David Brooks, Master Craftsman of Republican Talking Points

Okay... it's really not worth my time to dissent a column this risible, but... today, David Brooks gives a lecture on bipartisanship that, true to his standard, consists of his spin on the latest Republican talking points, recast to appear measured and moderate to those who might be... normally I might say, average to less-informed voters, today I'll say, people who aren't very good at thinking. How many sharks can you jump in a single column?

Brooks starts with a Richard Dawson impression. Survey says.... "viewers loved Mitt Romney’s talk of professionalism and bipartisanship." No need to argue why that is or what it actually means.

In other words, primary campaigns are won by the candidate who can most convincingly champion the party’s agenda, but general election campaigns are won by the candidate who can most plausibly fix the political system.

As any Tea Party member can tell you, there is a difference between "bipartisanship" and what it might take to "plausibly fix the political system". Brooks also knows as a matter of policy, reaching a bipartisan solution can weaken a policy proposal. That's not always the case, but by definition a bipartisan solution is going to be less partisan than, if I need to say it, a partisan solution. If you're looking for purity of ideology, you want partisanship.

Brooks then goes through a Romney-like list of elements he deems essential to "break[ing] through the partisan dysfunction and mak[ing] Washington work". Let's start with what it doesn't take:

1. It "doesn’t take moderation". Brooks points to Ted Kennedy, whom he argues "had the ability to craft large and effective compromises on issues ranging from immigration to education and health care."

   That of course explains why Ted Kennedy won the nomination to be the Democratic Party's candidate back in 1980, sailed into the White House and... oh, right.

   Well then, it explains why David Brooks and the Republicans view Kennedy as a pillar of bipartisanship, a figure they respect and admire, and regard the culmination of his career of work in favor of healthcare reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as what you can achieve through a true bipartisan effort. Oh... right.

   Well, Ted Kennedy did cosponsor the DREAM Act, and that sailed through the... oh, right, the Republicans changed their mind.

   Recall, Ted Kennedy is not only Brooks' best example in support of his point, Kennedy is his only example. I'm not going to dispute that over the course of a very long career Kennedy cosponsored some important legislation with Republicans, but anyone with knowledge of history knows that much of that cooperation occurred during a prior era when the parties were less polarized, when the Republicans didn't see obstructionism as a winning election strategy, and worked in contexts in which the Republican cosponsors saw an opportunity to benefit from attaching their names to the bill. John McCain didn't drop his support for the DREAM Act because Kennedy became less persuasive. He dropped it because he was afraid of losing his seat to a primary challenger.

2. Might doesn't "make right". Brooks lectures that the effective President has to avoid thinking that his position is objectively the correct one, and that he can "win the debate" and get everything he wants simply by "get[ting] the facts out there". Brooks somehow forgets to tell us where "out there" is, or what any of this has to do with passing legislation.

   Were Brooks honest about it, he would admit that he's not talking about what it takes to pass legislation, but what it takes to defend legislation that is not popular. If the opposition party is lying about the legislation and its effects, can you count on convincing people of the truth merely bu putting "the facts out there"? Obviously not.

   As you work through his column, it becomes increasingly clear that Brooks is making little effort at internal consistency. He's instead alluding to right-wing criticisms of President Obama.

3. Don't live in a fantasy world - "distant fantasies almost never come true", so it's better to work for incremental change. What Brooks actually means here is that a President who has the opportunity to pass legislation that Brooks opposes should instead pass something modest, perhaps inconsequential, in the name of "partisanship". Never mind that the actual fantasy would be believing that, after another election, somebody like Mitch McConnell will change his stripes, apologize for setting a legislative agenda around defeating you, and suddenly become a partner for progress.

Of course by now you're wondering, what does it take to be the bipartisan savior - the "governing craftsman" for whom Brooks so hungers.

1. Having a "dual consciousness" - "[T]he governing craftsman has to... distinguish between a campaign consciousness and a governing consciousness." Campaigning involves "simplifying your own positions, exaggerating your opponent’s weaknesses and magnifying the differences between your relative positions", while governing involves doing "the reverse of all these things".

   Needless to say, Brooks offers zero examples to back this claim up.

   Let me give you an example for how presenting complicated positions, attempting to bridge the differences between yourself and the opposing party, and taking up their opposition works in practice. A President might take, say, a health care reform idea that has its roots in the Republican Party and right-wing 'think tanks', and has even been adopted in one state by a Republican governor, attempt to tweak and update it so it will work on a national basis, and repeatedly attempt to reach across the aisle for bipartisan support. Sound effective?

