A meretricious triangulator at the end of his tether

David Brooks’s op-ed in the March 3 New York Times is one of the most offensive pieces, and probably the most incoherent, he’s ever done. He is such a shameless whore it’s hard for him to out-do himself. But he did it this time.

The short of it is: Brooks to his dismay realizes he was wrong about Obama’s being a centrist: “Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice.” But, Brooks continues, the Republicans/conservatives are even worse, and nothing must be done to help bring them back to power. Therefore the “centrists” and the “moderate conservatives” (and the whole piece is addressed exclusively to these groups, not to the general reader, and certainly not to conservatives, whom Brooks openly disdains) must defeat Obama’s program, but without allying with the conservatives, who are contentious and polarizing low-brows . The upshot is that David Brooks and his 300 David Brooks centrists, standing between the millions of Democrats in front of them and the millions of conservatives behind them, are going to stop Obama without fighting Obama, and without polarizing the country, while they simultaneously denounce the conservatives who also oppose Obama’s program.

The goal, says Brooks, is to bring Obama back to his “best self.” But Brooks has already said that the centrist Obama he had believed in and supported was a false Obama—so what “best self” is there for Obama to return to?

If, as a result of Obama’s now-unmasked radicalism, even a smooth manipulator like Brooks is intellectually falling apart before our eyes, that is a sign that we are indeed in a national crisis. The one good thing about the article is that Brooks has at last dropped his transparent mask of being a conservative and has come out openly as an enemy of conservatism—which, of course, he has been all along.

Here is the column:

March 3, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
A Moderate Manifesto
By DAVID BROOKS

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country—moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor—caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

The U.S. has always been a decentralized nation, skeptical of top-down planning. Yet, the current administration concentrates enormous power in Washington, while plan after plan emanates from a small group of understaffed experts.

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

The U.S. has traditionally had a relatively limited central government. But federal spending as a share of G.D.P. is zooming from its modern norm of 20 percent to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates—moderate-conservative, in my case—are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Moderates now find themselves betwixt and between. On the left, there is a president who appears to be, as Crook says, “a conviction politician, a bold progressive liberal.” On the right, there are the Rush Limbaugh brigades. The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

Those of us in the moderate tradition—the Hamiltonian tradition that believes in limited but energetic government—thus find ourselves facing a void. We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

The first task will be to block the excesses of unchecked liberalism. In the past weeks, Democrats have legislated provisions to dilute welfare reform, restrict the inflow of skilled immigrants and gut a voucher program designed for poor students. It will be up to moderates to raise the alarms against these ideological outrages.

But beyond that, moderates will have to sketch out an alternative vision. This is a vision of a nation in which we’re all in it together—in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority. This is a vision of a nation that does not try to build prosperity on a foundation of debt. This is a vision that puts competitiveness and growth first, not redistribution first.

Moderates are going to have to try to tamp down the polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget. They will have to face fiscal realities honestly and not base revenue projections on rosy scenarios of a shallow recession and robust growth next year.

They will have to take the economic crisis seriously and not use it as a cue to focus on every other problem under the sun. They’re going to have to offer an agenda that inspires confidence by its steadiness rather than shaking confidence with its hyperactivity.

If they can do that, maybe they can lure this White House back to its best self—and someday offer respite from the endless war of the extremes.

- end of initial entry -

March 4, 2009

James N. writes:

I’m forwarding an email I sent you in 2005, and another I sent you in 2006, about how center-right politicians, “right-liberals” as you call them, have a great, visceral fear of a “right-wing backlash.” This was manifest on September 12, 2001 when the first thing Bush did after returning to the White House was to condemn attacks against “peaceful Muslims” in the USA, EVEN THOUGH NO SUCH ATTACKS WERE TAKING PLACE.

This is quite interesting, to my way of thinking. Politicians are smart about one and only one thing—staying in power. Those of them who gain power from elections, all of them, seem to be terrified that a “backlash” will occur and throw them out. David Brooks appears to fear this “backlash” as well. Better to condemn Rush Limbaugh than to see Obama fall?

The great slogan of the French center-left was “pas d’ennemis a gauche” (no enemies to the left). The great slogan of American “conservatives” is “plusieurs d’ennemis a droit” (Many enemies to the right).

One man’s backlash is another man’s majority. Why do they fear us so?

Maybe we’re stronger than we think.

From James N. to LA, February 4, 2006:
Subject: Interesting Times

What astonishing times we are living through! I can’t tell if it’s 1914 or 475 [the end of the western Roman empire].

Your comments about liberals seeking dhimmitude have piqued my interest.

I rather think that liberals seek the defeat and destruction of the remnants of conservatism, and they are indifferent to the cost. The absurd repetitiveness of Bush and Rice about the “Religion of Peace” and the “Koran’s message of tolerance” is a case in point. Right after 9/11/01, the U.S. administration was more concerned about reprisals against Muslims (which were entirely imaginary) than they were about what those Muslims might be up to.

This was not because Bush seeks to be a dhimmi. It was because he, and Chirac, and Schroeder/Merkel, and Blair, all fear the “right wing reaction” more than they fear the Muslims.

The fear of the (mostly imaginary) “right wing reaction” is deep and profound, and it infects all sectors of the government.

What I don’t know is if it’s merely projection of the liberals desire for destruction of their enemies onto those selfsame enemies, or whether they see some potential for rightist resurgence which is so far invisible to me.

From: James N. to LA, September 7, 2006
Subject: Ralph Peters’s attack on Islam critics

One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is to review the utterances of our government after 9/11 (I mean right after, before 9/15 or so). There was a very heavy emphasis on not discriminating against or attempting to injure Muslims—even though there was no evidence whatsoever that Muslims in the U.S. were in the slightest danger.

Subsequently, an EU politician said, after the murder of Theo Van Gogh, that the main concern was “preventing a right-wing backlash.”

The nonexistent racism of Americans, the nonexistent threat to multiculturalism, and the looming nonexistent right-wing backlash are of more import to our leaders than the actual enemy within the gates.

This has complex psychological roots, but it must be extirpated before we can even begin to make progress.

LA replies:

The same message came from President Clinton and Mayor Dinkins immediately after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Their response was not anger, shock, indignation, at this attack, but warnings to Americans not to strike back at Muslims.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 03, 2009 11:05 PM | Send