David Brooks and Obama: Will the President Listen to the Columnist?
Brooks has no sympathy for those liberals who lash out at Obama “because the entire country doesn’t agree with the Huffington Post.” Certainly, Obama would be foolish were he to take the advice of the radical writers Peter Dreier and Marshall Ganz, who argue in The Washington Post that Obama must show real “audacity” and fight the “entrenched interests” from the Left and stand with the “progressive” movement. If Obama ditches the public option and assuages the insurance industry, they argue, he will end up “angering many of his progressive supporters.” Instead of bi-partisan compromise, they favor “movement building” which they claim is responsible for Obama’s becoming president. While criticizing citizen activists who come to town-hall meetings to express their opposition, they call for “ ‘movement’ tactics” including leaflets, vigils and civil disobedience to get the administration to act as they wish. Protest is evidently good and permissible, when it comes from their side.
These authors, and those who think like them in the vicinity of The Nation magazine, do not understand what Brooks notes: “You can’t pass the most important domestic reform in a generation when the majority of voters think you are on the wrong path.” It would be a disaster, Brooks writes, for Obama to “permanently affix himself to the liberal wing of his party and permanently alienate independents.” A president cannot succeed by representing only 35 per cent of the nation.
So Brooks provides some wise words for President Obama. But the last sentence of his column presents a problem. “That doesn’t mean,” Brooks writes, “giving up his goals.” It means only that he has to align his “proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.”
True enough. But the rub is that what if President Obama himself does not want to align his policy propels to the center? What if it is not “events” that have pushed him to the left, as Brooks thinks, but his own beliefs?
How Barack Obama responds in the coming days will answer this question.
With his man to man love of Obama, Brooks exposes himself as a faux Conservative, that exists way to the left of Rino. The only type of Conservative the Propaganda Rag NYT can handle. Known as a “Token” or “House Conservative” he humiliates himself fawning over the Marxist with his highly suspicious homo-erotic infatuation.
Brooks could accomplish much more admitting to the world and to himself that he is merely propagandist hack writer of the Marxist Front and avoid the ridicule and scorn from the right.
“…and a real intellectual like himself”
Did David Brooks say this with a straight face? He is an intellectual mediocrity—and Barack Obama is even shallower. But the pay is good. We can take for granted that Brooks “earns” a very comfortable six-figure annual income. Pinch Sulzberger most assuredly takes good care of his well-behaved, Uncle Tom conservative. Obama has no idea what to do next. No advice, however sensible, can save his presidency. We now have to worry about Obama having a nervous breakdown and possibly doing something foolish with the red telephone. And I am not indulging in vicious sarcasm! I am serious as a heart attack. Obama is coming unglued. The videoconference scheduled next week between the president and all of America’s public school children should literally scare the hell out of you. This unprecedented event is downright weird.
Great advice Brooksie, tell them to ACT LIKE THEY ARE CENTER RIGHT SO THEY CAN ACTUALLY GET THEIR LEFTIST ELITE WAY. Yeah, that is really going to work. Maybe a year ago, but no more. check out the ratings of all of the liberal TV networks and the liberal newspapers. The papers get thinner and thinner and the networks get more and more thin skinned. And FOX has to hire more and more smart, saavy and vivacious conservative women who can think and out argue any liberal who dares to take them on.
I quit reading Brooks in my newspaper a year ago.
This seems a good time to ask a question that is often on my mind when I encounter MSM-types, why are so many “journalists” looking for a bromance with the President? This President in particular and others before him? I am not looking for an emotional attachment to the leader of my country, I vote for the person I think has what it takes to do the job well. The person other talented people will want to work for. Once again I’m thankful for PJM.
So Obama needs to lie about his intentions for America in order to maintain some resemblance of popularity?
Shouldn’t be difficult for him to do as all he does is lie.
Ron,
Is David Brooks the canary in the Obama coal mine? He would like us to think so.
Steve Sampson above captures Brooks with his accurate portrayal as a “faux conservative”. This is why he is allowed to write for the NYT.
