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Brooks went gray so young! (Photo: Miller Center / Flickr)
That is the only conclusion that readers of David Brooks’ column could reach. After all, he tells us:
Today’s Republican Party unabashedly celebrates this ambition and definition of success. Speaker after speaker at the convention in Tampa, Fla., celebrated the striver, who started small, struggled hard, looked within and became wealthy. …
Republicans promised to get government out of the way. Reduce the burden of debt. Offer Americans an open field and a fair chance to let their ambition run.
He then adds:
On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted Democratic Party, which says: We don’t have an agenda, but we really don’t like theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.
If Brooks was as old as he looks he would remember that back in 1980 Ronald Reagan promised to cut taxes and get government out of the way. However he must not be old enough to have been following politics way back then.
Of course if Brooks was as old as he looked, he certainly would be able to remember back to 2000, when George W. Bush promised to cut taxes and get government out of the way. However Brooks must not be old enough to have been following politics back in 2000 either.
If he were old enough to remember Reagan, or at least Bush, he would realize that Governor Romney and Representative Ryan are simply rehashing tired old rhetoric about individuals striving to succeed and how this benefits everyone. He would remember that we tried their route. The 1980s we had what was at the time the slowest decade of growth since the Great Depression, and the growth we had overwhelmingly went to those at the top. Workers in the middle and bottom of the distribution saw their wages stagnate.
We then went the same route in the last decade. This led to a completely lost decade for the economy, with the worst downturn since the Great Depression (which happened before President Obama took office).
While it is certainly fair to blame the Democrats for not being full of creative ideas, the reason that we are facing the economic disaster we now have is due to the fact that we followed the path that Romney and Ryan are now pushing. If Brooks were as old as he looks he could be blamed for having so little knowledge of the country’s recent political history, but this young man will just have to do a bit more homework so that he can recognize rehashed rhetoric and old tired ideas.
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economy and Policy Research. He also writes a regular blog, Beat the Press, where this post original appeared
16 Comments
… and to “unleash the miracle of the free market.”
Reagan’s gambit worked. For the 1%. Not so well for the 99%.
Brooks is a sub-par party hack who exists to author puffy PR pieces. He’s utterly vacuous, he’s a lot like Peggy Noonan. They conjure up sweet images of family values that really appeal to “conservatives”, who in turn are people who do not like to be addressed with hard facts and realism. “Conservatives” are people who prefer judgemental and narrow-minded denunciations of others based on “values” – or race, or religion, or any sort of tribal factor available – to dealing with reality on its own terms.
Brooks makes a very good living shilling for Republicans.
And he prpbably likes making a very good living.
None of the shills are honest, even the ones who seem oh! so very, very principled, like Maddow and O’Donnnell.
this po po whore………well he aint poverty stricken ,just pathetic
Examples, please, of Maddow’s dishonesty? Lots of people seem to enjoy trashing her, but rarely do I ever see any evidence for their snideness. Where’s your evidence?
Oh, I note that you pontificated in the a.m. while this was at myFDL…. so I doubt that you will be back to support your blanket statement of dishonesty. Too bad about that. We like cites here.
Yeah, with you there. If bank accounts are anything to go by, the shills are smart. I do wonder how they pick sides.
Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, trickle down Raygunomics. The Harvard MBA candidate (G W Bush). The candidates with business crenditals; Bush and Cheney. Yup, this is all stale and know to fail.
In other words; Romney is Bush
“. . . you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering rejuvenating reform.” –0–
Are you fucking kidding me? If by ‘reform’ you mean that tired old whore named tax cuts and deregulation, then yeah, they’re offing ‘reform’ in spades.
It absolutely stuns me every time these assholes prattle on rhapsodizing longingly for a time that never existed and never will. What in the pluperfect Hell are they smoking, popping, huffing, or injecting to come up with this shit? Further, what are the rubes who believe them taking to swallow it hook, line, and sinker? Dumber than a bag ‘o hammers. Man.
The assholes do extremely well on that regimen. And Obama has been dismal, evil. I listened to a couple of those people in the I-voted-for-Obama-but-I won’t-again ad and the thing that struck me were the references to deficits. I’m telling you, the one percenters have spent their money wisely. People BELIEVE. Given the composition and inclinations of the Democratic Party today, I see no realistic chance that a progressive agenda can be enacted to demonstrate its efficacy.
It’s a Dorian Gray thing, you wouldn’t understand.
Brooks is not interesting; he’s just another whiny, entitled white guy who likes to lie. What’s interesting is his position of authority.
I cannot find a direct quote, although I searched for it. On a panel show, it may have been on Bill Maher, she mentioned (paraphrasing), "I cannot get into their heads and understand why they would attack us." in reference to so-called terrorists. What I took away is that she finds it contradictory that a sane person from the Middle East would want to hurt America, and by extension Americans.
I find that extremely intellectually disingenuous, which makes me deeply suspicious of her portrayed place on MSNBC. There is no way any intelligent person (or even one who is a representative of a marginalized group, i.e. a gay American) can utter such a sentiment without lying. You merely have to imagine it is your friend, family or loved one who is being vaporized by a drone attack. It is that easy.
Although she is an otherwise good source of information on all things, which don't pertain to criticizing Obama in any substantial way.
I used to really enjoy her.
Yeah, well….
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-01-23-ronald-reagan-president-obama_N.htm
I am always amused to read the letters to the editor n the NYT following Brooks’ columns. They are almost uniformly negative. Of course, one could postulate that there is a selective process operating, and that would probably be true, but with Freidman and Douthat also offering their weekly commentary, one would expect a fair number of conservatives to be reading the paper and offering support to clueless David. But, there is very little. He always starts out with a nice couple of paragraphs that seem reasonable and accurate, but he then draws totally strange conclusions from those beginning statements. I usually get half-way through his column and then start shouting at the paper — in private, mostly.