The other day I was speaking with some chaps who’d attended a David Brooks speech shortly after he joined The New York Times, and in the course of the event he was asked if his relations with the Times crowd were a bit awkward, him being a conservative and all. And he supposedly replied that no, they get along fine because “I look like them.”
That’s what a lot of these smart guys thought when they saw Obama: “He looks like me. I can imagine myself sitting across from him at dinner and enjoying it.”
Whereas Dean Barnett talked like Sarah Palin marinated in a vat of chowder for a year and a half. Nevertheless, Dean looked past Obama’s tailoring and “temperament” (elite-speak for “cool”), and listened to what the guy was saying.
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