When I reached New York Times columnist David Brooks in D.C., I was most interested in getting his impressions of the University of Chicago from which he graduated as a history major in We skipped talking about his new, bestselling book, The Road to Character, in which he decries today’s focus on “resume virtues” by exploring the lives of people—from St. Augustine to Dwight Eisenhower—who exemplified what he calls “eulogy virtues.”
I couldn’t let him hang up without asking him about his obvious admiration for Rahm Emanuel, several times the subject of his columns, as well as David Axelrod, whom he once described as his “hero,” and Barack Obama, who is said to call Brooks his favorite conservative.
Because Brooks’s twice-a-week op-ed columns (he has written hundreds of them over the past plus years) often flirt with piousness, his recent split from his U. of C. classmate—Jane Hughes, who converted to Judaism and changed her name to Sarah Brooks—has been snarkily and gleefully noted by his critics. I’ve noticed that he is increasingly the butt of derision, and I asked him about
These days, the center-right Brooks frequently seems more sympathetic toward Obama than the liberal Paul Krugman. He has written columns praising Obama’s Afghanistan policy, education proposals, and economic team. Even on broad areas of disagreement--deficit spending, the sprawling stimulus bill, health care reform--Brooks tends to treat Obama and his administration with respect. “My overall view,” Brooks told me, “is ninety-five percent of the decisions they make are good and intelligent. Whether I agree with them specifically, I think they’re very serious and very good at what they do.” It is an odd situation to say the least: David Brooks, prominent conservative, has become the most visible journalistic ally of arguably the most liberal president of his lifetime.
How did this happen? During the s, Brooks was closely identified with national-greatness conservatism--a set of ideas that he touted in a widely discussed cover story for The Weekly Standard--which, in turn, was closely linked to the insurgent McCain campaign of But, whereas McCain and Bill Kristol (Brooks’s boss at The Weekly Standard) eventually put aside the bitterness of that primary contest and returned t
The Color of His Presidency
A few weeks ago, the liberal comedian Bill Maher and conservative strategist and pundit Bill Kristol had a brief spat on Maher’s HBO show, putatively over what instigated the tea party but ultimately over the psychic wound that has divided red America and blue America in the Obama years. The rise of the tea party, explained Maher in a let’s-get-real moment, closing his eyes for a second the way one does when saying something everybody knows but nobody wants to say, “was about a black president.” Both Maher and Kristol carry themselves with a weary cynicism that allows them to jovially spar with ideological rivals, but all of a sudden they both grew earnest and angry. Kristol interjected, shouting, “That’s bullshit! That is total bullshit!” After momentarily sputtering, Kristol recovered his calm, but his rare indignation remained, and there was no trace of the smirk he usually wears to distance himself slightly from his talking points. He almost pleaded to Maher, “Even you don’t believe that!”
“I totally believe that,” Maher responded, which is no doubt true, because every Obama supporter believes deep down, or sometimes right on the surface, t
August 31,
David Brooks Reveals Not-So-Secret Reason for Mancrush on Obama: "I divide people into people who talk like us and who dont talk like us"
By "us," he means dime-a-dozen pundits.
Cheap date, eh?
Another bit of fun there actually comes from Obama. When Brooks showed up with genuine Republican pundits to chat with him over dinner, Obama greeted him by asking, "What are you doing here?" (i.e., "Are you sure you're with the right group?").
That first encounter is still vivid in Brookss mind. I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, Brooks says, and Im thinking, a) hes going to be president and b) hell be a very good president. In the fall of , two days after Obamas The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was Run, Barack, Run.Brooks concedes that his place on the political spectrum has shifted somewhat over the years. I used to think conservatives were right abo
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