Smartocracy

David Brooks is upset that our next president is going to be staffed by smart guys.

Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists.

Well we just got through 8 years of Dumb-guy you want to have a beer with rule; maybe this will be slightly more stable and less of a hassle than that.

David Brooks Electoral Advice

David Brooks is an astonishingly banal person, as I may have commented on in the past. His latest article is about the election. His overall point is that the candidates need to be weird. Distinct from their parties. And Obama can best accomplish that by attacking his parties base.

Obama needs to occasionally criticize his own side. If he can’t take on his own party hacks, he’ll never reclaim the mantle of systemic change. Specifically, he needs to attack the snobs who are savaging Sarah Palin’s faith and family. Many liberals claim to love working-class families, but the moment they glimpse a hunter with an uneven college record, they hop on chairs and call for disinfectant.

So basically Obama needs to come to the defense of his opponent, in order to score some points with . . . who exactly?

I'm also curious what Mr. Brooks thinks about comments on her lack of qualifications, the seemingly cynical way she was connected, the lack of a real vetting process when other more qualified candidates were snubbed, the deceptions the McCain bill has practiced regarding her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, and so on and so forth. Should Obama defend Palin on those issues as well?

But don't worry, Brooks has some advice for McCain as well. And no it's not that McCain should take on those Conservatives who are telling likes about Barack Obama and his family. Rather he thinks McCain should stress his willingness to work with Congressional Democrats.

If I were McCain, I’d make the divided government argument explicit. The Republicans are intellectually unfit to govern right now, but balancing with Democrats, they might be able to do some good. I’d have McCain tell the country that he looks forward to working with Congressional Democrats, that he is confident they can achieve great things together.

That's not a bad idea when it comes to winning over the independents and disaffected liberals. But it totally runs against the grain of the current McCain Campaign and the state of the Republican party. The convention held last week was clearly more about the evil Democrats and how they are going to ruin things than it was about any kind of positive agenda the Republicans have. To turn around now and say that "Yeah Democrats and Republicans disagree, but we can work together for the good of the country" would have a couple of effects.

1. Independent voters would love it, but probably not enough to completely counter the argument that John McCain agrees with Bush 90% of the time.

2. Conservative Commentators, starting with Limbaugh, would go out of their minds with anger. Liberals are the enemy to this crowd; we aren't to be gotten along with. We are to be defeated.

And honestly I'm not sure the warmth that Independents would receive this announcement with would be enough to counterbalance the hellfire the Conservative Base would rain on it.

Update

Yesterday I was super busy work wise and so didn't have time to update. Today I'm not that busy, but I am super pissed off so probably not going to write much. I will direct you to this editorial by David Brooks, who's a conservative idiot at the New York Times. That sad thing is that he's not wrong.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

Hard to argue with that. But it's primary season, so Ms. Clinton obviously has the right to fight this as long as she wants to.

He's Huckalicious

David Brooks wrote about Mike Huckabee yesterday, who he describes as "the one candidate acceptable to all factions." Except, presumably, those who want to hold the White House in 2008.

I'm joking, mostly. Huckabee has some strengths and some weaknesses. He's definitely a solid Christian conservative, and they will turn out for him. Which I suppose is his real strength - with the Christian Conservatives clamoring against Guiliani, McCain and Romney, he's a breath of fresh air.

But, as referenced above, his foreign policy would be, perhaps, softer towards Europe. But he would continue the degradation of Civil Rights begun under Bush and he would continue the policy of preemptive war that has worked so well in Iraq.

It's hard to know what people are going to want in 2008, but it doesn't seem likely that they are going to want more of the Bush Madness. And if Huckabee predicates his campaign on that, well, Clinton's "return to normalcy" campaign might be very attractive.

David Limbaugh vs. Glenn Greenwald vs. David Brooks. Also appearing, the Daily Howler and Christ Matthews

Talk about a battle of the titans! Nah - there's only one titan in this particular fight, and it isn't the brother of Rush Limbaugh. David Brooks, in the New York Times, wrote about a visit to the President, in which he said this (unfortunately from behind the firewall so I can't link to it).

But Bush is not blind to the realities in Iraq. After all, he lives through the events we're not supposed to report on: the trips to Walter Reed, the hours and hours spent weeping with or being rebuffed by the families of the dead.

Rather, his self-confidence survives because it flows from two sources. The first is his unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: ''It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist.''

Glenn Greenwald picked up on that language in what is described as a fawning tribute to our "great leader" and wrote this.

This has been the great unexamined issue of the Bush presidency -- the extent to which Bush's unwavering commitment to Middle East militarism is, as Bush himself has made clear, rooted in theological and religious convictions, not in pragmatic or geopolitical concerns.

. . . At least in large part, Bush sees the "battles" he is waging in epic theological and religious terms, and as a result, political constraints and pragmatic limits are irrelevant to his actions. It is such an uncomfortable reality -- that religious fervor drives our wars and other foreign policy -- that it has been ignored almost completely over the last five years, even though ample evidence exists proving that it is true, beginning with his own continuous statements.

Daily Howler noted that this striking passage was not commented on in the letters the Time posted in response to the article, and suggested a reason why.

Our speculation: The Times did get letters about Bush’s statement; they got a lot of letters about it. But uh-oh! At the Times, it isn’t polite to discuss this pol’s religion—to let conservatives even imagine that you’re painting Bush as a “religious nut.” And so, the editors chose to ignore this striking part of Brooks’ column. Seven letters discuss Brooks’ piece—and its most startling passage is AWOL.

Is that what happened? We don’t know. But Greenwald surely wasn’t alone in his reaction to Brooks’ column. In truth, David Brooks provided a service when he quoted the commander in chief making this religious statement. But darlings! It simply isn’t done! That is where the discussion will end!

Chris Matthews was asked about this statement on the Tonight Show, and said, "Well, if he was going to play Joan of Arc, we wouldn't have elected him. Getting whispers from heaven is scary business. The guys we're fighting say that, too."" To which David Limbaugh had a response.

While I can't prove a negative, I am confident Bush never said that God is on our side in this war -- though it wouldn't bother me if he had -- or that God directed him to attack Iraq. He has said he continually prays for divine guidance and reads the Bible every day. That is wise, commendable and utterly no different from what Abraham Lincoln and many, probably most presidents in our history did.

This is not a distinction without a difference. Matthews is unequivocally implying that Bush has claimed to get his marching orders directly from God and that that is scary -- as if he's in some kind of spiritual trance. It simply isn't true, and Matthews is distorting the truth in suggesting it is.

Thank you for playing Mr. Limbaugh. But from what I hear, from David Brooks, that Bush, speaking from a theological perspective believes that history is moving in his way. That doesn't really sound all that different from saying that God is on his side.