   Now let's consider what "the opposite" looks like. The sort of approach Brooks would surely tell us would be a one-way ticket out of Washington. The opposition leader might sniff that his number one job is to defeat you, not work with you. The opposition might engage in demagoguery about the plan, asserting that it is socialism, a government take-over of health care, that bureaucrats will decide the care that you get, that it will have death panels that can deny you life-saving care.

   Thank goodness we live in a political culture in which "governing consciousness" rules the day, because one would hate to think what might happen a president or opposition leader couldn't get past his "campaign consciousness". The horror.

2. "Being able to count".

   Is Brooks trying to rule out Mitt Romney at this point, based on budget numbers that don't add up? No, Brooks is pointing ot the obvious fact that if a President wants legislation to pass he must gather enough votes in the House and Senate to get it to pass.

3. Being able to "distinguish between existential issues and business issues." Brooks evokes that famous American politician, Winston Churchill, and contents that "Churchill would have made a terrible mistake if he had compromised with the appeasers". That assertion is going to make little sense to a casual reader, but immediately evokes the right-wing tropes against President Obama - Mitt Rommey's demagoguery and his persistent lies about an "apology tour". Brooks, a good Republican to his very core, is articulating a set of rules for others, specifically Democrats, not for himself.

   Brooks has one other example he offers in support of his point, "On the other hand, Dan Rostenkowski and Robert Packwood were absolutely right to compromise to get the tax reform of 1986 passed." Let's see... so far his examples of politicians who live up to his deals are the late Ted Kennedy, the late Winston Churchill, the late Dan Rostenkowski, and the long-politically dead Robert Packwood. As I said, he's describing what happened in an era during which the parties were less polarized, and pretending it carries over into a significantly different era.

   Assuming Brooks is aware that Winston Churchill would be ineligible to run for President, which of the two additional names he's mentioned does he imagine would have been the "craftsman" politician who would have been elected to the presidency in a walk and presided over a golden era of bipartisanship?

   Brooks feigns child-like innocence, that "in the middle of the fight almost every issue will feel like an existential issue, though, in reality, 98 percent of legislative conflicts are business issues". Perhaps Brooks is describing his own confusion, because although I can see plenty of examples of the opposition party turning "business issues" into stumbling blocks - preventing appointments from going through, needlessly obstructing the progress of legislation that it will ultimately support, spreading misinformation about what should be relatively non-controversial passages in new or pending legislation, and the like.
   
   I'm not coming up with an example of a president confusing business issues with existential issues. It's fair to observe, though, neither does Brooks - we know he's attacking President Obama through innuendo, but Brooks knows how foolish he would look if he came right out and made that claim.

4. Brooks offers the brilliant insight, that his bipartisan leader must be "able to read a calendar". Brooks explains that the politician must understand that they cannot postpone their agenda until after the next election in order to act - that it's "usually better to make a small step next month than do nothing in hopes of a total victory next generation".

   Let's imagine then, that the President is facing a large deficit and national debt, and that people are urging a so-called "grand bargain" that will supposedly balance the budget for decades to come. "Never mind the fact that this Congress cannot bind future sessions of Congress", those maximalists might argue, "You can't take seriously any budget proposal that doesn't fix everything for decades - or longer!"

   The David Brooks who wrote the current column might lecture those politicians and peers that they are being absurd, not only due to the fact that the next session of Congress might undo the work, but because it's not a realistic outcome to expect. He might argue, "If you calm down and take a look at the President's tax plan, you'll find that it does a lot to accomplish your stated goals. This isn't an existential issue - it's business. It's what can pass through Congress, right now. Think of it as a first step down a long road."

   But the David Brooks we have come to know and love? He wants none of that incremental stuff.

   Obama would be wiser to champion a Grand Bargain strategy. Use the Congressional deficit supercommittee to embrace the sort of new social contract we’ve been circling around for the past few years: simpler taxes, reformed entitlements, more money for human capital, growth and innovation.

   So guzzle that Kool-Aid and shoot for the moon! But... what if the public resists?

   Don’t just whisper Grand Bargain in back rooms with John Boehner. Make it explicit. Take it to the country. Lower the ideological atmosphere and get everybody thinking concretely about the real choices facing the nation.

   Doesn't that translate into the big "no-no" of thinking, "all I have to do is get the facts out there, win the debate and then I’ll get everything I want."? No, you see, this is completely different - all you have to do is get the facts out there, win the debate, and then David Brooks will get everything he wants. No rules or principles should get in the way of that.

