Today's missile - er, missive - from David Brooks has left me so near speechlessness that I'm having trouble writing this diary, but here goes:
Brooks' Sunday sermon posits the extremely revisionist idea that the conservative movement will be - nay, has already been - saved by none other than - George W. Bush!
Almost single-handedly, Bush reconnected with the positive and idealistic instincts of middle-class Americans. He did it by recasting conservatism more significantly than anyone had since Ronald Reagan. He rejected the prejudice that the private sector is good and the public sector is bad, and he tried to use government to encourage responsible citizenship and community service. He sought to mobilize government so the children of prisoners can build their lives, so parents can get data to measure their school's performance, so millions of AIDS victims in Africa can live another day, so people around the world can dream of freedom.
Funny - I thought he mostly scared American voters right out of their socks and used government to line the pockets of the previously-rich. I musta been living somewhere else...
"Government should help people improve their lives, not run their lives," Bush said. This is not the Government-Is-the-Problem philosophy of the mid-'90s, but the philosophy of a governing majority party in a country where people look to government to play a positive but not overbearing role in their lives.
I guess that's why he's tried so hard to make sure his base -"the haves, and the have-mores"- doesn't feel too much of that overbearing government; it has also worked well for the people of New Orleans.
In part because of Bush's shift, the G.O.P. has become the party of the middle class. Bush beat Kerry among whites earning between $30,000 and $75,000 a year by 22 percentage points.
Too bad they're vanishing like the buffalo, thanks to declining real income, vanishing employee benefits, a bursting housing-market bubble and eroding purchasing power. And I guess the black middle class - you know, the ones who gave Bush a 2% approval rating? - are just too stubborn to know a good thing when they see it.
This is not to say that Bush's approach to government is fully coherent. The tragedy of the Bush administration is that it never matched its unorthodox governing philosophy with an unorthodox political strategy or an unorthodox management style.
The first sentence of this paragraph may be the understatement of the century. The tragedy of the Bush Adminstration is that our country and our planet have been forced to live through it, and that, if we're lucky enough to survive the rest of it, we'll be repairing the damage done for decades to come.
In the face of such monumental denial, this is the only reply I could think of send the Times. I doubt they'll be publishing it.
Subj: Drug Use By Your Staff
To the Editor:
Wow! Whatever David Brooks is smoking, I want some! Can you get it for me? Anything that can make someone see "The Savior of the Right" at the helm of our present administration must be wonderful indeed; to most of the world it looks like a corrupt corporate kleptocracy led by a group of war criminals!
Memo to David, when his feet are back on the ground: take a clear-eyed look at your hero's actions, not his words.
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