Wednesday, January 20, 2010

What He Said


I'm not interested in becoming a one-trick pundit, but yesterday's David Brooks column was such a fat, hanging curveball that I had to actively restrain myself from unloading on it.

It wasn't easy. When Brooks, in an apparent effort to defend his long-running Obama man-crush, says things like, "[Obama] is no ideologue" or uses variations on the word "pragmatic" six times in one column to describe The One's administration, it's difficult not to, as P.J. O'Rourke once joked, lower the guns to deck level and load with grapeshot.

Fortunately for me, Rich Lowry was more than willing to man the cannons:

David Brooks tells us, once again, that Obama is no ideologue. Apparently, it's just his cool, thoughtful pragmatism that leads him to agree with Nancy Pelosi on practically every major domestic issue (his "voracious pragmatism"). I don't doubt that Obama's strategy meetings are civil, thoughtful, smart, and altogether impressive. The problem appears to be that there isn't anyone to interrupt during one of the meetings and say, very politely and thoughtfully, "Uh, sir, giving the unions a carveout until 2018 is disgusting. And, um, running a car company is a bad idea. And, er, most of things we're saying about the health care bill are kinda sorta untrue. If you'd forgive me, I'd just also like to mention that we've governed domestically like Pelsoi Democrats for the last year. I know that's just a bizarre conincidence owing to unusual circimstance beyond the control of our highly rational deliberations, but, you know, I just thought I'd put it out there — in the interests of civil and open dialogue, of course."

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