I have listened to Brooks from time to time to hear a conservative point emanate from his larynx. Still waiting. He is a Bob Michel Republican and, though he fancies himself an intellectual, his middle of the roadkill thoughts betray his pseudo intellectual capacities that are limited in depth and scope. Edmund Burke he isn’t. More like David Frum’s twin bro. Every little thing in conservative thought is just a wee bit too far right for ol’ Brooksie.
Don’t ever confuse a journalistic ability to word craft with actual intellectual capacity. 50 years from now no one except immediate family members will have any memory of him.
It would be a disaster, Brooks writes, for Obama to “permanently affix himself to the liberal wing of his party and permanently alienate independents.” A president cannot succeed by representing only 35 per cent of the nation.
Another “conservative” who doesn’t understand that Obama is a tried and true member of his left wing base.
Brooks should throw away his knee pads and start reporting on the actions of Mr. Transparent.
The Scottish government told FOX News Tuesday that the U.S. government refuses to allow them to release details of any communication between Scotland and the U.S. over al-Megrahi’s release.
A source with the Scottish government, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the demand was made in a letter sent Tuesday from U.S. Embassy Chief of Mission Richard LeBaron.
Who reads David Brooks and WHY?
Why does anyone need to read anything except something by Thomas Sowell?
I have trouble wading through this article for its obliqueness.
How the hell would I ever get through one by Brooks?
Amusing. Exactly how can the Apologizer in Chief align himself with ‘fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralization’ when his hopes and dreams are based on profligate spending, individual dependency and crushing centralization? Neat trick. Even George Orwell would run into some difficulty there. The more likely tactical ploy would be to mouth the words to assuage voters growing scepticism, while never abandoning ultimate goals. Just as he has done on multiple occassions. Just words. Day is night, night is day. The one good result of Obama-sans first six months is his plummeting credibility. Whatever proposals he serves up to becalm the center and the right, he will not be believed. And for a single irrefutable reason: he is a liar.
Isn’t this the same David Brooks who just the other minute was telling us how transcendental Obama is and why conservative freaks like Sarah Palin need to have their brains spooned out by their superiors?
I thought so.
Hey David, your life’s ambition to be part of Sally Quinn’s quilting bee has been realized. Don’t blow it now.
David Brooks is obama’s coalmine canary.
From someone whom I always expected to match Matthews in legs antisiness in res Obama (Brooks’ crappy peformances in Lehrer’s show as visual aid here), his criticism looks like another rat’s packing and readying to jump ship.
There are no secrets in Obama’s deserved fall, and his fizzling trajectory (see Obama’s night of meditation by Lincoln’s statue), was fully anticipable by the end of the elections, its chief causes being:
1) Gross incompetence -
2) Great deal of “foreigness”, & lack of understanding of Americans’ traditions, aspirations, resents and suspicions -
3) Lack of understanding of foreign affairs, his views in this field being a silly summary of some shrill lefty propaganda tracts -
4) Antipathy for America and the larger Western civilization and a complementary & absurd fondness for post colonial radical, marxist doctrine -
5) Provincialis/ lack of exposure to the larger American world that made him believe that the sycophantic bubble in which he lives is respresentative for Galveston, Des Moines, Atlanta, Juneau, etc.
6) antipathy for military,
7) cynical yet gullible nature, preferring to believe only good news,
8) …..
9) ……
10) …..
x) … and coumpounding all these, is Obama personality which is surprisingly (if not foolishly) inflexible.
… and many other elements can be added to the wrong baggage that doomed the flight of THE ONE from its very beginning.
David Brooks has sold his soul to President Obama; therefore, he has no credibility. The “moderate” from the rapidly shrinking New York Times needs to get out of his bubble from New York City & actually be with the real people in fly-over country. Brooks should move to the South & learn what it is like to be with real people. His time in the New York Times media bubble has only made him a lucid reporter playing catch-up to the Americans who already knew Obama’s true Communist colors.
