How Do YOU Read This?
I've not been reticent about the sinuous, the serpentine, and the sophistical David Brooks, whose star never dims for the great lights who run The New York Times' op ed page, PBS' News Hour and NPR's "All Things Considered."
But this time I'm wondering what you make of Gail Collins' response, in a recent Times "conversation" blog, to Brooks' latest attempt at re-positioning.
In this mercifully brief exchange, he and Collins mention the pros and cons of partisanship -- a worthy subject in its own right. But, then, after all Brooks' attempted political make-overs, she tells him, especially in her last couple of sentences, to crawl back into the hole he dug so deftly for himself and credulous fans across 15 years, six at the Times.
I'm inclined to pass the torch, the microphone, the podium, the floor, and every honor of Polemicist Laureate to Collins for addressing Brooks as I've never seen a Times columnist address another Times columnist before.
Maybe I'm reading too much into her tweaking. But even if, say, Ralph Nader was right about both parties, isn't it a bit late in the day for Brooks to flutter his eyelashes and ask, "Who, me, a raving partisan?" What do you think?
I found her suggestion encouraging, maternal even. She basically told him that he needs to get back in the house and clean up the mess he made. I'm skeptical he's the kind of person who can do it, or that the party of profits before people will listen, but still, back he must go. He belongs with there, win or lose, he must fight there, which, now that I think about it, is a hole.
August 13, 2009 3:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a witty and common sense statement by Collins, one of the best of many such from her.
I also firmly believe, however, that both political parties richly deserve to be flung onto history's scrap heap. Nonetheless, it would not be prudent for America if both reached overdue oblivion simultaneously. We can ill-afford having more than half the country be like Italy minus the good food, wine, and music, or like Woodstock for more than a few days. The Republicans very richly deserve to die first. After they foreswear the worship of ignorance, juvenile rudeness, arrogance, and flaming hypocrisy that has been their hallmark since the arrival of Windbag Gingrinch, and reinvent themselves as polite informed advocates for "Tradition", then Democrats can bury their spineless selves, do their necessary 180 degree turn and come back to life as clear and courageous champions of sensible and significant "Change."
August 13, 2009 4:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I enjoyed reading the exchange and as far as some semblance of 'parties' and organization I agree. It takes a lot to organize a population to move in any direction and arrive at decisions.
I see that many conservatives have no choice but to disown the extreme ignorance being fostered in the republican party. Perhaps forming a new party of conservatives is a good idea. They might even be the taming force for the wackos.
But just as the whackos emerge in the republican party and overwhelming sense of the impotence and lack of vision and skill in the democratic leadership is more and more evident. We have control of congres and the executive branch and we wield it very poorly.
If there is no way to move political office back to a position of service over a path to power, money, and influence... the government cannot serve the people.
Much like the issue of health care the influence of money and power is not likely to give way to the best interest of the public. So where are we really? No accountability/little enforcement of law among the 'elite', corporate ownership of media that grows more and more consolidated, a continuing diminishing of what is left of our democracy.
We deserve to have the profits removed from our health care system. We deserve to have a government that is based in much more on service than weilding of money, power, and influenct. How can we do this, they will not simply be given to us?
August 13, 2009 4:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well... what does the New York Times, NPR and PBS think? Why does Brooks' star still shine in those media heavens - once, long ago, thought of as left-of-center? Progressive, even. There's a reason why he still appears on those pages and airwaves, and that's because his views on domestic and foreign policy - especially re Israel and Iraq - mesh perfectly with those of "the great lights running things" at the Times, NPR and PBS. These "giants" signify... what? Neoprogressivism? They prattle in volumes on racism and the dogged evil of American history, the whole litany of the soiree socialist hymnbook, but when it comes to the real world - protecting their own elite stations and thumping tubs for their own pet causes - they're not so far from the American Enterprise Institute tree. It's a new millennium, baby.
August 13, 2009 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
And... what "do" they think, too...
August 13, 2009 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, you're reading too much into it, though I will agree with her underlying sentiment that only a coward runs away from a fight to fix the mess they left behind.
