Tag Archives: David Brooks

the dead hand

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We’re in a strange historical trough at the moment, as the economy gets worse and worse. Laura McKenna, at 11D, fears the CitiGroup crisis is worse than reports have told us, and says “Rumor has it that Citibank is going to go bankrupt.” So as public affairs exhibit all the signs of panic on the one hand, Paul Krugman describes “the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis” on the other, a vacuum reminiscent of the interregnum between 1932 and 1933 when “the outgoing administration had no credibility, the incoming administration had no authority and the ideological chasm between the two sides was too great to allow concerted action.”

But the present crisis of leadership seems more than an accident of history. While the new administration struggles to be born, the old seems determined to perpetuate itself and do, from my perspective, as much damage as it possibly can while it still holds the reins of power. The Bush team’s promulgation of “midnight regulations” and its shifting of large numbers of its political appointees into high-level civil service positions, a strategy called burrowing in, in order to protect them from being fired and thereby perpetuate their influence, have been the most reported of the outgoing administration’s efforts to thwart the public will–together with speculation that Bush may issue blanket pardons to many of his most vulnerable appointees who have committed crimes during his lawless administration for which somebody might decide to prosecute them. Add to these disturbing developments the present congressional stalemate over aid to the auto industry and Henry Paulson’s foot-dragging over the next stage of the $700b rescue plan, and the trough becomes a slough.

Indeed, across the spectrum of the conservative movement, so-called, there seems to be a determination to continue to defend and perpetuate bankrupt ideology that has been falsified by events and by and large repudiated by the public. Mike Huckabee has a new book entitled Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America and is on a tour promoting it, looking every inch like a presidential candidate again. Sarah Palin has been on a victory tour, finding new venues for cognitive dissonance, and wherever she goes she speaks for the old time religion. David Brooks predicts this week that control of the Republican Party will remain with “Traditionalists,” because “Congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists,” and “Traditionalists have the institutions.”

Brooks goes on to argue that conservatism has rigidified into Traditionalist ownership of conservative mythology. Here are a couple of of observations that I think are insightful in that regard.

Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.

This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity.

And bogus or not, this mythology gives its adherents who still hold power in Washington a license to attempt to shape the future in its image even in the face of resounding defeat at the polls.

All the signs seem to point to a pragmatic Obama administration rather than an ideological one. I find this very hopeful. David Sanger predicts that Obama will govern from the center right of his own party, and that is hopeful too. Both Brooks and Sanger are predicting an Obama administration characterized by thoughtfulness and creativity rather than ideology as they survey the choices Obama is advertised to be making for his cabinet and White House staff. As Sanger puts it:

The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.

President Obama will need broad and diverse support if he is to govern effectively. His first moves seem calculated to garner such support and to maintain it in the future; though during its early days in office the new administration will need to do a good deal of house cleaning to disencumber itself from the Bush administration’s last ditch efforts to bind that future.

lay that pistol down, babe; don’t shoot that snow snake

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I remember a story, my mother used to tell when we were all younger, and she was still in the world, to the effect that my father would stop and shoot snakes on the roadways in New Mexico because they could get inside your car. Last evening at dinner with friends from North Dakota I learned what snow snakes are and also heard some good stories about canny Norwegians and innocent city folk that it wouldn’t do to tell here, even though this is my blog and I can say anything I please without fear of censorship from Stanley Fish or anybody else.

New Obama ad: Well, my guy is speaking forcefully about the economy, and he has a new two-minute ad that is forthright and direct. I’m grateful to Ben Smith at Politico for the reference.

The comment thread for this ad at Politico is also interesting. Both positive and negative comments echo campaign themes. Read it all here.

Elitism turned: and in what seems like one more chorus of a tired, old song, The Huffington Post is carrying a story today to the effect that Lynn Forester de Rothschild, one of Hilary Clinton’s top fundraisers, is switching her support to McCain. Obama is arrogant, says Rothschild, who is “a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.” He (Obama) “has a problem connecting with average Americans.” How would Rothschild know?

Palin and Pegler: Robert Kennedy, Jr. notes Sarah Palin’s now infamous quotation from Westbrook Pegler as follows:

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that “some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.”

It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

But I wonder if Palin knew that she was quoting Pegler or even who Pegler was. I suspect she didn’t.

David Brooks, again: The Huffington Post reports David Brooks to have written that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice President. Well, maybe. But Brooks still can’t give up on the theme that those of us on the left who don’t think Palin is qualified are snobs. “Sarah Palin has many virtues,” Brooks writes:

If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

Sounds like a claim that Palin isn’t qualified because she lacks experience and prudence, Brooks’s main themes. But here’s Brooks’s final paragraph, which seems to take the edge off the critique.

The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.

Now that could be a swipe at Obama as much as at Palin, it seems to me. Brooks is no democrat (note the small d); and however elegant his reasoning in most of this piece, and it is (mostly) elegant, he can’t credit the negative reaction to Palin from the left with any validity. “The idea that ‘the people’ will take on and destroy ‘the establishment’ is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right.” How droll. I sometimes think Brooks never met a stereotype he didn’t like.

“If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman.” No sh*t! as my ex mother-in-law used to say. Palin’s actual performance in office doesn’t justify Brooks’s enthusiasm — I suspect he knows it. And in spite of today’s reports of a lawsuit attempting to stop the Alaska trooper investigation, Palin’s own administrations in both Wasilla and Juneau are beginning to look a lot like corrupt establishments, themselves.

Brooks should realize that the candidate whose prudence he should question is John McCain.

and as if Tina Fey weren’t enough for your average Monday,

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Garrison Keillor has a wonderful Salon column today about how the Republicans are running against themselves. I especially like this couple of paragraphs, in light of all the sneering and hand-wringing about elitism I’ve encountered lately.

. . . [A] former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, “I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hardworking people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battle ax you.”

In school, you couldn’t get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don’t uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death.

Right on!

And while I’m at it, here’s David Brooks scolding my guy for failing to correct the manners of vicious liberals.

. . . [Obama] needs to attack the snobs who are savaging Sarah Palin’s faith and family. Many liberals claim to love working-class families, but the moment they glimpse a hunter with an uneven college record, they hop on chairs and call for disinfectant. Obama needs to attack Bill Maher for calling her a stewardess and the rest of the coastal condescenders.

As a former hunter (in my childhood and youth) with an uneven college record, I can testify that no liberal has ever sprayed me with disinfectant. Nor has Bill Maher ever called me a stewardess. My neck is as red as the next man’s, but I am a proud liberal and member of the religious left, though I don’t believe in God in a creedal sense. In my checquered life I have managed to read a few books and perhaps learned a thing or two. My beloved, who is a real professor, tells me that I am an intellectual (though she may agree with Margaret Soltan that few professors are such). If this is true I got to be an intellectual over a long time and as a result of some honest labor. I don’t share most fashionable contempt for the professorial class (of which I am generically a member, having spent most of my adult life teaching and working in universities), though I do think the concerns of many academics are pretty parochial.

I’m thinking of writing something about the reconstituted culture wars here, and may do so soon. Today, I merely observe that Brooks’s comment about “coastal condescenders” is a self-indulgent piece of stereotyping to which Michael Kinsley quite rightly objects. Soltan doesn’t like Kinsley’s argument, but I rather do. And about the culture wars, Tim Burke has been writing some good posts recently. You can read a couple of them here and here.