Know nothing elitist David Brooks laments today in the New York Times about what went wrong after Obama got elected. Brooks decries the dramatic shift to the right now the public can actually see what Hope and Change is all about.
Brooks: ... The center has been losing political power pretty much my entire career. But I confess that about 16 months ago I had some hope of a revival. The culture war, which had bitterly divided the country for decades, was winding down. The war war — the fight over Iraq and national security — was also waning.
The country had just elected a man who vowed to move past the old polarities, who valued discussion and who clearly had some sympathy with both the Burkean and Hamiltonian impulses. He staffed his administration with brilliant pragmatists whose views overlapped with mine, who differed only in that they have more faith in technocratic planning.
Yet things have not worked out for those of us in the broad middle. Politics is more polarized than ever. The two parties have drifted further to the extremes. The center is drained and depressed.
What happened?
What happened? I’ll tell you what happened Mr. Brooks. Stupid people like you, who run around pretending they are so smart and pragmatic, drank gallons of Hope and Change Kool Aid. If you were half as smart as you pretend to be, you would have taken a look at Obama’s limited record and sketchy past, and concluded that electing him president would have been risky at best or dangerous at worst.
Now that Obama is dragging the nation kicking and screaming toward a European socialist model, your much admired middle is beating a hot retreat to the right. Their hope is to bring the nation back somewhere towards the center by 2012. My advice to you Mr. Brooks is that you stop writing these stupid columns and join them.
Join the middle in their retreat to the right; because that will be the only way you will ever see that dream of a small and energetic government. Should that dream be realized, know this Mr. Brooks, such a government requires a very active and alert electorate; an electorate that can see politicians in the most stark and realistic terms before voting for them. People who pick their presidents because they have sharp creases in their pants are completely ill suited for the task.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: The New York Times