Becoming and independent is easy. Rolling up your sleeves and turning the republican party back into an organization the Lincoln or TR might recognize will be the work of a generation, of which Brooks will feature prominently if he can keep talking sense about many things and not be too much of a wuss to take on GOP crazies.
The democratic party has finally gotten around to doing the same thing this past election cycle and I suspect they will continue at a much faster clip than the republicans at fixing what ails their party. However, until they can actually fix those things, I think it is disingenious to absolve either party of the part they played in the last thirty or forty years of massive devolution in America.
Our degredation has been bipartisan, even if the GOP seemed to excel at the task.
August 13, 2009 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
"However, until they can actually fix those things, I think it is disingenious to absolve either party of the part they played in the last thirty or forty years of massive devolution in America.
Our degredation has been bipartisan, even if the GOP seemed to excel at the task."
Go peddle this bullshit somewhere else. I've lived in this country for the last thirty or forty years, and our "devolution" is almost exclusively due to the rise of John Bircher conservatism as a dominant political force.
If you think blame that should be apportioned 90% Republican, 10% Democrat is "bipartisan", fine. But it proves you're either stupid or fundamentally dishonest.
August 13, 2009 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
One thing he's not: a naive jackass. That would be you. Birchers, my ass!
August 13, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you have a point?
August 13, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
More reasoned commentary from someone with a slim grasp on objective historical facts.
The democratic leadership council was the other half of the filthy corporate coin. Unless you are saying Bill Clinton was a John Bircher. Reagan had a democratic Congress paving the way for neoconservatism. Was Tip O'Neil another Bircher? It wasn't a democratic president who interned hundreds of thousands of US citizens or dropped a nuclear bomb on an enemy or instituted carpet bombing as a method of winning a war against a civilian population?
I suppose FDR, LBJ and Truman were all wacko, right-wing Bircher thugs seeking to subvert the Constitution to their ideological leanings. Or perhaps there is much more nuance in American history than this comment allows for.
August 13, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
You bring up WWII and Vietnam, conveniently leave out the New Deal, the Great Society, and civil rights legislation, and accuse me of not understanding history.
Name anything a Republican has done that advanced equality or social justice in our country. While Democrats have been lacking on many fronts, as you are fond of overemphasizing, the Reagan revolution, will be recognized by historians as the death knell of our country.
Your equivalence is a false one. Pointing out Democrats' failures and shortcomings doesn't mean they have been as harmful to our country's future prospects as Republicans have been.
August 13, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most of those programs were widely supported by the conservative and liberal grassroots alike, so I am not really sure what point you're trying to make.
Your continued insistence of convicting rank and file voters who barely pays attention every four years with the immoral politicians and power players who took advantage of them all these years is intellectually dishonest. That you would absolve democratic politicians for the very sins you accuse republicans of committing is just more partisan nonsense that has no room in a logical and fact-based discussion.
Your justifications aside, democrats have been barely more effective than republicans and have maintained the corporate-controlled status quo just as often.
August 13, 2009 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the rank and file voters (I'm assuming you mean those hard-working white Americans Hillary Clinton famously spoke of) stop voting out of resentment and a misplaced sense of privilege, then you might have a point. McCain, after all, got a significant majority of the white vote just last year.
There was a general consensus after World War II where a generally pro-business orientation was mediated by efforts at creating greater equality and prosperty for working class Americans. Reagan broke that consensus, and it's been downhill ever since.
This is why you have to keep reaching back to "Democrat Wars" and Teddy Roosevelt to make your case. Roosevelt would not be a Republican today. He'd almost be too liberal for Democrats.
And to ascribe Democrats move to DLC centrism as anything other than an attempt to win back Reagan voters is also wrong. As is your ridiculous implication that Bill Clinton was just as bad a president as George W. Bush.
August 13, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Teddy Roosevelt were running the party today, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Name a single thing the democratic party has done of any consequence since LBJ, the man most responsible for a million dead Vietnamese civilians.
You can't because they haven't.
Both parties stand guilty of running this country into the ground, just as both parties have a history of violating their principles given the proper motivation. Bill Clinton was simply the second act of a three part play that started wtih Reagan and ended with Bush. In fact, he was perhaps the most moderate republican president since Eisenhower except that he was a democrat.
