political system in which functioning Democratic and Republican parties are the "given" that explains all the other predictable routines of politics our elites think they know so well. There is therefore a powerful inertia driving this political class to protect those "givens" from outside scrutiny or criticism no matter how demented and dysfunctional they may have become. But what happens to our establishment and its mastery of America's political system if one of those two major parties suddenly goes off the rails? Well, as anyone who's ever had experience with an alcoholic family knows too well, the family tries to cope by rearranging itself to accommodate its own sickness so as to establish a "New Normal" that prevails until the family finally quits its denial, meets its problem head on and gets help. That's what I think is driving all of these demands for President Obama and the Democratic Party to move to some poorly-defined "Center" even as one of America's leading conservatives like George Will concede that his own party's leaders are "careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons." What better proof do we need that "The Center" is less a place of political moderation than a shorthand for the emotional blackmail a family or a political community is willing to pay to its most hysterical members in order to appease them or get them to just shut up. Brooks' advice against exploiting divisions between the parties and exposing the dangerous radicalism and dysfunction of the GOP is a trap because it's not meant to benefit President Obama but David Brooks by protecting the stable two-party status quo upon which Brooks' own rank and privilege depend.

- TedFrier

October 28, 2011 at 6:15am

Of course, Obama's biggest political mistake is that he didn't keep fresh in the public's mind who got us into this mess. Now Brooks wants to make sure Obama continues that same mistake just in case those low information voters have enough mental acuity actually to be reminded. Obama's mistake is most likely beyond correcting - after all, those are the same voters who now give credit to Republicans for avoiding a terrorist attack on the US while a Republican was president - but give credit to Brooks for trying to add a little insurance. I don't object to Brooks or his point of view, but it's beyond irritating for him to pretend that he only wants to help Obama with advice that everybody (even Obama) knows is intended to do the opposite. At least McConnell is honest about his intentions.

- rayward

October 28, 2011 at 7:27am

Rayward, I do object to Brooks' point of view. It is incoherent, which is terrible because he has a large megaphone and millions of readers and tries to pass as an educated intellectual. We don't know the principles upon which his so-called Burkean conservatism can't accept Obama into the fold but somehow reserves space for the Palinite wing of a party that has lost all decency. All we know is that, by the very end of every column (with the exception in July noted by TedFrier), the Democrats and Republicans have battled to a draw, with the Republicans prevailing on technical grounds. (It's a centre-right nation!) That's not intellectual. It is sophistry and political hackery and I calls it as I sees it. Read David Frum to see conservatism grope for coherence. Discard David Brooks.

- chaitless

October 28, 2011 at 8:38am

Brilliant. So brilliant and complete I have nothing to add. Bravo. From your words to Obama's ears. And yes, it's Republican intransigence that's got us where we are now, Republican resistance to Keynesial policies that have crippled and reversed the recovery, it's even Republican policies we are living under now -- No New Taxes during a recession with historically high deficits and historically low taxes. And it's been Obama's tendency to "blur" the responsibility to "Congress", instead of "Congressional Republicans", that has enabled and rewarded this Republican behavior. Instead of Brook's strategy, he MUST adopt yours. Excellent.

- AllanL5

October 28, 2011 at 9:06am

Chaitless, whose fault is it that Brooks is given such a large platform to peddle a political philosophy - that a draw between the two major political parties produces the best result - that can only benefit the party whose aim is, at best, to maintain the status quo. Whose fault is it that McArdle is given such a large platform to peddle the nonsense that she thinks is sound economics - that she learned by reading Ayn Rand and taking a couple of MBA-type economics courses. This is the third time I have alluded to it, but I recommend Alan Wolfe's review of Corey Robbin's new book about conservatism and its appeal to ordinary people, middle class people. Brooks offers hope that we can "return to an ideal world", one that exists only in the imagination. Cheney, Nino, Brooks, and the rest, they are stuck in the 1960s, or, more accurately, a vision of America before the 1960s, that never existed. I recently read Chernow's personal biography of George Washington, and I was struck by how his Excellency, at the successful conclusion of a long war for freedom (it was nine years for him though we tend to forget), could separate the freedom gained for white Americans from the freedom not gained for African Americans (he captured and returned to slavery many of his slaves that had been freed by the British during the war), his mental gymnastics to do so, even to the point of referring to himself and his slave dependent plantation in the third person as if he were a mere observer. The history of conservatism is a history of maintaining the status quo, of the "second-class status" of those who "insist on their full rights as human beings". Brooks's aim is to maintain the status quo, and what better way to achieve that aim than for those who "insist on their full rights as human beings" to accept a draw instead.

- rayward

October 28, 2011 at 9:59am

Second, true Independents and swing voters aren’t best captured through clever centrist political positioning. They have almost no ideological frameworks with which to judge the candidates and parties; they are quintessentially referendum voters, with low levels of information and focusing almost exclusively on performance. While I have no arguments with the general advice in the article, this part pisses me off. I am pretty damn close to the definition of a swing voter and damn right I have an ideological framework with which to judge people, and I sure as hell have high levels of information (I am here, aren't I). I get so tired of people labeling moderates or centrists as being weak kneed, easily swayed individuals that allows the fringes of both parties to pull them from one side to another. I use reason and facts to inform my decision and then when I make my decision I support it completely. For example I was a very strong supporter of the US involvement in Libya, I believed via a cost benefit analysis that the likelihood of success was high, but I never supported boots on the ground or the US going it alone and I think Obama handled the situation there about perfectly. McCain, otoh, would have gone it alone and maybe would have invaded, which would have been a disaster. A leftist would have allowed the slaughter of Benghazi and a Gadhafi triumphant. The Libyan war was a textbook case of centrist political positioning.

- blackton

October 28, 2011 at 10:02am

Roid, I think your comment is unfair to court Jews -- after all, their toadying to absolutist power generally succeeding in preventing pogroms of their co-religionists, which was usually their second objective after general self-aggrandizement. I don't see much evidence that Brooks's commentary succeeds in moderating the outrages of modern conservatism.

- wildboy

October 28, 2011 at 11:07am

TNR had an interesting review of a new book on conservatism "The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin" by Corey Robin Too bad it wasn't posted on this site instead of the book site where open discussion online is not available.

- arnon

October 28, 2011 at 11:37am

TedFrier - very well written post, my friend. I don't think I've read a post of yours before; if you're new here and that's the quality of what we'll be seeing, you are indeed welcome.

- Tristan

October 28, 2011 at 11:38am

Props to Ted for accurately describing the "two-party" system. Obviously, we have a thinly-disguised single-party state in which the Incumbents Party stages regular rituals ruthlessly hyped by the Political Class in government and media as establishing stark differences between Republicans and Democrats. In my view this began to go off the rails under Dubyah, who proved to be the most left-wing Big Government president since LBJ, and arguably FDR. This created the Tea Party, which has now been joined by OWS in acting on what is for many a new awareness. I like Brooks, who brings a serious grasp of sociology and a better gut instinct for voters real sentiments than most pundits. And if anyone ever questioned George Will's intellectual honesty, the above-noted column should put that one to bed. These guys deserve a little respect. I have to say that while I completely agree with Mann and Ornstein here, I don't think Brooks was advocating making nice with Republicans. What he was talking about was the "class struggle" trap that awaits O if he allows himself to be manipulated into advocating for Big Government as Republicans have been quite effective in spinning him. He shouldn't help them. But that doesn't in any way prevent him from going on the offensive in running against Congressional Republicans' hypocrisy, dishonesty, and damaging obstructionism. They are currently what's most wrong with Big Government, and voters right across the spectrum know it.

- Robert Powell

October 28, 2011 at 1:12pm

I agree with your post RP. But you're assuming good faith on the part of Republicans that I've seen no evidence exists. Even if Obama he stood up at a lecturn and announced his new program to end of all federal taxation, install Jesus Christ as his VP and padlocked every building in DC - he'd still be painted as a proponent of Big Government. It simply does not matter what Obama says or does. All the matters is that he's not a Republican and they want him out, period. Any public policy at all is irrelevant. Obama is as dillusioned as Brooks if he doesn't absorb this fact and act accordingly. He needs to take his own sensible instincts and successfu record on many things (very easily identified), not to mention his suburb record as CIC, straight to the American people. The only real class struggle happening in this country is from the top down and that's pretty clear to most Americans. The only question is how to responsibily deal with it.

- WandreyCer

October 28, 2011 at 1:39pm

A fair point, wildboy. And kudos indeed to Ted Frier.

- roidubouloi

October 28, 2011 at 2:00pm

David Brooks is so full of it that it's coming out of his eyes instead of his ears. Obama tried that center-Right crap and got kicked in the groin for it. Now he has to go center-Left. Polls show that the public is center-Left now, which is logical, considering the cowardice of our "job creators," who are sitting on over $2 trillion of loose change. Jobs, jobs, jobs is what the American people want now, and they will swing even further Left as our "job killers" continue to fire and lay off Americans in order to fatten their bank accounts even more. It's a law of nature. And all that dumping more and more job-holders by cutting the deficit will accomplish is to move America further Left. The deficit is an important issue (except when a Republican is president, of course), but it is dwarfed by the job issue right now. America is moving Left. And if conservatives don't like it, maybe they can talk their corporate buds into hiring millions of Americans before the 2012 election. Fat chance.

- magboy47.

October 28, 2011 at 2:11pm

Wandrey, I am NOT assuming good faith on the part of Republicans. It's their very lack of good faith that O needs to focus on, and that can provide advantage. I'm just saying that he can do that without playing into their attempts to brand him as an advocate of Big Government. THEY are the government too, and currently it's not hard to i.d. them as the part of it that's doing the most damage. Brooks is dead right that with a vast majority of Americans government is guilty until proven innocent. O needs to use that Repub weapon against them. The whole point of going on the offensive is that you dictate the narrative.

- Robert Powell

October 28, 2011 at 2:52pm

Brooks is my un-favorite of columnists, a mealy-mouthed hack dressing up the agenda of the 1% in the fancy attire of reasonableness. His advice to Obama is transparently lethal and therefore laughable. There was once another right wing columnist who used to write for TNR as the house conservative --I can't think of his name. Brooks never wrote for TNR, but he is this man's sorry-assed successor nonetheless.

- JackR

October 28, 2011 at 4:29pm

"It simply does not matter what Obama says or does. All the matters is that he's not a Republican..." You got it right, Wandrey. During Reagan's second term, Republicans got this religious-type conviction that His Holiness had established the White House as the permanent residence of Republicans. They were apoplectic with fury when Clinton took it away from Bush the Elder, and for two terms. That's the main reason they impeached Bubba. When it comes to occupancy of the Oval Office, Republicans want America to be a one-party state. And slimeoid operatives like Karl Rove have taken that sense of entitlement right down to the offices of federal judges. I remember an interview during the 2008 presidential campaign with another slimeoid, Dick Cheney. He was asked what he had against Hillary Clinton. "She's a Democrat," he said. Republicans feel they have a right to rule America from the throne room on down. And anyone who challenges them is at least an enemy, if not the Devil. That's why they were so enraged when Obama took the throne away from them. They want a one-party state, so that the plutocrats can rule without obstruction.

- magboy47.

October 28, 2011 at 6:30pm

Obama entered the White House fresh from reading "Team of Rivals" and intending to govern by bringing together both parties to work for the public good. This is in line with his natural inclinations and his desire imitate Lincoln's success in bringing together conservative Democrats and radical Republicans to work for a common goal. However, Lincoln had the great advantage that the most conservative of the Democrats were in Richmond, not Washington. And the conservatives in Washington did share the common goal of saving the Union with Lincoln. But Obama can not send the Tea Party to Richmond, and the chief goal of the Republicans is to defeat Obama, not work with him to improve the economy or anything else. There are simply no grounds for compromise. Lincoln could not have done much better. In retrospect, it seems clear that the big mistake Jeff Davis et al. made was to resign their seats in the Senate and House. They should have stayed in Washington and blocked Lincoln at every turn while others led the states out of the union.

- Vekert

October 28, 2011 at 6:31pm

Nice post, Vekert

- Tristan

October 28, 2011 at 7:57pm

On re-reading Brooks' original column it occurs to me that much of the hostility directed at him here might just be a function of ignorance--everyone is jumping on him for things he neither wrote nor implied. If you want to criticize the guy, fine. But you should do so on the basis of what he actually wrote, not just reflexive regurgitation of leftist talking points. Brooks quite correctly points out that roughly 85% of the public doen't trust government to "do the right thing most of the time", a record low. His advice, which is solid, is for O to campaign on the sort of things most Americans want, like a fair and reformed tax code, reasonable fiscal responsibility in terms of entitlements and defense, and sufficient regulation to prevent another runaway bubble-and-crash cycle, but to do so without coming across as a champion of Big Government. This is eminently do-able by saving the "fight" for Republican obstructionism in Congress. As I read the history, "court Jews" not only looked out for #1 and moderated pogroms (which are nowhere in evidence as Republican policy), they introduced some rationality into the process as well...

- Robert Powell

October 29, 2011 at 5:14am

At your invitation, Robert, I just re-read Brooks. Brooks advocates the exact opposite of "saving the 'fight" for Republican obstructionism in Congress." He advocates that Obama continue to present himself as a conciliator and continue to promote a Grand Bargain that in fact only a few pundits and wonks want. Brooks insists that being a partisan Democrat would be disastrous for Obama. In other words, Brooks advocates that Obama continue to fail in exactly the manner he has been failing, the very failure that has allowed Republicans to move the political temperature so far to the right. Wildboy was right. I was insulting court Jews by comparing them to Brooks. Brooks is something much worse for which I cannot even think up a name.

- roidubouloi

October 29, 2011 at 8:04am

@Tristan Thanks for the shout-out. I was a "Talk Backer" on this site a few years ago before they instituted a time delay on comments that made interaction impossible and, as I remember, required paid subscription. So, after paying my dues, I came back.

- TedFrier

October 29, 2011 at 12:49pm

roi- with all due respect, I don't see any contradiction between O presenting himself as a conciliator promoting a Grand Bargain (which all the polls show a big majority of voters in BOTH parties want), and fighting Republican obstructionism. If he gets a deal that reflects what every poll on the issues shows most voters want (a combination of cuts and tax increases), he wins. If he can't get a deal because Repubs are simply blocking all initiatives and he makes that clear, he wins. How is this not the optimal strategy? Simply railing against the Ruling Class and etc is a proven loser.

- Robert Powell

October 29, 2011 at 12:59pm

It is not optimal because it has already been a huge failure. Brooks advises Obama to keep on doing exactly what has been sinking him.

- roidubouloi

October 29, 2011 at 6:26pm

The "center" of our mass politics is people who acquire their political information in micro-snippets as they maneuver the TV remote between the Kardashian sisters and Turner Classic Movies. The "center" of our elite politics is Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe. Enough said.

- cforeman

October 29, 2011 at 10:08pm

I don't think so roi. I think he's advising him to advocate for what the majority wants and tag Republicans with denying it. That's not quite the same as waltzing with Boehner and McConnell as before. It's more like holding them accountable. As a "little d" democrat, I have to disagree with cforeman. It's easy to poke fun at mass culture, but over the decades the average American voter has been the greatest single force for good on the face of the earth. Running around with one's hair on fire denouncing capitalism probably won't fly with such folks, but then it probably shouldn't fly at all.

- Robert Powell

October 30, 2011 at 10:58am

Okay, average voters can be jerks, too. Let's just say that in past incarnations of The Democrats, the element of the party that considered average voters to be mostly Archie Bunker dolts communicated their disdain sufficiently clearly to make their candidates virtually unelectable. So, roi, what's the alternative? I agree that O shouldn't be getting into negotiations that just emphasize his weakness, but his weakness is genuine. There is very little he can do between now and the election on his own to turn the economy around--some of the kind of small-bore executive order kind of stuff that doesn't really address the problem and makes him look not only ineffective but dishonest. I think it's best to play the Harry Truman card and run against the Do Nothing Congress, and to use the time left to underline what he's for and what they're doing to hamstring the country. If Big Government is now slightly less popular than the ebola virus, I think it behooves O to point out that they represent Big Government at its worst.

- Robert Powell

October 30, 2011 at 1:01pm

The American mass public is inattentive to politics and generally ignorant of policy details yet exhibits a fundamental decency over the long run. But its attention must be prompted, with issues well framed and good alternatives presented. Leadership and advocacy often fail on these fronts. Obama may lose next year (if so, an honorable loss) and he has certainly made mistakes but his task now is to frame the choices effectively and communicate that he stands with the mass of ordinary hardworking people -- not in an untenable "center" and not with the likes of David Koch.

- cforeman

October 30, 2011 at 5:50pm

The Grand Bargain is only "popular" as an abstraction. The elements of it are all politically unpopular. It is also terrible policy. Medicare is not killing us, medical costs are killing us. If private medical costs had been growing only at the rate of public these last few decades, we would be a couple of trillion ahead. Similarly, social security is not an unsupportable burden. It is unsupportable that the burden falls entirely on workers when the contribution of labor to capital is likewise huge. If all income were taxed to support social security, we would have no problem. We are not too poor to have enough output to sustain seniors, and if we were it would not matter whether the financing were public or private. Extending working life by deferring retirement income while we are suffering from high structural unemployment is moronic. If and when we find ourselves with a labor shortage because technology is unable to keep up with the changing balance between working mouths and non-working mouths THEN we can look to boost the labor supply by deferring retirement. So much for the Grand Bargain. Brooks likes it because he is a toady to capital and favors anything that pumps money out of the pockets of working people and into the pockets of the wealthy whose mouthpiece he is. i I agree that Obama is powerless to do anything about the economy (although that might not be the case had he comported himself differently). His best play is what he is starting to do now: lay out what should be done, get the Democrats to support him, and excoriate the Republicans for blocking all progress, thereby hanging millions of Americans out to dry. That is not at all what Brooks advocates. Brooks urges Obama to continue to pursue a so-called bargain that has little if anything to do with our current problems and is, in its elements, hugely unpopular just so that Obama can continue to appear the conciliator to the Republicans intransigence. That tactic has already failed miserably, and Brooks wants nothing so much as for Obama to continue to fail. Obama's failure to confront the Republicans has not made him popular, it has made him appear weak and there is nothing Americans hate and fear more than a weak president.

- roidubouloi

October 30, 2011 at 8:32pm

As I said above: "he has certainly made mistakes." Mistake number one was failing to pivot fast enough from post-partisan campaigner to realizing he was in a partisan knife fight. I wouldn't say that all politicians lie but I would say that MOST presidents do. (Maybe Carter didn't.) Frankly I was hoping in 2008 that he WAS lying about trying to be post-partisan, knowing, as we ALL knew, that Mitch McConnell was waiting to fillet him. When it became clear in a face-to-face that Chuck Grassley wasn't going to support health care reform no matter what Obama put in or took out -- by then, surely, the real deal should have been clear.

- cforeman

October 30, 2011 at 10:49pm

Precisely, cforeman. Turn the other cheek has no place in a political knife fight.

- roidubouloi

October 30, 2011 at 11:22pm

Roi, are you such a loser that you hate anybody in this country who works hard and is successful? I suspect you are. I'm roi, I'm a sensitive soul, the government owes me a living. Get a life.

- bulbman1066

October 31, 2011 at 12:09am

I agree in terms of the tactics advocated by roi and cforeman. But I also think it makes sense to pay at least some heed to the general sense that government spends too much and gets too little for its (our) money. It would be a great relief to the markets and the long-term stability of the dollar if we took reasonable and fair measures like means-testing entitlements and using the government's leverage to bend the curve on healthcare costs. And can we please admit that ending our moronic, self-destructive War on Drugs, confronting the appalling corruption and waste in Medicare/Medicaid, and ending distortionary, unnecessary subsidies would save money without "slashing the safety net"?

- Robert Powell

October 31, 2011 at 3:15am

Amen to that, Robert. __________________________ Bulb, I have already made more money than you could see in ten lifetimes. We're talking tens of millions here. The government doesn't owe me anything, but I do object to shipping my money to red states to subsidize morons like you who like to imagine that they are productive human beings. Get your bulbous head out of your ass and take a look at the world we actually live in rather than the Randian fantasy world that is all you can observe in the impenetrable darkness of your own rear-end.

- roidubouloi

October 31, 2011 at 1:05pm

Brooks is offering Obama good advice. Hopefully, he won't take it. We need to limit Obama to one term.

- Spengler47

January 25, 2012 at 11:39am