Misanthropius, we should not forget one of Obama’s most cherished assets, Michelle who with her charm and grace forged with a new found pride in America warmed the cold heart of America. She told us that President Wee Weed was going to ask us to work towards changing the United States and that we should all work together to improve the government and in the mean time the Wee Weed Messiah would be rewriting our history, so that we could all be proud of our past. This is the new Marxist America that Obeyme is willing to form for the good of all us.
The promise of his quasi military/political army of thugs that would be funded and armed with the same capability as our military, for what purpose no one has said; yet many of us have fairly good ideas.
The more recent development of un-Constitutional czars that are a whose who of the American Communist Party is another interesting development that portends an evil wind that is soon to encompass our once great land.
Since the end of World War II, we have never been so vulnerable to the Marxist Front. Now we have a Marxist living in the White House. Vigilance American Patriots, now is the time for vigilance if we are to keep our country from becoming a Venezuela or a Cuba.
David Brooks is likable enough, and writes well, but he cannot fill the space vacated by William Safire.
I there are any folks in the administration tempted to follow Brook’s advice, the poor souls must be running for cover.
Obama’s trajectory is not any more tweakeable than that of an intercontinental missile in its ballistic phase. Funny: Thee guy wants to de-fund missile defense!
Prof G as you probably know all too well, writing is a craft like basket weaving. Some weavers can craft a better basket than others.
The message of the heart or the message that is conveyed, that is the essence of journalism once you are beyond the simple gymnastics of writing.
There are few on these cyber pages who trust the message nor the intention of Brooks. Being the only Conservative within a Progressive Socialist propaganda medium is a dubious position at best. A position that could still earn respect with solid Conservative writing, however job security would become an issue. Playing it safe with Marxist propagandists hardly qualifies a writer as a Conservative. Except to a Rino or a Progressive Socialist.
Lets see what Obama does now. If he continues to lie and misrepresent the facts its over for him.
Brook’s, the author of “Bobo’s In Paradise,” must of thought Obama was a soul brother Bobo, on the same Ivy League wave length as Brooks. It must be difficult for a grudging bourgeois bohemian like Brooks to deal with getting politically raped by the Chicago Left. Brooks is not a very good judge of political character, especially when seduced by a brown sugar baby boomer, but there was a lot of wishful thinking going on rather than sober consideration of facts and individual history. On the eve before the election, Brooks must have had visions of centrist sugar daddies dancing in the Oval Office, only to belatedly realize later that he got the right color, but the wrong man for the job. Oh well, when you live by affirmative action, you die by racial profiling.
“his romance with the future President began in 2005, when Brooks met with Obama in his Senate office, and found him to be a man with whom he was in philosophical agreement.”
“And like Obama, whom he thinks is a Burkean by temperament and philosophy, and a real intellectual like himself, that he has finally found a kindred spirit in the White House. Thus, as Sherman puts it, “Brooks’s sympathetic columns help to validate the key myth of this White House: That it is fundamentally post-partisan.”
Brooks & Obama, Echo and Narcissus? Has Echo now turned to stone?
Not sure how a dear friend of 911 Truthers-the anti-American haters of Jews, Christians, Whiteys and Bush- can move from such an extremist position to a Centrist position in one simple speech however it will be fascinating to watch which side of the twelves sides of the great speaker’s mouth from which he shall choose to speak.
Of course, there is always adding a thirteenth side to really muddle the message.
That said; muddling the message is always good for the wisdom-less Intellectuals to wrap their twisted brains around and around and around until their chattering, blathering and babbling becomes ivy-league explosive.
MR.RADOSH:Why would Obama listen to Brooks? He’s already got a surfeit of lap dogs.
Not sure how a dear friend of 911 Truthers-the anti-American haters of Jews, Christians, Whiteys and Bush- can move from such an extremist position to a Centrist position in one simple speech however it will be fascinating to watch which side of the twelves sides of the great speaker’s mouth from which he shall choose to speak.
Of course, there is always adding a thirteenth side to really muddle the message.