You continue to display a purely ideological understanding of American history.
August 13, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
We've had this discussion before, and I don't feel like having it again. The fact the income inequality moderated, and tax rates became more progressive, under Clinton, and those statistics were immediately reversed under Bush II (not tom mention an resumption of the massive deficits we saw under Reagan), belies your opinion that Reagan, Clinton and Bush were all the same. And the fact that you honestly believe Bush II was an extension of, or at least not significantly different from, Clinton indicates that I am not the one looking at our recent history with blinders on.
"Name a single thing the democratic party has done of any consequence since LBJ"
Well, they haven't started any other massive wars, for one. You have heard of Iraq, right? And we have had Republicans in the White House for twenty eight of those forty years, and a nearly divided Congress for most of that time as well.
And to your inevitable reply that Democrats voted for Reagan's and then Bush's initiatives, I would simply argue that significant numbers did not. Bush's support from Republicans on every intitiative was nearly unanimous. And, in any case, being complicit in the commission of a crime is not the same as committing the crime itself.
August 13, 2009 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I actually remember the vote on Iraq, so my view is a little less sanguine. Final vote in Senate: 77-23. Final in the House: 296-133. That included 81 democrats in the House and 29 democrats in the senate. Do the math. The war in Iraq doesn't happen without democratic votes.
Here are some of Clinton's greatest hits to remind you that not all "prosperity" comes without a victim of its ill effects. In fact, it was my very first post here having to respond to someone with their Rose Colored Clinton Glasses firmly in place. Add to that the democratic penchant to support Cold War spending during Reagan's years and to keep dominoes from falling during the 1960s and going all the way back to the founding of the country, it is clear from the historical record that both parties have had their hawks and their doves.
This is all publicly available information, so you really have no excuse for ignorance given your Internet connection and ability to use a web browser.
August 13, 2009 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Final vote in Senate: 77-23. Final in the House: 296-133. That included 81 democrats in the House and 29 democrats in the senate."
You are such a dissembling piece of shit. If Bush, a Republican, hadn't ginned up and outright fabricated intelligence to get us into that war, admittedly cowardly Democrats wouldn't have been forced to risk their political careers by voting aggainst it. Even so, the Senate Democrats were basically split, and a majority in Congress voted against it. So practically ALL of the good guys were on the Demcocratic side of the aisle.
And are you seriously equating fabricating a case for a massive war and then conducting it so ineptly, to voting for it (especially with many, like Clinton and Kerry, doing so with outspoken reservations)? This is without speculating as to what was patently obvious to anyone who was sentient at the time (which apparently excludes you), that Bush would have went to war without Congressional authorization.
Again, your argument boils down to the proposition that someone who doesn't take the gun away from a murderer is just as culpable as the guy who pulls the trigger. Are you really as morally obtuse as your argument suggests?
August 13, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our march to hell in this country, throughout our entire history, has been led by democratic and republican politicians alike. There have been varying levels of deception and deceit and outright corruption along the way, but the historical record is crystal clear.
You are the exact reason why democrats have been unable to get anything truly progressive done for the last forty years or so and have basically become the opposite half of our filthy corporate coin. You HATE republicans and excuse democratic mistakes as having been inspired by republicans so REAL Democratics aren't responsible for the fake Republicrats.
What kind of pretzel logic is that?
August 14, 2009 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
"the historical record is crystal clear.
Spoken like a true simpleton.
August 14, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
August 14, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of these first nine TPM readers' comments -- several of them thoughtful, a few of them not -- only two suggest that the writers read the New York Times op ed page, and only one of those seems to care whether David Brooks has anything of value to say. "Unscientific" though this little sampling is, I'm grateful for what it suggests. I'm even pleased.
August 13, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I was thinking last night, the Republicans are brainless and heartless, while the Democrats are spineless and gutless. If you put them together, you'll either get a complete person, or total annihilation... :-)
August 13, 2009 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's hope the combination tends more towards a total person than to complete annihilation.
August 13, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
My gut reaction is:
1) Help accelerate the Republican self-pulverization
2) Reform the Democrats from within.
3) the "pox on both your houses is incoherent". Who would be left?
August 13, 2009 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
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