If I wrote for The New York Times it would piss me off beyond measure that I had to share type with David Brooks. I know from direct, personal conversation that actual Timesmen (or at least one of them) don’t feel that way — there’s a pervasive issue there with the self-conceit of a newsroom papacy with concommitant infallibility. But still, it must gall on some deep level to know that all the hard work of doing actual journalism could get lumped in with the sloth and intellectual dishonesty of the newspaper business’s best two minute man.
Case in point: today’s Brooks keening that is almost a type specimen of hackery. It’s a perfect more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger column about the terrible nastiness of politics today (it wasn’t like that when honorable men walked the land!) that somehow manages to land on precisely the talking point the Romney campaign hopes will offer some cover for their candidate’s foreign policy and security weakness.
Let’s go to the videotape! (h/t Warner Wolf). Brooks starts out by trotting out what appear to be casual, but are in fact carefully crafted assertions:
Maybe a campaign is like a courtship…Maybe a campaign is like a big version of “American Idol.”….Maybe, on the other hand, hiring a president is like hiring a plumber….You could make a case that most campaigns are a little of all three, though the proportions vary from year to year.
Study those phrases well, grasshoppers, for here you see one of Brooks’ standard tropes, and a measure of the skill he wields to much greater effect than lesser hacks like McArdle or his mini-me, Douthat. What he’s written is mostly piffle, of course — but he has, as he usually does, inserted the crucial weasel words: “maybe…maybe…you could…are a little of…” Push him on any part of his claim here, and he can just pillsbury doughboy back into the “maybe nots” or the “perhaps you could make a different case…” and wobble on.
More important for his rhetorical aims, Brooks cleverly poses what appears to be an open ended list, which he then slams shut by declaring that “most [weasel again, that rodent-lover] campaigns are a little of all three.” What was a chain of musing suddenly becomes the ground of all that follows. He’s transformed assumptions into facts — his single most common stupid pundit trick — and we’re off to the races.
Up next, the pearl clutching:
So far, though, the 2012 presidential campaign is fitting into none of these categories. It’s being organized according to a different metaphor.
As an aside: Dear David: Out here where most of us live, campaigns are organized in the material world, and this one now confronts corporations, metamorphosized into people, along with crazed billionaires, dumping unlimited boluses of cash into the race. The framing of political dispute in that context is not built on a metaphor; it is a direct response to an actual present, in-the-world circumstance. Just saying, you pretentious sack of wind.
But I digress…
This year, both organizations seem to visualize the campaign as a boxing match or a gang fight. Whichever side can hit the other side harder will somehow get awarded the champion’s belt.
So far this year, both President Obama and Mitt Romney seem more passionate about denying the other side victory than about any plank in their own agendas.
Another sidetrack: Dear David: I know that this will cause you pain, but I have to break it to you that campaign politics at this (or really any) level is actually about winning. Denying your opponent victory is not an aesthetic choice. It’s the goal. Sorry, old tool.
But I digress…
Both campaigns have developed contempt for their opponent, justifying their belief that everything, then, is permitted.
Oh my! Mabel get my nitroglycerin! I do declare that I feel palpitations!
Both sides do it. Of course! How could I have been so blind?
In both campaigns, you can see the war-room mentality developing early. Attention spans shrink to a point. Gone is much awareness of the world outside the campaign. All focus is on the news blip of the moment — answering volley for volley. If they bring a knife, you bring a gun. If they throw a bomb, you throw two.
Really? First, again, it’s not exactly news to anyone who actual does politics that you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. But anyone watching the actual Obama campaign claiming that they aren’t playing a long game as well as a short one isn’t paying attention. In Brooks’ case, this means he’s willfully not doing so; he’s actively not-knowing anything that would confound his ability to depict his fantasy world. That’s what, in real journalism, we call failure. As for awareness of the world outside the campaign…let’s try to finish this screed before 0-dark-hundred and simply say that I haven’t noticed Obama ceasing to do his presidenting whilst kneecapping his eminently target-rich opponent. Last I heard, walking while chewing gum is a requirement of the job.
