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Escaping from the week’s bad news for Republicans, David Brooks revisits the nature-nurture debate in a discourse on the explanatory limits of evolutionary psychology, a favorite ten syllable phrase he trots out whenever the horizon looks bleak for the GOP:
Has there ever been a time when there were so many different views of human nature floating around all at once? The economists have their view, in which rational people coolly chase incentives. Traditional Christians have their view, emphasizing original sin, grace and the pilgrim’s progress in a fallen world. And then there are the evolutionary psychologists, who get the most media attention.
Imagine, Mr. Brooks building a column of distraction on three things he knows little about, in order to deal with having just read his monthly charge card statement:
Shopping isn’t merely a way to broadcast permanent, inborn traits. For some people, it’s also an activity of trying things on in the never-ending process of creating and discovering who they are.
I imagine he’s also making his sponsors and their spouses feel comfortable with their credit card bills, too, though his crowd uses them to manage cash, not because they haven’t any.
Back in the real world, Paul Krugman articulates his worries about which Obama will hold sway over the other when it comes to reforming health care:
On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold.
But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.
He worries that Obama will reform health care with the same "too little by half" approach he used not to reform financial services and the economy.
[T]he final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach.
Cost control is not just a Republican talking point used to derail reform. It is an essential element to effective, consumer-oriented reform. The debate is about whose costs get controlled. Will we reduce the power and exclusivity wielded by private insurers by establishing a credible, low administrative-cost public insurer? Will we give that public insurer the power to negotiate fees for drugs and services (a power denied the public in George Bush’s drugs plan for seniors)?
The government does both capably through Medicare and could replicate that with a wider mandate, and with adequate resources and informed oversight from Congress. Not much is at stake — hundreds of billions of dollars, the credibility of government involvement in any health care reform, and the health and pocketbooks of three hundred million Americans.
Mr. Krugman closes by using his bully pulpit at the Times to good effect, repeating a message Jane Hamsher has been putting into action:
Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough — no more gratuitous giveaways in the attempt to sound reasonable. And reform advocates have to keep up the pressure to stay on track. Yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good; but so is the not-good-enough-to-work. Health reform has to be done right.
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That first statement by Brooks demonstrates his abuse of the glittering generality. Which of his three topics – themselves badly summarized – actually gets more media attention? I would put them in the opposite order: 1) fundamentalist Christians and their pursuit of power politics; 2) economists and economics in a world of failing jobs, absentee employers and rapacious investment bankers; and 3) “evolutionary psychology”.
Mr. Brooks is attempting to distract his readership from important things, by both admiring and throwing stones at what is, for the public, an obscure discipline.
Yes, health care/insurance reform has to be done right. It’s big.
I think we don’t need to help private insurers. We should get out of their way by pulling back on any government assistance to them. No mandates.
The public option and expansion of doctors, nurses & community health centers to insure & care for the uninsured should do the job.
Some other regulations, such as no-preexisting-conditions or insurer interference in medical care, also need to exist for the consumer’s protection.
Studies to determine ‘best practices’ to advise doctors a changes occur would seem to be obviously good.
Thus, the President’s goals of lowering cost, insuring everyone and improving quality can be achieved without touching private insurers or care-givers in huge ways. A few regulations to avoid harm to consumers is all.
If Medicaid expansion to enable more people to be able to afford the public option is to be done, then it has to be restrained to prevent the entire bill from being too expensive.
The Medicare donut fix is good, but not fundamental to the program.
If private insurers don’t want to insure everyone, then the gov’t will do the job as insurer-of-last-resort!
Krugman is spot on about the issues and about Mr. Obama’s preference of negotiating with himself. That suggests less confidence than more, and a great need to stay in the middle, regardless of how much one or both poles shift position. Move the right one alone far enough right, and the new middle is the two-yard line, not the fifty-yard line.
earl, love your analysis of Brooks. Thank you. There is something hypnotic to many when Brooks begins to hold forth. Did he learn that art from WF Buckley? Not the same style as Buckley at all, not arch and pointedly snarky, but a kind of rhythm of superciliousness that glazes one’s mental functioning. And in terms of right philosophers, the bar is so low.
your take on obama is also right on, so very sadly. I was thinking that obama is a skillful and adept “reactor” but that leaves no room to be a “pro-actor” and things are so WRONG that he has got to learn to walk away from toxic, no win, status quo games. There is a moral compass which can help him. It is worrying that he seems to let cronyism among the political and military elite now, be a political compass to guide him, rather than using a moral and even LEGAL compass to guide.
I agree about Bobo: his sonorous babble is so gentle, it sells the most radical of agendas.
I think Obama’s comfortable with the status quo – look at his life story – and thinks that always looking for midfield between the goal posts is the politically smart and proper thing to do. He knows intellectually how far right the GOP shifted their goal post, but I assume he takes that for a political reality he can’t control and sticks to his game plan. I think that fundamentally misreads our needs and his opportunity.