David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Have you ever asked yourself, “What would it take to get David Brooks to admit that Barack Obama took him to the cleaners? What would it take to get him to acknowledge that he has been had? What would it take to cause him to turn on The One?”
Well, now we know. The campaign against “millionaires and billionaires” is too much for The New York Times’ self-styled moderate. In a column entitled Obama Against Obamaism, he writes, “I am a sap, a specific kind of sap. I am an Obama Sap.”
When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.
I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.
It recycles ideas that couldn’t get passed even when Democrats controlled Congress. In his remarks Monday the president didn’t try to win Republicans to even some parts of his measures. He repeated the populist cries that fire up liberals but are designed to enrage moderates and conservatives.
He claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)
This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible.
In the end, Brooks concludes, “The White House gives moderates little morsels of hope, and then rips them from our mouths. To be an Obama admirer is to toggle from being uplifted to feeling used.” It has taken Brooks a very long time to recognize what was evident to nearly every member of Ricochet from the start -- to wit, that the moderate demeanor of Barack Obama was a mask, and that behind it was a man intent on overthrowing the old America and replacing it with what he tellingly called The New Foundation.
The real question now is whether this recognition will have consequences for Brooks. He has a bully pulpit, and a decision on his part to systematically dispel the illusion of Barack Obama's moderation could have a real impact on American life.
I can easily imagine Brooks following through on the logic of his discovery and figuring out that there never was a moment in the entire disgraceful and demeaning process in which he was not being used. I can imagine him, then, reassessing the longing for what he calls "moderation" that made him so easy a mark.
Alternatively, I can imagine the President inviting David Brooks to lunch, flashing a smile, telling him of all the nasty things that he has suffered at the hands of the Republicans, and leading the disappointed columnist gently down the primrose path once more. I have known the like to happen.
Missing from the sort of moderation that Brooks espouses is any recognition that principles have consequences, that compromise is not always possible and desirable, and that conflict and contest are sometimes necessary. Those who turned decisively against Barack Obama in the early months of 2009 examined the so-called "stimulus" bill and knew immediately what they were up against. Brooks might want to ask himself why it took him so long to see the handwriting on the wall.
In North America, in the 1770s, men of David Brooks' temper nearly always ended up as half-hearted Tories, wringing their hands. Any bets on where this self-confessed Obama Sap ends up in 2012? Once a sap, always a sap? Or is redemption a possibility?
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Comments:
Oct '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
I wonder if he thinks that he was justified in not dismissing Obama as soon as the rest of us and what he's discovered now that we didn't know three years ago.
I was struck when I remembered that Obama never really won, outright, his party's nomination. He couldn't even convince his own party to nominate him. I'd like to think that because of that there's hope he'll lose in 2012.
May '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Dave will be back to his old self by Friday, when he and EJ Dionne lean languidly over their NPR microphones and shake their heads in sad exasperation at those crazy Republicans.
May '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Well, this is just extremely embarrassing.
Oct '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Paul A. Rahe
Once a sap, always a sap?
Yes. There is no hope for redemption for Brooks or any of the other so-called "conservatives" who drank the Obama Kool-Aid three years ago. The likes of Brooks, Heather Mac Donald, Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, and Christopher Buckley aren't worth one minute of my time. That they couldn't instantly see Obama for the fraud that he is speaks volumes of their lack of judgment.
Apr '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
The rube. The rube. The rube is in dire .... um, straits. Apologies to Glenn Reynolds and everyone. Next book -- BoBodise Lost?
Jul '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
It's hard for me to dislike Brooks, for some reason, because it's taken him 3 years to see what everyone else knew from the start, and had it re-affirmed with every political step Barry has taken. David is a knowing cuckold, in that the love of his life has been cheating on him, for years, but he's only now acknowledging it publicly. We'll see if he actually files for divorce, or just goes quietly into another room to type (again, quietly) a routine screed on the awesomeness of his life's love, the wind in his sails, the breath in his coffee, the cheese on his taco - Big Barry O.
It could just be that hanging around with the economic dolts at NPR dulls the senses.
Jul '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
If Obama has lost Brooks, he's lost all the RINOS. You better throw in the razor-sharp trouser crease fans as well.
Aug '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
I think that Brooks clung too long to Louis Hartz' thesis that America is a liberal country (in the classical sense) and thus isn't prone to those socialist tendencies of our European allies. He forgot that a nation having a liberal tradition doesn't preclude it having politicians who differ from the American tradition and trend toward the European. He believed Obama when he used liberal rhetoric and discounted it when he used socialist rhetoric, believing the one would outweigh the other. He can be forgiven.
I have disagreed with Brooks about Obama from the beginning, but I saw the same gullibility among many young voters as well as among certain older moderates like Brooks.
I would hold that Brooks is like those of the Founding generation who believed that peace could be attained without Revolution, but who eventually took up the cause of liberty. He's more John Dickinson than John Adams.
