David Brooks - You Rock!

David Brooks is a really smart guy. I wanted to come up with a lead that was a little more sophisticated, but I failed to come up with anything that didn’t sound pretentious. Brooks is just a smart guy – the kind of guy who if you were in a meeting with him, you’d walk away saying “wow, he’s smart.” This is opposed to most conservative columnists. You’d walk away from meeting them saying, “wow, he’s an arrogant blowbag.” Sorry Robert Novak – Crossfire didn't help your image.

Brooks isn’t a blowbag and there lies his charm. Where other conservatives are dower, he is optimistic. Where some are dark and insulting he is forward-looking and even, rosy. He is the original item, the real deal, and a person with a completely unique outlook. The irony is that he comes from a side that sneers at originality because its suspect and strongly dislikes creativity, because it is soft.

Brooks isn’t taken seriously by conservatives or by the Republican base. They see him as too liberal. When I said to my students this past term that Brooks was the conservative columnist for the New York Times, they scoffed. Anyone who was conservative for the Times must be too liberal to be mainstream, so went their thinking. Likewise, when I have sent his articles to some of my more conservative friends, they think he’s too liberal. Crunchy is the word that they use; he’s a crunchy Republican. He’s soft and fluffy, not meaty and mean, like Cheney.

He’s not liberal; he just he isn’t their kind of conservative. Their kind is what the party has become in recent years. It is largely an ironic blend of evangelism and reaction. Like a spider retreating into a crevice from the beam of a flashlight, reactionary conservatives retreat from new ideas into their comfortable, but dank, corner.

The Republican Party has become what John Stuart Mill called “the stupid party”. Allegedly (though there is some dispute) he was describing backwater conservatives who were enslaved to the status quo and refused to believe in progressive ideas, like science or social reform in mid-nineteenth century England. The conservatives, or Tories, were so reactionary that they refused to open up their eyes to either the injustice around them or the ideas blossoming to correct it – ideas from science, technology, or social philosophy. Sound familiar?

Brooks is the human antithesis of “the stupid party” for he is a vibrant and refreshing mind and he comes from an intellectual side, or Party, seriously lacking in both qualities. The fact that he isn’t accepted by the stupider elements of the Republican Party is no surprise. They like their columnists like they like their preachers – all rant and no substance beyond the skin of the onion. Think of Sean Hannity and David Brooks taking an essay exam in political science class – who would you put money on?

Today David Brooks outlined the first in a series of columns he is calling the “Human Capital Agenda” an agenda he thinks can save a Republican candidate for President from being out-thought by the Democrats. It is a big agenda, a bold new strategy for opportunity and social growth, and one that I fear at the outset is doomed for the intellectual graveyard. As long as the Republican candidates continue to pander to the stupid party within their party, they will forfeit the ideas race because they will lose their credibility to moderate voters.

Why would I want to vote for someone who was only a month ago a toady to the crazy wing of my party? Why would I trust that person with my future? What does that say about their sense of conviction? What does it say about mine if I vote for them?

These are real questions that get to the heart of the Republican candidate’s credibility with those of us in the middle. We want a person with the ideas of Brooks, the big thinking vision that can transform the political, but that sort of conviction is not found in panderers. Ironically, that sort of statesmanship is found in a visionary columnist from the New York Times.