Both sides are extraordinarily willing to flout respectability to show that they are tough enough to bare the knuckles.
Oh, Thank You Lord.
He actually just says it. “Both sides…” do it. It’s the one sure sign that points to the howler to come. For we know that in just about any dyadic relationship, both sides don’t do it in the same way, whatever it may be. Given that it’s Brooks, we know that what’s about to come is a beauty of false equivalence. Let’s see…
In November, the Romney campaign ran a blatantly dishonest ad in which President Obama purportedly admits that if the election is fought on the economy, he will lose. The quote was a distortion, but the effectiveness of the ad was in showing Republican professionals and primary voters that Romney was going to play by gangland rules, that he was tough enough and dishonest enough to do so, too.
Note two things: Romney is. by Brooks own statement, a blatant liar.
See also that Brooks is a rather more subtle corrupter of the truth: he claims that the point of the ad was to persuade Republicans that Romney is enough of a thug to be president. I’ll grant him that, but this was hardly the only point of the Romney spot; rather, this ad is one of a series, still ongoing, trying to paint Obama as a failure as a steward of the economy. To suggest that this was mere inside GOP baseball and hence, by dogwhistle implication, not quite a real lie, is itself a material distortion.
But remember: Both Sides Do It! So what was the Obama sin, equivalent to Romney’s out-and-out lie?
Last week, the Obama campaign ran a cheap-shot ad on the death of Osama bin Laden. Part of the ad was Bill Clinton effectively talking about the decision to kill the terrorist. But, in the middle, the Obama people threw in a low-minded attack on Romney.
That would have been this ad:
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/BD75KOoNR9k” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
This, Mr. Brooks, is what Harry Truman meant when he said that he didn’t give the Republicans hell, he just told the truth and they think it’s hell.
It is a fact that Obama made the final decision and gave the order to attack bin Laden. It is true, as President Clinton says in the piece, that we hire our presidents to make exactly this kind of hard choice. It is true that Romney publicly suggested that this was not a high priority goal of his, and that it was not something he would necessarily do. The record isn’t obscure or controversial here.
And it is just as true that this is a campaign. We’re in the midst of making a choice presented to American voters as to which of two men we wish to take on such difficult tasks. Directly comparing one record to another is not just an ordinary feature of any campaign; it’s essential. There’ nothing “low-minded” about pointing out that Obama did one thing, while Romney had indicated he would not.
Plus, of course, there’s that deeper problem:
Brooks himself admits Romney is a liar. Brooks himself acknowledges, in effect, that the Obama piece is accurate. He just doesn’t like it. So he lies himself, and says the two acts — lying, and presenting a factually supported argument that caused Brooks pain — are the same.
It’s just a coincidence, of course, that this false equivalence falls directly into line with what has become the chorus-line GOP response to the embarrassing truth that Obama pursued and caught bin Laden where Bush did not and Romney — taking W. Mitt at his word* — would not have done.
I admit that there isn’t much else available to the political hacks trying to prop up the kind of mendacious and unqualified candidate presented to them in the person of the failed one-term governor of Massachusetts. But Brooks’ problem, and that of everyone who gets a byline at his shop, is that if you lie down too often with the hogs, it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference in between one mammal and the next in the wallow.
PS: I realize I never actually got to the Nixon howler up top of the column. Basically, Brooks claims that Nixon ran as a plumber (and yes, he made that joke) … the guy who would come in and fix stuff. I guess Brooks has forgotten about the Southern Strategy and the “secret plan to end the war.” Ah well.
*A high risk proposition, I’ll concede.
Update: You make one lousy rodent mistake and you end up ratting out the whole thread.
Image: Leonardo da Vinci, Lady With an Ermine, c. 1490
Egg Berry
That Brooks column is just … stupid on so many levels.
debbie
Where is the Democratic response to all this Republican outrage? They need to get out there and remind people of how the Republicans politicized 9/11 — not only to further their own re-elections but to start a bogus war. Where is that truth?
Omnes Omnibus
Weasels aren’t rodents, but, aside from that, well said.
