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Mushy, meaningless moderation
Political Animal —
... , put it this way: "The 'moderation' Brooks is championing seems to represent little more than an instinctive reaction against any coherent plan of action, and a horror of following through with the logic of progressive -- and actually, 'moderate' -- analysis of why the economy has collapsed and what, specifically, needs to be done to revive the country." What's more, Joe Klein argues that Brooks' approaches also lacks context: "We are at the end of a 30-year period of radical conservatism, a period so right-wing that many of those now considered 'liberals' -- like, say, ...
Moderation for moderation’s sake
Crooked Timber —
David Brooks has been getting a lot of flak for this column (which is a follow up from this one a week earlier).
We [moderates] sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. … But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. … a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor … an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a ...
Klein on the Budget
Balloon Juice —
Joe Klein seems to get it:
David Brooks writes today as a moderate-conservative anguished by Barack Obama’s budget. I’ve known David for almost twenty years now. We’ve had many wonderful conversations, publicly and privately, over those years, and I value the quality of his mind, his decency, his essential sanity. We both consider ourselves moderates, though of different sorts.
But I disagree with him profoundly about the Obama budget—and so, I would venture, do most moderate-liberals. The budget has to be seen ...
New York Times Crashed-and-Burned Watch (Worst David Brooks Column Ever Edition)
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles —
... On Moderation: We are at the end of a 30-year period of radical conservatism, a period so right-wing that many of those now considered "liberals"--like, say, Barack Obama--would be seen as moderate pantywaists in the great sweep of modern political history. The past 30 years have... [seen] such a profound destruction of the basic functions of government that a major rectification is called for now--in rebalancing the system of taxation toward progressivity, in rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, not just physically, but also socially and intellectually. ...
The Moderate Road to Hell
Comments from Left Field —
... the same disastrous results?
The “moderation” Brooks is championing seems to represent little more than an instinctive reaction against any coherent plan of action, and a horror of following through with the logic of progressive–and actually, “moderate”–analysis of why the economy has collapsed and what, specifically, needs to be done to revive the country.
Actually, says Joe Klein the “moderate-liberal,” this budget is moderate:
… The budget has to be seen in ...
Catching up
The Sideshow —
... : "Here's my thought: The money is going to the European banks. But to a significant degree, the money the European banks were playing with was from the oil-rich Middle East. If that can be proved, can you imagine the furor over giving money to AIG which flows through to European banks in order to make whole a bunch of wealthy Arab potentates." (And a link on the same page tells me I missed it the other day when Joe Klein finally admitted that: "We are at the end of a 30-year period of radical conservatism, a period so right-wing that many of those now ...