Jun '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
David Brooks is a joke. He writes whats needed to keep his job. He is slightly complaining about President Obama to save any semblance of his competency.
Who else becomes smitten with (supposedly) the other party's presidential candidate because of the crease in his pants?
Jun '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
David, redemption is always possible... if you repent and renounce your Obamaist ways,
Aug '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
His admission that he's a sap means that he will eat it up again. Obama's sweet nothings appeal to him. If he didn't want to hear "free market capitalism" the first go round, he won't be listening for it now. Brooks probably doesn't even trust free market capitalism nor federalism. How else could he have fallen for the Neibuhr, creased pants leg, Greek columns and meaningless slogans? Bill Ayers, Rezko and Rev Wright's "God d___ America" did not bother him. He made a pathetic joke of himself. His admission is too late. He might as well call himself a moderate Democrat.
Aug '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Having chatted with Brooks -- briefly as part of a class at Claremont Graduate University after he spoke at CMC -- I don't share the hostility to him that many Ricochoise seem to hold. Brooks is an optimistic conservative, he believes in the American tradition and when someone mouths the words of that tradition he believes them.
He is, as he wrote, a sap.
When someone talks of higher principles, like deliberation and moderation, Brooks responds. The fact that he didn't get concerned by the Rev Wright story demonstrates the universal power of confirmation bias, and not any particular weakness on Brooks' part.
How many here hold dearly to their own believes, even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary?
I know I do from time to time.
But then...I'm just a RINO squish.
Dec '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
More Benedict Arnold than Patrick Henry. Leaning forward towards Groucho Marx after falling for Karl. Voted for the winner, now stuck with the loser. He’s not going anywhere and will not change. New York is where he’d rather stay—he gets allergic smelling hay.
Dec '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Jump ship? When someone jumps ship, they are too busy swimming to safety to repeat idiocies like this one: "Being a sap, I still believe that the president’s soul would like to do something about the country’s structural problems."
You see, one jumps ship because one knows that one of two things is about to happen: the ship is about to sink, or the Captain is about to make one effectively a slave. Knowing that the Captain is either a useless dolt or a ruthless dictator - or both - one does not waste breath on making wistful conjectures about the Captain's "soul."
Brooks can call himself a "sap" because that's just a word for a starry-eyed idealist. Let me know when he starts calling himself a gullible fool: then I might believe he's ready to admit the truth to himself about himself.
Jan '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
To answer your question, Dr. Rahe, Brooks will stick with Obama if Perry gets the nomination, but he'll sidle up to Mitt if that "pragmatic" candidate prevails.
You see, all the talk above about ideas misses the point. It's sensibility, not sense, that rules in the chattering class.
Like all so-called progressives, Brooks doesn't really believe in anything. Ideas don't matter; they're just totems of academic achievement and status. Style and appearance are what really count.
Here's an excellent illustration.
Peggy Noonan was interviewed on WSJ’s video podcast “Opinion Journal” and offered the following approving description of Jon Huntsman:
“A moderate fellow who’s sophisticated.”
Jul '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Prof. Rahe: “Alternatively, I can imagine the President inviting David Brooks to lunch, flashing a smile, telling him of all the nasty things that he has suffered at the hands of the Republicans, and leading the disappointed columnist gently down the primrose path once more. I have known the like to happen.”
If Mr. Brooks could fall for that given his reflection on the reality of the situation, imagine what The One could accomplish with his dewy-eyed followers. The question is, are there enough of them? And if there are, we's doomed.
May '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Nov '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
In Game Change, authors John Heileman and Mark Halperin make note of the many powerful Democrats (specifically Harry Reid, Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy) who orchestrated the presidential run of BHO. The Clintons have many enemies.
It never ceases to amaze me that such people manage to earn a living in a highly competitive field!
Mar '11
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
Mr Brooks will remain a sap - it's the only way he can stay employed at the NY Times and PBS - the house "conservative" to create the illusion of balance.
Oct '10
Re: David Brooks Jumps Ship?
I think you’ve nailed it, perhaps inadvertently. Gullibility should be forgiven the young, not someone of Brooks’ age, experience, prominence.
In decamping from the Obama Fantasy Theme Park, Brooks reinforces the intellectual as well as psychological immaturity of those holding what elite Leftists consider ‘acceptable’ opinion. He will not wiggle out of the straitjacket with which NPR devotees constrain his ideological movement. He doesn’t want to lose his livelihood or his platform. David Brooks saw what NPR did to Juan Williams and correctly assesses Fox News won’t bail him out. Let’s remember: Maureen Dowd turned on Obama before David Brooks, making it acceptable for the latter to join in. Even if Brooks’ turning is for somewhat different reasons, it’s undergirded by the same sense of—now acceptable—disappointment. Brooks is Dowd plus thirty days or so, draped in differently patterned cloth.