Tom Levenson
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah well…
Will fix when I get to a real computer.
Baud
@debbie:
You just read it. The more important question is what is our response to this Republican outrage?
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: You can’t tell people too much of what they don’t want to hear if you want to get elected/re-elected. Not too many people can do what Cole did and call bullshit on their former beliefs and affiliations. Most need to be gently nudged in a new direction and need to draw a curtain around the bullshit. Too many people were Bush cheerleaders or at least bought into the bullshit for a winning campaign to spend too much time exploring the past.
c u n d gulag
And Brooks wrote this insipid piece, even though Paul Krugman called him out and warned him on this bullsh*t weeks ago.
Mr. Krugman – the ball is clearly in your court.
ATTACK!!!
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
They aren’t? I did not know that, what are they?
Mino
It appears that on this subject, the Republicans have decided to lick their wounds and move on. I guess Brooks is providing the pivot?
And weasels are skunks(actually both are quasi-bears).
I jerked as I scrolled down the artwork and saw that head.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemizel: Weasels. They are related to otters, badgers, and mink. Ravenous little carnivores is what they are.
Schlemizel
@Mino:
Went & looked it up & weasels are of the order Carnivora suborder, Caniformia. They include bears and sea lions!?!
Skunks are Carnivora but Musteloidea so not as related according to wiki
ETA:@Omnes Omnibus: THANKS!
Mino
@c u n d gulag: His new book, End This Depression Now, is gonna cause heartburn to a lot of corporatists. Alice Rivkin and John Breux shuld be timetraveled to 18th century France.
A new freckle is his calling out the hereditary tone creeping into capitalism’s defenders. Get ready for divine right of kings making a comeback.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
For a fighter, Romney reminds me of an eight year old spoiled brat who gets sputtering hysterical after having the shit kicked out of him. Of course this makes Obama the thug from the wrong side of the tracks but I’ll take the winner any day. I’m waiting for Romney to start yelling “Mommmmmmmmyyyyyyy”.
Mino
@Schlemizel: Was just naming the closest, most disreputable relative. To save the metaphor.
Deen
Brooks also ends his article with this:
The thing is, that the Obama add actually did contain more positive messaging than negative messaging, as even Brooks seems to admit. After all, the majority of the ad consists of Clinton speaking (“effectively”, even, according to Brooks), while the attack was merely thrown into the middle. Also notice how he never mentions any positive side of the Romney ad at all.
R. Porrofatto
Yeah, David, this is all brand new. Do we even need to look for the non-existent Brooks column complaining about all the Swift Boat lies and Purple Heart band-aids and “pals around with terrorists” crap of the last two presidential elections, along with truckloads of other shit? Christ what a right-wing hack.
stoned stats
Welcome back, Tom. Great read as always.
Tom Levenson
@stoned stats: Thanks.
Not really back yet, at least not all the way. Played hooky into the wee hours to lance my Brooks-bile-boil.
Ash Can
Dear David Brooks,
Your pet presidential candidate is an incompetent, feckless coward. Grow the hell up and deal with it.
Signed,
The world outside of your bubble
debbie
@ Omnes Omnibus:
I agree that you don’t want to beat people over the head, but Obama or a spokesperson could point it out once and then move on.
kerFuFFler
@Schlemizel: I think you misread something. Weasels are indeed mustelids along with minks, badgers otters and others. Skunks are no longer thought to be mustelids. Weasels are not closely related to bears though both are caniforms.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Caniformia
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Obama’s car in the ditch metaphor does exactly that. He trots it out every once in a while.
Hawes
What a menagerie! Romney is a weasel or perhaps a rat. I don’t know, it was dark and he darted behind a dumpster.
Nixon: clearly a sewer rat scavenging around the pipes like a plumber (OMG, REALLY David?!)
Obama is apparently a peacock of some sort for showing his feathers.
But Brooks is clearly a crow, braying, shrieking and cawing at the blue jay near the bird feeder. Endlessly disrupting the stillness of a lazy morning.
