QUAKE CITY

So I got up this morning and read David Brooks’ latest column. This morning was yet another one where David and I were not on the same page. I had planned to write about it this evening, but Andrew Sullivan beat me to it.  And he should, it is his job. Unfortunately, I have a day job and have to leave it to the professionals some times.

Nevertheless, here are some of David’s passages which I took issue with:

History happened. The administration came into power at a time of economic crisis. This led it, in the first bloom of self-confidence, to attempt many big projects all at once. Each of these projects may have been defensible in isolation, but in combination they created the impression of a federal onslaught.

Of course they were defensible. The “impression” David refers to is the distinct but equally irrational unrealities of the Tea Party, the Republican Party and Fox News. Simply because some have the impression Obama is a socialist, an elitist and worse does not make it so. It is simply their delusional ”impression.”

He continues:

In the first year of the Obama administration, the Democrats, either wittingly or unwittingly, decided to put the big government-versus-small government debate at the center of American life.

Or maybe it was about pulling us back from the brink of the economic abyss, fixing the banks, saving the auto industry, giving people health-care and all the rest. The big v. small government debate is a distraction created by people who cannot win the argument on its merits. You know the Republican Party. At least the cultural warriors have a argument to make, no matter how crazy it may be, just ask the Tea Party.

As government grew, many moderates and independents (not always the same thing) recoiled in alarm.

Again, this is perception, irrational perception. In reality Obama inherited huge deficits caused in part by Bush’s “compassionate” conservatism and a revenue killing recession. Health-care was no government take over and it was paid for. The bailouts were a one time expense, unlike the 2005 Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit and the Bush tax cuts. Brooks knows attempts to cut the deficit are not going to come from the right side of the aisle. Brooks’ discusses the Democratic Party’s declining numbers without putting it into the context of the larger economic situation the country finds itself.

During periods of government war, the Democratic Party also reverts to its vestigial self. Democrats don’t want to defend big government, so instead they lash out at business. Over the past weeks, President Obama has upped his attacks on Big Oil, Wall Street and “powerful interests,” sounding like an orthodox Reagan-era Democrat. 

Right, because you would rather have Obama and the Democrats stick up for these people. Wall Street and financial reform should have happened a year ago. If anything they are late to the game. The argument should be about better government not small verus large.

I will let Sullivan finish this one off:

But I disagree with David’s world-weary resignation over this, and his reluctance to support the Obama administration as it represents the pragmatic center in this day and age. The truth is: Obama has notcaved to the left’s understanding of the role of government. In reality, the healthcare reform was a moderate enterprise, made radical in the public consciousness by a cynical bid to propagandize the whole debate by the FNC-RNC axis. Same with the handling of the banks, the financial regulation bill, the stimulus, and the recalibration of US foreign policy after the failed belligerence of the Bush-Cheney years. If David doubts the moderation of Obama, he might ask his colleague, Paul Krugman, or read more Glenn Greenwald.

And finally:

It seems to me that if, as David notes, it is history that has allowed the perception of Obama’s “big liberalism” to take hold, then it is the duty of moderate conservatives to resist this narrative, not cave into it. And that means the uncomfortable task for real conservatives of stoutly defending this president as the best option we now have. The epistemic closure on the right is how other conservatives still manage to blind themselves to the pragmatic virtues of this president’s remarkable 15 month record at home and abroad. Our job is to insist that the debate continue and that criticism of Obama be based on empirical reality, not ideological fantasy. If we do, we have a president open-minded enough to listen. But if we give up, the old divides win.