Today, David F. Brooks bemoans political leaders’ lack of a “vocation,” which “reveals itself in a sense of enjoyment as you undertake its tasks and it can’t be easily quit when setbacks and humiliations occur. As others have noted, it involves a double negative — you can’t not do this thing.”
Yas as usual has an interesting take on Brooks. Locating the likely plagiarism or semi-plagiarism by Brooks usually slips by everyone else. But after Brooks’s bromides about idealism v. careerism, he makes the mistake of trying to apply it to two political figures:
For example, Hillary Clinton seems to have been first inspired by a desire to serve children, but over the decades walls of hard-shell combativeness formed. Mitt Romney seems to be an exceptionally fine person, but when he was campaigning his true nature was often hidden under a film of political formulas.
BOTH SIDES!
Forget Romney — if he has a true nature it was hidden under a blizzard of lies in 2012 (533 in 30 weeks, documented by Steve Benen). But Romney is a political ghost now.
What I want to know from Brooks is:
When exactly did Hillary stop being "inspired by a desire to serve children?"
- Was it before or after she was instrumental in helping S-Chip pass in 1997, leading to 6 million children getting insured?
- Was it when she worked to expand it while she was Senator?
- Was it when she helped the Clinton Foundation start Too Small to Fail, “a new initiative to improve the health and well-being of children ages zero to five.” (oops — I think I violated the rule that you can only talk about Bahrain emails in connection with the the Foundation — any mention of the actual lives saved and improved, including children’s, doesn’t fit in with the “narrative.”)
- Is she completely a lying liar when she says that's a major thing motivating her to run for President?
I also want know:
What’s the deal with those “walls of hard-shell combativeness?”
- Could it have been the jihad against her aided and abetted non-stop by Brooks and his publications, and the likes of Safire and Dowd at the Times?
- Is a "hard shell wall of combativeness" mutually exclusive with having a vocation?
- Could that hard shell be enabling her to trudge forward through all the crap that is thrown at her to this day (and if President will enable her to help children more)?
- Is it possible her work at the Clinton Foundation was at least partly "inspired by her desire to serve children" (and millions were saved).