Winston Smith
Weasels are mustalids, motherf—er, not rodents.
I don’t even know why I read this site sometimes.
Turgidson
@debbie:
I’m guessing the Democratic messaging thinking here is, something along the lines of “do nothing to interrupt your enemy when he’s busy making a hilarious ass of himself.”
I think the standard Democratic response to this nonsense should just be to hold up a picture of GWB on that goddamn aircraft carrier in that goddamn flight suit with that GOD DAMN mission accomplished banner behind him, and give a sarcastic grin, not bothering to even say a word. But I admit that I’m too much of a DFH pinko to be trusted to find the ideal broadly appealing message. And Jon Stewart already did more or less what I suggest.
Ejoiner
Speaking of Da Vinci – just finished “Da Vinci’s Ghost” by Toby Lester and can’t recommend it enough. A fun, informative and enlightening read.
Hoodie
Sometimes the contempt is justified, and everything that is actually truthful and relevant is “permitted” (as if a toady like Brooks gets to decide what is and is not permitted). Romney has shown himself to be contemptible — he’s a lying, inconstant sack of shit, born to privilege with a sense of entitlement a mile wide. He has presented no reason whatsover as to why he should be president, and a hell of a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t. Now that Obama has metaphorically jammed one home from the free-throw line over the top of this talent-challenged, accomplishment-free trust fund baby, Brooks is whining to the refs because Romney can’t even get out of his own way.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This painting is my desktop wallpaper.
I saw it when it was “on tour” at the National Gallery of Art back in the mid 90s. It simply captivated me. An amazing portrait.
The museum curator or head historian or whoever at the time speculated that the black background was done much later and that chances are there’s a landscape underneath. He tried to get the museum that owns the portrait (it resides in Krakow Poland) to allow them to do some testing but they didn’t.
Elizabelle
Love the portrait of the woman and the ermine.
Brooks? Meh.
PS: what’s the ornamentation on her forehead? Is it a necklace, or trim of some sort?
Randy P
@Elizabelle: I had the same reaction. And what looks like her hair actually wraps under her chin. So is that not her hair, but some sort of silk thingie wrapping her face?
And does she have a light-colored unibrow, or is that more ornamentation?
I’m afraid I’m not much of an art lover for art’s sake. Instead, I’m more fascinated by the glimpses into the lives of the subjects. I’m a big fan of Pieter Bruegel the Elder for that reason.
grandpa john
@Egg Berry:
And how is this one any different than all the others he has wrote
Cerberus
He also seemed to glide over the fact that Nixon ran such a dirty campaign both times that not only are Nixon’s “dirty tricks” and ratfucking some of the greatest examples of how to run a campaign like an asshole, but it actually ended up ending his fucking presidency.
But hey, why not take the time to further pollute the waters with false equivalence by making Nixon look better as well.
driftglass
Once again, the 2012 “New York Times” David Brooks has managed to forget every single thing that 2003 “Weekly Standard” David Brooks wrote about war and politics.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/05/today-is-annual-mission-accomplished.html
driftglass
And, once again, neocon scuttlefish use David Brooks’ NYT prestige as ablative shielding to protect their own, lying idiocy.
“Even David Brooks…”
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/05/even-david-brooks.html
Mnemosyne
@Randy P:
I’m not sure what the terms are for that particular fashion, but I think she’s wearing what’s essentially a lace-trimmed cap that wraps under her chin — the “unibrow” is the lace trim across her forehead.
danielx
And of course we wouldn’t want to cause David Brooks any pain.
What really pains David Brooks is that – for once – a Democratic president is campaigning exactly as Republican presidential candidates do, and yes, that means bare knuckle political tactics. When your opponent is listening to the advice of Karl Rove, has a quarter of a billion dollars of his own money and unlimited money available from loopy right wing billionaires, what the fuck does Brooks expect?
Dumb question, he expects the Democrats to act like nice ladies and gentlemen who compromise because that’s the way Brooks thinks they should act, while Republicans lying their asses off while playing for keeps, well, that’s just how Republicans are…to Brooks. Actually, that’s as it should be for Brooks, because that’s the way the world works according to the Village. As long as Brooks’ expectations are met all is well, and if the country goes to hell in consequence it affects him not at all. He is certainly not going to lose his job or insurance.
