THE GREAT REJUVENATION: Hidden in

THE GREAT REJUVENATION: Hidden in David Brooks’ latest column in the New York Times are the landmines he planted in these key passages:

As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980’s as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation.

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The U.S. economy has enjoyed two long booms in the past two decades, interrupted by two shallow recessions, and perhaps now we’re at the start of a third boom. More nations have become democratic in the past two decades than at any other time in history.

Wonder how paragraphs like those are sitting with the average reader of the Times who feels, based on the information he’s been spoonfed by the Times, that (a) George H.W. Bush was right when he called Reaganomics “voodoo economics” (and then later lost his bid for reelection when he steered away from its central tenant) and (b) that the “worst economy of 50 years” recession was actually, as Brooks accurately labels it, shallow and minor.