The sheep returns to the sheepfold

David Brooks has been saved from the condition of unbearable incoherence into which he had been thrown earlier this week by his traumatic discovery that President Obama “is not [the centrist] who we [centrists] thought he was…. [H]is actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice.” That discovery caused Brooks to map out an absurd and desperate strategy in which the David Brooks-type centrists of America, all three hundred of them, would stand at the pass of Thermopylae stopping Obama’s Democratic-left revolution while simultaneously fending off the Republicans and conservatives to their rear who also oppose Obama but who Brooks says are even worse than the Democrats. The piece suggested an anguished Brooks being torn to pieces by his own contradictions. But today a notably calmer Brooks tells us that in response to his earlier column he got four calls from White House staffers, who ‘splained to him that Obama’s not a radical leftist but a moderate pragmatist, and now he is happy and contented again. So Brooks’s brief flirtation with tragedy is over. The comedy may resume.

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Hot Air has amusing reflections on Brooks’s turnabout:

We often complain about regular reporters injecting their opinions into what should be objective articles. This is the reverse of that problem. Brooks writes an opinion column, but the opinions are supposed to be his. In this column, he basically turns his newsprint space over to Rahm Emanuel and his staff and merely takes dictation. Had Brooks and the New York Times run this as an interview news piece, it might seem less obsequious than how it appears in Brooks’ column today.

How obsequious? Brooks finishes with this paean to White House flacks:

Nonetheless, the White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based. These people know how to lead a discussion and set a tone of friendly cooperation.

Do they? I guess they didn’t say, “We won” when talking with Brooks, but then again, they didn’t have to. This sounds less like “friendly cooperation” and more like a push to get back on the Obama reservation. The biggest laugh of the column? Emphasis mine:

I didn’t finish these conversations feeling chastened exactly.

Does Brooks even think it’s their job to chasten him? They’re supposed to work for us, David, not the other way around. Remember that when you talk to them the next time. It might keep those pesky scales from reattaching themselves to your corneas.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 06, 2009 06:53 PM | Send