David Brooks usually likes to position himself as something of a romantic, but every so often he lets down his guard and reminds us that lurking beneath his veneer of optimism there lies a cynical fool. For example, on Monday:
The failure of the top-kill technique in the Gulf of Mexico represents an interesting turning point on the Obama presidency. It symbolizes the end of the period of lightning advance and the beginning of the period of nasty stasis.
Is this guy for real? BP's failure to control the gush of oil means the Obama era is over? That doesn't make any sense, but if were right, why didn't the Republicans think of it sooner?
President Obama swept into office having aroused the messianic hopes of his supporters. For the past 16 months he has been on nearly permanent offense, instigating action with the stimulus bill, Afghan policy, health care reform and the nearly complete financial reform. Whether you approve or not, this has been an era of bold movement.
Aroused? Messianic? Huh? That Brooks sees Obama as a Jesus-like object of sexual arousal might be interesting to a psychoanalyst peering into his mind, but it is utterly irrelevant to the national political debate. (Not to a mention a complete embarrassment to the NYT Op-Ed page.)
But now the troops are exhausted, the country is anxious, the money is spent and the Democratic majorities are teetering. The remaining pieces of legislation, on immigration and energy, are going nowhere. (The decision to do health care before energy is now looking extremely unfortunate.)
The Democratic majority is teetering? True, we lost in Massachusetts, but of the seven special elections in the House, Democrats have won six, resulting in no change whatsoever in the balance of power. Democrats picked up a seat in New York, Republicans picked up a seat in Hawaii, and perhaps most tellingly of all, Dems held on to Murtha's seat in Pennsylvania. That's simply not teetering. Sure, pundits see Dems losing control of Congress, but at least on the generic ballot, everybody other than Rasmussen is showing Democrats with a lead.
And as for Brooks' claim that energy and immigration are going nowhere, and his belief that health care should have been done second, his rush to judgment reveals his own desire to see inaction. His inability to recognize that the gusher in the Gulf will rekindle the urgency of passing energy legislation is remarkable. There's no guarantees that we'll see progress (thanks to the filibuster), but the fact that Democrats demonstrated their willingness to (as Republicans would put it) "walk the plank" on health care should tell GOPers like Brooks that they should not underestimate the ability of this Congress and this administration to push legislation through. Not only did the passage of health care demonstrate the political resolve of Democrats (and a warning shot to Republicans against sidelining themselves), but it also taught Dems what they should avoid in future pieces of legislation. We saw that when Senate Democrats forced Republicans to get on board Wall Street reform by actually making them filibuster.
Brooks, in his conclusion, offers yet another reminder of his cluelessness:
We should be able to build from cases like this one and establish a set of concrete understandings about what government should and shouldn’t do. We should be able to have a grounded conversation based on principles 95 percent of Americans support. Yet that isn’t happening. So the period of stagnations begins.
Put aside the fact that he's trying to explain why the Obama presidency is entering a period of stagnation without having established that the Obama presidency will enter such a period. The thing that strikes me here is that Brooks thinks the core of the problem here is that we're not grounding political discourse in principles 95 percent of Americans support.
That idea is so broad it is virtually meaningless, but Brooks would be smart to remember the reason that there is deepwater drilling in the first place is that Democrats (like President Obama) have compromised with Republicans. Outside of Mary Landrieu (and perhaps Mark Begich), there are virtually no Democrats who are enthusiastic about deepwater drilling. It's the GOP that's the party of "drill baby drill." But in the name of cooperation and accommodation, many Democrats have grudgingly accepted the policies which led to this disaster in the Gulf.
Maybe, instead of stagnation, BP's oil spill will remind Democrats that when Republicans are wrong, accommodating them is also wrong, and that instead of listening to David Brooks' dire warning, they should seize the opportunity of them moment to make this country and this world a better place for all of us.