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David Brooks: Lobbyists Are Best Equipped to Fix the Economy
Open Left - Front Page —
The New York Times' David Brooks uses his column today to tell the country that K Street lobbyists are the most qualified people in America to fix the economy. I'm not making this up: ...
Doubling Down
The American Scene —
... it’s also clear that we’re on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited. We will know that highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change. If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity. — David Brooks ...
State of the Union
Swampland —
... Faced with this swelling tide of activism, David Brooks makes his usual, intelligent case for Burkean conservatism--and against the innate optimism of liberals--in the Times today. If Obama tries to do everything, Brooks argues, he will do nothing well. Perhaps. But, in a time of crisis, a half-baked effort is better than no effort at all. In any case, the column leaves a crucial question unanswered: And therefore...what? Is there any alternative for Obama but to try to confront the problems coming at him like an amped-up video game? And if the President has no choice but to try ...
Rationalism In Obama
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
David Brooks worries today about the rationalism - to use an Oakeshottian term - of Obama's politics: I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do
nothing well. I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even
learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S.
economy. I fear they are going to try to undertake the biggest
administrative challenge in American history while refusing to hire the
people who can help the most: agency veterans who are registered
lobbyists. I worry that we’re ...
You know, if Brooksie is this upset, Obama must be doin' somethin' right
Corrente —
... Call me what you will -- naive, blindsided, gobsmacked, overcome, a turncoat, whatever -- if David Brooks, the New York times pundit, can be all "they don't know enough to do this much" a month into the new administration -- I can be thrilled. ...
Reach exceeding grasp?
Daimnation! —
David Brooks of the NY Times is worried--but hopes against hope:
We cannot successfully address any of our problems without addressing all of them.
Barack Obama, Feb. 21, 2009
...The political history of the 20th century is the history of social-engineering projects executed by well-intentioned people that began well and ended badly. There were big errors like communism, but also lesser ones, like a Vietnam War designed by the best and the brightest, urban renewal efforts that decimated neighborhoods, welfare ...
Avoiding the End of The World
Belmont Club —
If possible. David Brooks hopes to find comfort in Barack Obama’s premise that “we cannot successfully address any of our problems without addressing all of them,” but can’t. The reason is that Brooks long ago learned to distrust people who thought they had all the answers. “The political history of the 20th century is the history of social-engineering projects executed by well-intentioned people that began well and ended badly.” And Obama sounds like he’s got them all. These experiences drove me toward the crooked timber school of public philosophy: Michael Oakeshott, ...
When will Beltway Republicans start listening?
BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash —
... a popular consensus, against which the rather vulgar opposition is drowning upstream. For now, anyway. But doing something completely different about the now -- the immediate now -- is, after all, what the body politic voted for. Thus the polls' confirmation of this gelling of national sentiment should come as no surprise. What has pleasantly surprised, however, is that our present crisis is not being met by uncomprehending or ideologically resistant eyes among all conservatives. The Times' David Brooks , for instance, understands through a laudable sense of perspective that ...
Snap Judgments
Ross Douthat —
... of any Democratic President since LBJ, and did it so smoothly that you'd think he was just selling an incremental center-left pragmatism. I think that he has an acute sense - more acute than most people in Washington, probably - of just how much running room is open in front of him at the moment, and he intends to make the absolute most of it. Burkean temperament or no, this was not a Burkean speech by any stretch: It was the speech of a man seeking to turn a moment of crisis into a domestic-policy revolution, and oozing confidence from every pore along the way. Now all he ...
The power of government
Megan McArdle —
... David Brooks
today writes that Obama is about begin in the world's biggest political
engineering project with his economic stimulus package and other policy
proposals. While liberals think that government can fix things,
conservatives think that human society is way too complicated and
anytime that government gets involved, it makes a right mess of things.
Welfare=welfare queens. ...
2/25: After Round 1, It's Obama 1, Jindal 0
Blogometer —
... of any Democratic President since LBJ, and did it so smoothly that you'd think he was just selling an incremental center-left pragmatism. I think that he has an acute sense -- more acute than most people in Washington, probably -- of just how much running room is open in front of him at the moment, and he intends to make the absolute most of it. Burkean temperament or no, this was not a Burkean speech by any stretch: It was the speech of a man seeking to turn a moment of crisis into a domestic-policy revolution , and oozing confidence from every pore along the way. Now ...
Limbaugh v. Reason: A Four-Line Play
The Moderate Voice —
... KEVIN MCCARTHY (chairman of the ‘08 Republican Platform Committee, citing the platform’s preamble)
As the party of ideas, rather than a mere coalition of interests, we consider vigorous debate a strength, not a weakness.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
Yeah, right, like anyone’s going to believe that.
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For additional perspective: Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks.
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 ...
Obama: a president who would rather redistribute income than create wealth
THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS —
... who fancy themselves conservative and use big words like epistemological are having second thoughts about the second coming. ‘Bout time. ...
Helene Cooper Needs To Discover Google, Lexis
Obsidian Wings —
... last week to read heartfelt pleas to Obama from my Post
colleague David Ignatius
and David Brooks of the New York Times to get his priorities straight
and concentrate on the crucial task of rescuing banking, credit,
housing and jobs.
These are people who deeply admire and respect Obama and wish him
nothing but success. But, like some thoughtful congressional Democrats
with whom I have spoken, they worry that he has bitten off more than he
can chew. David Brooks, 2/23/09: Yet they [the Obama team] set off my Burkean alarm bells. I fear that ...