5. Be "socially promiscuous." Brooks argues that a good deal maker will have lots of friends, be constantly glad handing the opposition, "celebrate their anniversaries and birthdays". You know, the sort of thing that helped Clinton have such a smooth, carefree relationship with the opposition party during his presidency.

   Were Brooks an honest man, he would admit that he's merely parroting an Republican talking point that the President does horrible things like... eating dinner with his family when he could be out at cocktail parties glad handing Republicans and lobbyists. Never mind that, by a number of accounts, Mitt Romney is no social butterfly, and came to be detested by pretty much every one of his primary opponents in two consecutive primary seasons. Never mind that many Republicans openly hated him right up to the second they were stuck with him.

6. Be a really good liar, and conspire against your base. Seriously. Brooks lectures,

   It is relatively easy to cut a deal with the leader of the other party. It is really hard to sell that deal to the rigid people in your own party. Therefore, the craftsman has to enter into a conspiracy with the other party’s leader in order to manipulate the party bases. The leaders have to invent stories so that each base thinks it has won.

   On the little issues - the "business issues" - that's relatively simple, politics as usual. A bit of spin, the issues not that important, you make a deal. How in the world, though, does Brooks believe that will work in relation to solving big issues. Might it sound like President Obama, at a debate, telling the public that he and Mitt Romney aren't very far apart on how to fix Social Security? If so, what are the odds that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are going to get out of the way and allow the passage of a modest reform bill that will fix Social Security's balance sheet for the next 50 - 75 years?

7. Next, you have to compromise in advance - show "substance pragmatism". Your base wants Medicare for all? A public option alongside private health plans? The insurance industry and healthcare industry want to be sure that the reform will not affect their bottom line profits? Insurance companies want to ensure that they will stay in business, perhaps even become more profitable, despite changes that will otherwise reduce their bottom line? A "craftsman" President might do what President Obama did - work with the various industries and their lobbyists to overcome their opposition to any reform, build the reform on the platform of a right-wing, Republican-endorsed system of private insurance, a mandate to purchase insurance, and keeping the reformed system as market-based as possible. He might get a true craftsman like Ted Kennedy to strongly endorse the bill and its passage.

   No, of course that's all wrong. Stop arguing based upon those facts with their icky "liberal bias" - Brooks' column is about advancing Republican spin. What an honest Brooks might describe as the outcome of his "conspiracy with the other party's" leadership to "manipulate the party bases" and "invent stories." Because that's what pundits do when they are approached for help by a "governing craftsman".

Brooks knows he's being dishonest when he argues that voters are demanding "craftsmanship" in advance of the "brutal trade-offs that loom ahead". Were he an honest man, he would note that Romney's new "talk of professionalism and bipartisanship" is belied by his own campaign trail rhetoric and that, rather than addressing any of the "brutal trade-offs" that Brooks sees as inevitable Romney is promising the Sun, moon and stars - tax cuts for everyone, a huge increase in military spending, pain free spending cuts (trust him, even though he only states support for cutting PBS and the unpopular parts of Obamacare), and that he'll cure the nation's woes by magic - why, if people simply believe he's going to be elected, flowers will burst forth from the ground, the stock market will reach uncharted heights... yeah.

Brooks also cannot be so obtuse as to believe that "Voters [were] astonishingly clear. In 2000, they elected George W. Bush after he promised to change the tone in Washington". If Brooks checks his history books, he'll find that if you look at the popular vote the 2000 election was won by Al Gore. Last I checked, losing the popular vote was an "astonishingly clear" message that more people wanted your opponent to win than wanted you to win, even if you carry the electoral vote. Similarly, Brooks might realize that more was going on in 2008 than the Republican's self-proclaimed maverick, campaigning on a claimed record of "reaching across the aisle," lost to a candidate who merely "promised to move the country beyond stale partisan debates". The country I was in was suffering from a profound economic crisis, and McCain's response was not perceived as impressive. Where was Brooks?

Brooks would have done better to have written a column about how politicians will try to sell you snake oil while on the campaign trail, but alas, that would have ended up being a column in support of the wrong party.

Is the Problem a "Brain Drain" or a Lack of Sincerity

Richard Cohen is shocked that, in his opinion, the level of "talent" among the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination was lacking. His analysis reminds me a bit of how audiences react to Saturday Night Live - during most seasons, you'll hear people complain about how SNL was much funnier when [former cast member] was still on the show. If they're still watching the show three, five, eight years down the line, odds are that they'll be issuing the same lament but naming a member of the current cast. Call it nostalgia.

