March 05, 2009

The Audacity of David Brook's Buyers Remorse

From David Brooks, New York Times
Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Dear Dave,
I admire your courage to publicly admit your mistake, but crying in your beer now that Obama has shown his true colors is at this point disingenuous. You knew full well who or what Obama was as early as last June when you wrote about The Two Obamas:
But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.
This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

So as we see here it's not like you were caught up in the flowery rhetoric and the glittering generalities like the rest of the herd, you knew! You then made the conscious decision to endorse Obama while vilifying Sarah Palin as "a cancer on the republican party."

Sorry Dave it's time to turn in you pundits licence and remember those that stand in the middle of the road always get run over.

Sincerely
The Salmon

No comments: