JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 16, 2010
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Today David Brooks has written the platonic ideal of a David Brooks column. It is in some sense the template for nearly every David Brooks column, but it captured the major elements so perfectly that it almost feels as if every previous David Brooks column has been an homage to this one.
It begins with an interesting little sociological ditty:
Human beings, the philosophers tell us, are social animals. We emerge into the world ready to connect with mom and dad. We go through life jibbering and jabbering with each other, grouping and regrouping. When you get a crowd of people in a room, the problem is not getting them to talk to each other; the problem is getting them to shut up.
To help us in this social world, God, nature and culture have equipped us with a spirit of sympathy. We instinctively feel a tinge of pain when we observe another in pain (at least most of us do). We instinctively mimic, even to a small extent, the mood, manners, yawns and actions of the people around us.
When reading this, you were probably wondering to yourself, How is this going to lead to the reluctant conclusion the Democrats are wrong? Don't worry, Brooks has a bridge:
Political leaders have an incentive to get their followers to use the group mode of cognition, not the person-to-person. People who are thinking in the group mode are loyal, disciplined and vicious against foes. People in the person-to-person mode are soft, unpredictable and hard to organize.
See where this is headed? No? Here you go:
Reconciliation has been used with increasing frequency. That was bad enough. But at least for the Bush tax cuts or the prescription drug bill, there was significant bipartisan support. Now we have pure reconciliation mixed with pure partisanship.
Once partisan reconciliation is used for this bill, it will be used for everything, now and forever. The Senate will be the House. The remnants of person-to-person relationships, with their sympathy and sentiment, will be snuffed out. We will live amid the relationships of group versus group, party versus party, inhumanity versus inhumanity.
Oh, the humanity!
So using a majority vote procedure to pass legislation that the minority party has used strict partisan discipline into whipping its members into opposing is fundamentally about denying the humanity of the Other. It is a sad thing, and both parties sadly share some blame, but on the matter before us, the Republicans are in fact correct.
In reality, Brooks' conclusion is absurd. Does he really think that passing changes to the health care bill through reconciliation will materially effect how parties act in the future? He believes that the next Republican administration with more than 50 but fewer than 60 Senators would decline to pass a tax cut through reconciliation, but will now do so because the Democrats did it? I doubt even Karl Rove could say this with a straight face.
In any case, we don't have to guess about the future. We can look to precedent. Bill Clinton passed the signature domestic achievement of his presidency, the 1993 deficit reduction bill, through reconciliation with zero Republican votes. Sadly, Brooks was not there to explain how this denied the Republicans' humanity. In 2001, George W. Bush did get some Democrats to support his tax cut, most of them after it was a fait accompli. Why did he go through reconciliation, rather than regular order? It certainly had costs -- he had to sunset the whole thing after ten years. He did it because he didn't want to make the compromises he would have needed to get 60 votes. And if you think he would have given up the tax cut if a handful of Democrats hadn't jumped aboard, you're delusional.
So there you have it: a fun little sociological discussion followed by a reluctant, utterly incorrect defense of the current Republican position. If I ever get to glimpse Plato's world of ideal forms, this column will be there, preserved under glass.
6 comments
Brooks occupies two worlds. Simultaneously. And connecting the two sometimes requires tremendous dexterity. His world of social order is the world of the AEI, the annual convention of which was recently held at a five star resort in southeast Georgia (my home). On any given weekend, one can spot maybe ten private jets at the local, private airport (weekend residents and visitors at the resort). Not the AEI weekend. Must have been 60 of the things. And not the small Lear jet variety. It's the social order of the wealthy and their minions in politics, who travel in comfort and enjoy only the best (five star). Subsidized, of course, by the American taxpayer. And Brooks? A featured speaker at the event. But he arrived via the other world he occupies, by commercial flight, during which he learned from that social order that Americans are in a crappy mood "about how rotten Washington is", which he learned from a machinist sharing his flight to southeast Georgia (so he says in Sunday's dialogue with Dick Cavett). Two worlds - the machinist's and the guests' at the five star resort. With very little connection. But Brooks somehow makes it. With ample dexterity.
- raylward
March 16, 2010 at 10:37am
"We will live amid the relationships of group versus group, party versus party, inhumanity versus inhumanity." This is the stupidest line about parliamentary democracy, and partisan politics in action, I have read. Period. I can think of observations more disingenuous, more glib, more shallow, less informed - but none quite as daft as this one. This is written by someone who either has no conception of law making, who is wilfully blind to it, or who takes his readers as utter morons with less sense than a fourth-grade civics student. Anyone who writes a line like this in anything other than High Irony deserves no more respect as a thinker or writer or analyst than one gives a cockroach.
- icarusr
March 16, 2010 at 11:08am
Brooks is a toady to the wealthy and powerful, nothing more, nothing less. A court Jew, the designated exemplar of faux conservative diversity of opinion whose role in the service of his masters is alternately to offer "Jewish opinion" that advances their interests or "moderate-sounding opinion" that advances their interests. The purpose is always the same, hence the columns are always the same: The pretense that one can arrive through intellectual inquiry at the conclusion that the interests of the wealthy are those most deserving of our solicitude and protection, executed, however, by employing a comic book simulacrum of both intellect and inquiry that cannot withstand the slightest logical scrutiny. All of it is creepy and dishonest. Preserved under glass in the land of Platonic ideals? I doubt it. Not unless "ideal" is meant to include every perfect exemplar of odiousness and corruption.
- roidubouloi
March 16, 2010 at 11:10am
Brooks can be smart, and he can also be conservative. Unfortunately, he hasn't found a way to be both at the same time.
- Geoff G
March 16, 2010 at 11:19am
"Brooks can be smart, and he can also be conservative. Unfortunately, he hasn't found a way to be both at the same time." Don't blame Brooks: no one has yet found that particular formula. Non-ideological conservatism ("paleo-conservatism" to some) has played a valuable role in American history, but the simple fact is that conservatives have been wrong about every important political question in the history of the English settlement of America. To say that Brooks is a conservative, and that Brooks is wrong, is to repeat oneself.
- rhubarbs
March 16, 2010 at 11:34am
- brink·man·ship: the art or practice of pushing a dangerous situation or confrontation to the limit of safety especially to force a desired outcome. Yes, David, it is about the opposition choosing a tactic (the game of chicken?) which they believed to be their best option going into '09. The GOP had just been creamed in two cycles, the party was without a leader and Democrats were on the verge of total control. Republicans had to create the impression they would resort to the most extreme and irrational methods rather than concede. They even declared and defined that if they prevailed in their unity against Obama's agenda it would be seen as his defeat. Brooks doesn't admit Republicans did not negotiate, did not intend to cede any credit to Democrats and he ignores it is still up to his side to determine whether pure partisanship will continue. He refuses to explain how the GOP left Democrats few options but as the majority party they've chosen to govern, with the only procedures available. The balance may shift and Brooks will see that even with an advantage the right will probably chose not to govern. But it won't be for lack of cooperation, the right either lacks ideas or can only unfurl a list which is associated with a decade of failure. He can't accept his tribe is to blame for this mess and seems to be unaware that his team won't be able to carry the burden of governing when they have a chance.
- michael
March 16, 2010 at 12:55pm