When Cohen complains about the lack of Republican talent, declaring that Ronald Reagan beat "a future president,... two future Senate majority leaders... and two lesser-known congressmen", he's judging the cast of characters based upon their future résumés, not their qualifications at the time, and is also expressing a degree of nostalgia for a campaign that didn't seem all that impressive at the time.

Cohen's comment reminds me of the critique of the 1988 Democratic Party candidates, "Gary Hart and the seven dwarfs", a list that included a future House Majority Leader and a future Vice President and a number of others who were fundamentally decent men. But easy to make fun of at the time. And hey, why didn't people like Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy or Bill Bradley throw their hats in the ring? And let's not overlook the "you gotta be kidding me" candidates like David Duke and Lyndon Larouche. Michele Bachmann's not looking so bad now, is she?

Cohen also seems to want to have it both ways, criticizing candidates for being foolish enough to run after engaging in bipartisanship, dismissing Jon Huntsman as "a former appointee of the Obama administration", and in almost the next breath complaining that candidates felt that they had to cater to the right. Cohen complains, "The list of Republicans who looked at Iowa’s daunting demographics and did not run is more distinguished than those who did", without naming any of the candidates he believes would have been better. He laments "None of these candidates were remotely qualified for the highest office in the land", but doesn't state what he believes to be sufficient qualification, let alone explaining if and how they fail to measure up to past presidential nominees.

He's also convinced that Mitt Romney "espouses extreme positions he does not for a moment believe", but does not provide any evidence that Romney does not in fact believe his present positions. The courtroom cliché, "Were you lying then or are you lying now," comes to mind? How are we supposed to know what Romney believes, and why dos Cohen believe he holds the answers. A column in which Cohen lays out Romney's actual beliefs and presents a convincing case for why the beliefs he describes are the ones Romney actually holds? That would be worth reading.

The focus on personality and presentation reminds me of Cohen's principal criticism of President Obama - that "he's dreadful as a schmoozer". Part of the problem we're seeing is the product of a modern class of commentators who love the horse race aspect of elections, who love being given special access to politicians, being flattered, but treat policy as an afterthought. If you have a national platform and are truly concerned, you can complain about the vapidity of a slate of candidates while the primary is underway. You don't have to wait until large numbers of your fellow commentators are (prematurely) dancing on the casket of the nominee produced by that primary process.

I don't want to dismiss an important element of Cohen's argument, that after decades of holding itself out as the champion of religion and social conservatism, the Republican Party has reached a point where... well, not quite where the inmates run the asylum, but where the groups to whom that pitch is appealing are both demanding results and turning out in force in primaries. It is difficult to pander to those groups while giving a wink to the business community, "we don't really care about that stuff, but we'll take good care of you," while not turning off large numbers of voters who find that level of extremism to be disturbing or those who no longer believe the wink - who believe that if elected you'll cater to the social extremists because they've gained so much power within the party.

At the same time, I can't help but wonder how George Romney would have fared. A man whose credentials were a lot like his son's, but who would likely have approached the race with a sense of humility instead of entitlement, of candor instead of obfuscation. To look at it another way, Mitt Romney is unlikely to carry Michigan, but Michigan twice elected his father as governor, and recently elected a Republican governor who ran on his success in business. But for Romney's past positions on a number of Republican litmus test issues, I think he could have run a far more moderate campaign and prevailed while retaining greater appeal to moderates and swing voters. I may be wrong - and unfortunately it's impossible to test my hypothesis - but I think Romney's biggest problem has nothing to do with a perception that he is not qualified to be President, but is instead the fact that he's widely perceived as a phony.

In four years, assuming Romney loses, Jeb Bush is likely to be running for the nomination. He's likely to be taking a more moderate position on social issues, and to be endorsing a mixture of spending cuts and modest tax increases to balance the budget. I'm not sure that Bush represents some form of secret Republican brain trust, and I see no reason to believe that he has any meaningful qualification for the White House that the better candidates of this year's Republican primaries lacked. But if he's perceived as sincere, and people can sufficiently distance him in their minds from his brother, he has a real shot. Even if he takes a moderate approach on immigration.

It's Important To Be Pro-Life....

Except when it counts? Or is that when it's most important that the state dictate your (lack of) choice?

Ross Douthat ploddingly repeats a tired old argument on abortion rights and Down syndrome:

For abortion opponents, cruel ironies abounded in this sibling disagreement. Because of Eunice Shriver’s work with the developmentally disabled, a group of Americans who had once been marginalized and hidden away - or lobotomized, like her sister Rosemary - was ushered closer to full participation in ordinary human life. But because of laws that her brother unstintingly supported, that same group was ushered out again: the abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome, for instance, is estimated to be as high as 90 percent.

