David Brooks retains credibility among the villagers and the totebaggers by clothing his hard-core rapacious views in ovine* camouflauge, quoting philosophers and social scientists who miraculously share Brooks' view that if only people would adhere to some Platonic ideal of "values," all of our problems will be solved.
But every once in awhile, his wolf's fangs emerge from this mask, and he writes a column that would fit right into The Corner, Newsmax, Redstate or Fox. His column today is a classic example of that:
President Obama is an intelligent, judicious man who can see all sides of an issue. But every once in a while he tries to get politically cute, and he puts on his Keith Olbermann mask.
I suppose it’s to his credit that he’s most inept when he tries to take the low road. He resorts to hoary, brain-dead clichés. He wanders so far from his true nature that he makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Authenticity.
Oh my goodness, David. I do declare that you have offended my sensibilities. Or rather, Obama has offended the delicate sensibilities of Brooks and Paul Ryan (affectionately dubbed "zombie-eyed granny starver") by
Charles Pierce, who does the definitive Brooks dissections by seeing him through the eyes of the columnist's irish setter,
Moral Hazard. Here's a part of the canine's "fisking" of today's Brooks:
Considering that Ryan's "budget" — which is unworthy of the name, but that's another fight for another day — depends on mathematic designed by Bighorn sheep, it seems only fair to let the president speculate on his own basis what will happen if we allow the zombie-eyed granny-starving to proceed. What we do know is that Paul Ryan, in his deepest political soul, where he is a teenage boy having a Penthouse Forum moment with Dagny Taggart, doesn't believe that financial aid, medical research, and early-childhood education are legitimate functions of the national government. It seems safe to assume, although Ryan doesn't have the moral backbone to admit it publicly, that all of these programs would fare less well under his idea of government.
As Pierce notes, Brooks hauls out every single "hoary, brain-dead cliché" he can to go after Obama, including:
Politifacts Non-lie "Lie of the Year" about Medcare!
Simpson-Bowles is the answer!
Democrats once liked Premium Supports!
Unfortunately, for Moral Hazard's master, many people, like Dean Baker, can do arithmetic,
and provide him with a
math lesson, which unfortunately, he will not read:
Since President Clinton’s 2000 budget alloted 6.3 percent of GDP for this everything else category (e.g. roads and bridges, education, medical research, the Justice Department and the federal prison system, and the national park system) the Ryan-Romney budget implies a cut of between 40 and 56 percent in most categories of government spending. If David Brooks knew arithmetic, he would realize that cuts of this magnitude are a big deal and that Obama is absolutely right to make a big issue of them.
As Jamelle Bouie notes in
the American Prospect:,
It takes a remarkable amount of disingenuousness to blame Obama for the flaws in Ryan’s plan. Thankfully, David Brooks is up to the task.
*Ovine= sheep-like.