When David Brooks’ worldview is violated, repeatedly and without lubricant, that’s when he gets upset and sorrowful.
Jennifer
I’ll paraphrase what I noted over at roy’s piece at the VV a couple of days ago:
I agree with Brooks; this ad was really, really tacky. To class it up, Obama should have had an aircraft carrier parked a few miles offshore, thereby delaying the return home of the troops aboard and effecting the expenditure of many thousands of taxpayer dollars, and flown out to it in a fighter jet, outfitted in a flight suit with a pair of socks stuffed in the crotch, to pose in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner to claim victory for a mission that wouldn’t be “accomplished” for another 9 years, if then.
I swear to Christ, both Stewart and Colbert are stealing my material.
Rick Massimo
Jebus, it’s only early May and Brooks is in “What is a campaign?” mode.
Next month it’ll be “What is this ‘winning an election’ thing we all talk about? What does it REALLY mean?”
By July, “Who actually wins an election?”
August: “What does ‘voting for someone’ really mean?”
September: “Have you ever looked at a ballot, man? I mean, REALLY looked at it?”
The subtext to every one of them, of course, will be “Romney 2012.” Being David Brooks, he can’t say anything else. But he has to find some way of saying it that doesn’t make him sound like the GOP-talking-point repeater he is.
danielx
@grandpa john:
Well, yes, but every so often our Mr. Brooks comes up with one that rises to the heights (or sinks to the depths) of absolute absurdity. I admit this column doesn’t have a keynote phrase like “Burkean alarm bells” or “Hayekian modesty” that will become a synonym for “pretentious assholery”, but it still ranks well up there or down there as the case may be.
danielx
@Rick Massimo:
It does cause one to wonder if Brooks fires up a big kazoo of medicinal boo before he sits down to crank out (squeeze out?) one of these clangers. On the other hand, there’s also my theory that he’s got some custom software where all he does is put in a subject and a couple of keywords, hit a key, and 800 words of carefully constructed gibberish pours out.
Jennifer
And also too on another thing I noted in my comment at VV:
If we want to talk about fucking tacky, I think that bar has been set so impossibly high that we may never again reach it, please god. Because for tacky, nothing tops wandering around on a stage, looking under the podium, while playing a clip of “searching” the Oval Office for the “missing” WMDs, while the “liberal media” in attendance laughs uproariously at the funny funny joke that killed thousands of American troops, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and cost over a trillion dollars – largely thanks to their aid in covering up the lies which started it and beating the drum to rile up public opinion in favor of it in the first place.
If that kind of tacky can be topped, I sure the fuck don’t ever want to see it.
Deb T
@Hawes:
Romney is a crow! Hey, I like crows. I respect them for their intelligence. Romney is more of a dodo – although he’s not extinct — not yet (and I mean that politically! – politically extinct).
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle, @Randy P:
From Wikipedia:
dsale
@Cerberus:
Yeah, it’s not Nixon didn’t have “plumbers” on his payroll…just read Chuck Colson’s obit…
Catsy
Any conservative or pundit whining about Obama’s ad about getting OBL needs to have their mug permanently affixed in the encyclopedia entry for chutzpah. Right after they are permanently exiled from polite society in a firestorm of ridicule.
There really are no words adequate to describe this level of shamelessness and mendacity.
Tehanu
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
This is my favorite painting (except for Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath”) and I have a sizable framed print of it above my desk. I’ve never had the chance to actually see it, alas. My personal, idiosyncratic take on it is to identify it with a fictional character, the Lady Fiorinda, in E.R. Eddison’s “A Fish Dinner in Memison.” Fiorinda is the avatar of Aphrodite as well as being — like Cecilia Gallerani, the “Lady” of the portrait — a Duke’s mistress. I don’t think Eddison knew the painting, but I like to think he would have recognized her if he had seen it.