Now we could start by looking at facts. You know, Kennedy's support for universal healthcare and SCHIP. By helping families afford to care for their developmentally disabled children through programs largely opposed and restricted by Republicans, liberals like Kennedy made it easier for families to "choose life". But lets run with Douthat's "facts be damned" approach. When Michael Gerson trotted out that same statistic, I responded with what should be obvious to even a mediocre thinker:

Do you suppose he has evidence that parents who self-classify as conservatives don't choose abortion when they learn that they are expecting a Down syndrome child? Well, he says, "In America, the lives of about nine of 10 children with Down syndrome are ended before birth." So either Gerson has to admit that American conservatives are a big part of what he describes as the problem, or argue that significantly less than 10% of Americans are "conservative."

I guess there's one more possibility: He could be arguing that while liberals fret over the conflict between humanitarianism and egalitarianism, conservatives are skipping the debate and heading straight to Planned Parenthood.

Seriously, that statistic can mean only one thing: When confronted with a very tough choice - one that Gerson and Douthat would strip away from them - the overwhelming majority of pro-life parents suddenly find that they prefer to live in a pro-choice world.

Now remember, the abortion issue is one of Douthat's favorite topics, if not his absolute favorite. If he understands anything, it's this issue. As much as he complains that Kennedy was firmly pro-choice, Douthat's an embodiment of pro-life absolutism. Thus, it's fair to take him to task for this:

[I]n Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court upheld a near-absolute right to terminate a pregnancy - a decision made possible by her brother’s demagogic assault on Robert Bork five years earlier, which helped doom Bork’s nomination to the court.

Did you follow that? Douthat, a supposed conservative Republican (and yes, he expressly declared himself a Republican on Bill Maher's show just a couple of weeks ago), whining that his party wasn't able to stack the Supreme Court and legislate from the bench.

First we have the illogic of his "for want of a nail" argument. Apparently, Douthat takes great umbrage that Kennedy said of Bork, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions", because but for such "demagogy" abortion might now be illegal.

Douthat also flat-out lies about the holding of Casey, which largely upheld state law restrictions on access to abortion. Other than spousal notification laws, what common restriction on access to abortion has been found to constitute an "undue burden" under Casey?

Douthat closes with yet another distortion, one that suggests that he's succumbing to the temptation of regurgitating his party's weekly memo instead of providing actual (or factual) analysis:

And it’s entirely fitting, given his record, that Kennedy’s immediate legacy is a draft of health-care legislation that pursues an eminently Catholic goal - expanding access to medical care - through a system that seems likely, in its present design, to subsidize abortion.

Nothing in the current healthcare proposals would have any effect on the Hyde Amendment or its prohibition on using federal funds to pay for abortions.

Update: Dana Goldstein points out yet another piece of legislation Kennedy sponsored:

In 2005, Kennedy co-sponsored a bill - the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act -- that expanded federal financing for support programs for expectant and new parents who receive a Down syndrome diagnosis. Research shows that doctors delivering such a diagnosis often share very little information about living with the disease, and presume that the patient would prefer to terminate her pregnancy. Indeed, about 90 percent of couples who receive a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis do choose abortion. But enriched by his sister Rosemary's life, Kennedy sought to link expectant and new parents with mentor families already raising a child with Down syndrome, as well as create a national registry of families willing to adopt disabled infants.

Once again, the opposite of what Douthat was implying.

Update II: Ruth Marcus addresses the abortion factor, noting how the issue has historically been treated, and (without naming names) how people (like Douthat?) are distorting the issue in an effort to derail healthcare reform.

"Meretricious"

The Non Sequitur takes on George Will's Kennedy eulogy. The quote at issue,

Kennedy's second-most memorable speech, a remarkably meretricious denunciation of Robert Bork, demonstrated the merely contingent connection between truth and rhetorical potency.

The use of a term like "meretricious" is, I think, intended by Will to disguise the true meaning of his statement. If you read older case law, particularly family law cases, you'll see references to "meretricious relationships". If you don't know what the word means, you could glide right past it, or even think it's a compliment... "He said something about Kennedy's speech having merit".

Whatever excuses the Post throws up from time to time about not editing its columnists, do you think the editorial would have gone to print in that form had Will described Kennedy's speech as "whore-like", rather than hiding behind an equivalent but less obvious term?